Before I even thought about the possibility of being a teacher-librarian, I, of course, had some misconceptions of what the job was. These came about through my experience as a practising teacher at university and as a casual teacher in New South Wales.

As a casual teacher in New South Wales, I worked in many different public schools. Through this experience, I came upon many of my misconceptions about the role of a teacher-librarian. Especially from working at the school I went to as a primary school student myself. Teachers that I had as a student in year one were now running the school library, and as such, I believed that teacher-librarians were simply teacher that had been ‘plonked’ in the library. I had no idea about the needs for masters to teach in the library as a library teacher and really thought it was just a teacher teaching in a different room.

Because of this experience, I believed that library teachers were Release from Face to Face (RFF) teachers. In all the schools that I taught at with a library teacher, never did the children go there besides RFF time. I was appointed to do RFF as a casual teacher and then was in the library for the entire day, which furthered to solidify my misconceptions about this position. I had very little knowledge about the teacher librarian’s job and no knowledge about what each class was learning at the time. Therefore I was simply filling in the time by reading to the children and discussing with them things like word choice, the meaning of the stories, and similar topics. I immensely enjoyed this day as a casual teacher; reading to children for an entire day was amazing! However, I walked away with many misunderstandings about what the role of a library teacher was.

Before looking into becoming a library teacher, I had no idea about what they were teaching. It wasn’t like there was a syllabus on library education, and the only experiences I had did not include any explicit teaching. The other teachers themselves seemed to hold similar ideas about what a librarian teacher was and acted accordingly.

Through these experiences, I came to the misunderstanding that these library teachers were just average teachers who landed themselves in the ‘cushy’ job due to extenuating circumstances. They seemed to have the benefits of being a teacher without the workload of assessments and a curriculum to follow explicitly. It wasn’t until I started looking into becoming a library teach myself that I began to understand what I library teacher was.

It was then that I noticed that the library teacher was discussing what they were doing with the teacher. Together, they chose books for the class about current learning in the classroom. They were exchanging knowledge through brief discussions that I had previously missed and collaborated to meet the curriculum goals in all key learning areas (KLA’s). The teacher-librarian was running lessons that would teach the children how to use essential technology, and then the teacher was implementing these skills in the children’s assessments and day to day learning. There were many other examples after this that I experienced effective teaching and learning between the teachers, and it opened my mind to the true role of teacher librarians.