Part B Reflection- Teacher Librarian as Leader

Being part of the ETL 504 Teacher Librarian as Leader subject has been both an informative and self-searching journey. Over the last four years, I have experienced two large career changes which have forced me to question myself as a teacher and as a leader. I have always had opinions on what I believe to be good and bad leadership and what leadership in a school should look like. The experience of being involved in schools experiencing financial problems and leadership crises recently has placed leadership at the forefront of my mind. The study of different leadership models presented in this subject has been valuable to be able to give context and definition to recent experiences.

I have been an Arts specialist teacher for most of my career, mainly working in independent boys’ schools. The opportunities to lead came about early in my career through working collaboratively with other teachers and consequently being asked to step up to the role. On more than one occasion it was a needs-based situation that involved taking on a more experienced teacher’s responsibilities. At least three leaders I believe have been able to identify qualities that I personally would not have seen or believed I had for a leadership role. To these leaders, I have felt dually grateful for being given the opportunities and for the influence they have had on my leadership style. Identifying particular qualities in members of the staff is an important skill that seems to fit with both distributed leadership and servant leadership models. As Harris (2014) states, “those in formal leadership roles have a key role to play in creating the conditions for distributed leadership to occur. They have to create opportunities for others to lead. The opportunity to step in and take on a role of greater responsibility was both an opportunity to lead and work collaboratively”.

The study of leadership models has been insightful, as I have been able to reflect on my current role as a teaching and learning officer and how I would work as a TL. In the first assessment, I focused on how a teacher-librarian would work with a whole school leadership model. In my current role as a department of education teaching and learning officer, I have been working as an instructional coach to help schools in the implementation of a whole school curriculum model. Initially, I looked into the application of the transformational model to envisage how leaders assist schools, to implement an overarching policy (Bush & Glover, 2014). Instructional and distributed leadership models were studied to envision how they would work together in different roles in the school. With further reading, I have realised how the role of the TL may also fit with a servant leadership model. I was initially dissuaded from the idea of a servant leadership model, as it implied being in a servant role, which was a complete misunderstanding of what this model represents. Like Richmond (2017), I too was cautious of being perceived as a person in the school who is there to just serve and felt this was problematic from the position of a traditionally female-held position. In a recent think space blog, I reflected on how my past experiences as a teacher and leader in a school had affected my perception of servant leadership (Kennedy, 2021)

There are many qualities of all of the leadership models studied that will be taken into account in the day-to-day work that I do. Currently, the work that I am engaged in is more akin to an instructional leader, as it is centered on coaching and the delivery of professional Learning. When I have the opportunity to move into a Teacher Librarian role I will take away much of what I have recently learned about servant leadership, the work, I believe should authentically engage with the overall vision of the school, enabling change to create an environment that is conducive to student learning (Meulemans & Matlin, 2019).

 

References

Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we know?

School Leadership and Management, 34(5) 553-571. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.928680

Harris, A. (2014, September 29). Distributed leadership. Teacher Magazine, ACER. https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/article/distributed-leadership

Ingram, D. (2019, February 4). Transformational leadership vs transactional leadership definition. HearstNewspapers: SmallBusiness. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/transformational-leadership-vs-transactional-leadership-definition-13834.html

Kennedy, J. M. (2021, April 18). Servant Leadership and the Role of the Teacher Librarian [blog post]. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/kenneja/2021/04/18/servant-leadership-and-the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian/

Meulemans, Y.N., & Matlin, T.R. (2019). Are You Being served? Embracing Servant Leadership, Trusting Library Staff, and Engendering Change. Library Leadership & Management 34, no. 1: 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5860/llm.v34i1.7399

Richmond, L. (2017). “A Feminist Critique of Servant Leadership.” In Feminists Among Us: Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership, edited by Shirley Lew & Baharak Yousefi, 43-65. Library Juice Press.

 

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