Scanning my memories of my brief teaching career for my understanding of the role of teacher librarian at that time has been… difficult. I’ve basically drawn a blank, and spent the last few weeks pondering.

As a prac teacher in a state secondary school in Brisbane, I recall my year 10 music class had a research assignment, and I ran a library lesson under my supervising teacher’s direction where they had an opportunity to explore resources the librarian had collected on the topic. This is my only memory of meaningful contact with the librarian at that school.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

During my first year out in a state secondary school on the Gold Coast, I recall being physically present in the library for child protection training, and for a couple of lessons timetabled in the library. These memories are of the library as nothing more than a physical space, where non-library related activities were sometimes timetabled. It’s possible there was no librarian. If there was, I must have had some contact with them, however I spent that first year barely keeping my head above water. I never proactively sought out the library as a teaching resource. I don’t recall being given tips or encouragement to use the library, though my memory may be failing me.

After that, London, where, as a day-to-day supply teacher, I didn’t even know where the library was. Then three years in a school for teenagers with severe learning difficulties. No library there. I was the teacher on staff who took the lead with the new interactive whiteboards and then supported my colleagues to use them. I spent an inordinate number of happy hours researching, writing, collecting props, and making playlists for my outlandish and original sensory stories for my students with PMLD (profound and multiple learning disabilities). Both of these are activities I can now see may have been supported by a teacher librarian if I had had access to one.

Age and experience make me want to shake first-year teacher me. In those pre-Australian Curriculum days (which I like to call “choose your own adventure teaching”) I could have drawn on the librarian as a resource, and created inquiry-based library lessons early in my English and SOSE units (though as a green, one year-trained teacher in the late 90’s, I barely knew what inquiry learning was). With my developing ideas of what a teacher librarian can contribute, I find myself imagining what I would do as a teacher librarian to support a new teacher.

It has been since my time as a teacher that I have become more aware of the role of teacher librarian in schools, partly as a result of there being a visible and proactive TL working at my daughter’s school. I’m planning volunteer days working with her as I navigate my studies, as I want to get a sense of a variety of environments. The academic library is the setting which seems obvious for me based on my career to this point, but the more I learn about the specific work of the teacher librarian, the more curious and excited I become.