“To make a lovable school, industrious, inventive, liveable, documentable and communicable, a place of research, learning, re-cognition and reflection, where children, teachers and families feel well – is our point of arrival.”
Loris Malaguzzi
In reflecting on the Reggio Children (2022) twelve principles of the Reggio Emilia Educational Project:
- Children are active protagonists
- Progettazione
- The hundred languages
- Organisation
- Environment and spaces
- Participation
- Environment and spaces
- Co-construction
- Professional growth
- Educational Research
- Documentation
- Evaluation
You can see that resource collection must be a collaboration between the Teacher Librarian, Classroom Teachers, learners and the wider community.
As a Teacher Librarian (TL), guided by the principles above, the relationship that exists between TL and teacher, TL and learner, learner and teacher and each with the wider school community must be reciprocal and collaborative. Observing children in their learning and play, being an active part of teacher research and planning and being the conduit between the school and greater community will ensure that resource selections are relevant and authentic to the learning that is taking place.
It is also important for the TL to know what is available in order to introduce teachers and learners to new provocations and ideas.
Child agency is extremely important. Children must be consulted as to the types of resources that would best support their learning and interests. They may even use this provocation as a basis for a project inquiry surrounding how resources are selected.
Just in time purchasing is a considerable proportion of the development of the collection with the TL making contributions based on the values and direction of the curriculum for the learners.
So how would this look in my setting:
- Conversing with borrowers about their interests, inquiries and preferences.
- Working with teaching teams to create bibliographical resources to support their student/class inquiry projects.
- Planning collaboratively with all teaching teams.
- Promoting the purchase by request service to teachers and students.
- Including a ‘Suggest a book’ service in our space.
- Ensuring that my knowledge is up to date, regarding new publications in order to suggest these to the community.
- Observing the learners engaging with texts and researching how we can optimise their learning experience.
- Constantly observing, questioning, reflecting and collaborating.
- Ensuring the environment is organised in a way that the teachers and learners can easily see what resources we have, in order to uncover the possibilities of what we can acquire.
Reference:
Reggio Children. (2022) Values: Principles of the educational project. Reggio Emilia Approach. https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/valori-en/