Libraries as safe spaces
In my very first blog post, I discussed the role of the TL. My first line? The moment I realised how important it is for schools to have a teacher librarian was the moment I realised what it’s like to not have one. Reading back on this, I am pleased to say that everything I said still stands – in particular, my focus on the library being a hub and safe space for all students. I even mentioned how at my last school, the person who ran the library was so scary that students begged not to go there. I knew immediately that I would never make students feel this way about my own library.
The definition of safe is ‘not likely to be harmed or lost’, and for me this was my primary goal in my first year of being a teacher librarian – making our library somewhere students wanted to be in the often-difficult world of high schools and adolescence. Of course, it was 2020 and COVID hit, but that just further highlighted the need for strong community spaces once we could no longer access them. Research by Merga (2021) concluded that school libraries can be “highly valued safe spaces for avid users”, with their value lying in “their capacity to foster belonging and sanctuary, allow exposure to books and opportunities for reading, and provide a space for relaxing and recharging.” In my four years as a TL, I can confidently say that the small team of myself and my library technician have created this space for students. Library usage post-COVID has soared, with the biggest challenge for us being a lack of physical space – a Year 12 student videoed the library (see link below) to show administration how busy the space was during a lunch break (so far, still waiting on an increase in space, but we’ll see!).
The Library at a busy lunchtime!
A part of Merga’s study (2021) that resonated with me personally was that the pastoral care contributions from library staff often go unrecognised by school leadership. During my professional placement, I witnessed the necessity of the public library as a space where everyone feels welcome and no one gets turned away – a school library is similar to this, except on the much deeper pastoral care level that comes with working with young people on daily basis. Your relationship with them is often just as important as what they are learning, and I have found this to be true in the library, where your list of “regulars” is often evolving and growing as the students need you. The study visit with Lake Tuggeranong College teacher librarians (H. Godfrey & L. Korodaj, personal communication, May 1, 2023) included an answer to a question about the characteristics of an effective teacher librarian – ‘gentleness and emotional intelligence’, ‘cheerfulness and warmth’, and ‘firm and pushy, but likeable about it’ were qualities they mentioned, as well as knowing your students and what they want/need. Sometimes what they want is a space to hang out with their friends, but sometimes what they need is a space where the library staff are genuinely happy to see them, let them hang out behind the counter and eat, venting their worries and concerns. As Hall (2021) said, “we are not judgemental, we are not assessing them…this is important because these friendly chats with a trusted adult outside their home or classroom may be what they value most in their day.” It is why a library space is often unquantifiable when measuring their worth – it is difficult to measure the seemingly insignificant everyday moments on a data table.
The library should be a place where diversity is celebrated, and students can see themselves reflected in the collection. My assignment for ETL402 Resourcing the Curriculum focused on the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ texts in school libraries, and I discovered that “students feel safer in schools that have LGBTQIA+ issues in the curriculum” (Szalacha, 2003). The school curriculum is lacking in this area, but that doesn’t mean the school library collection has to. I have spent the last few years purchasing more of these texts, labelling them with rainbow stickers to identify them in this genre; being at a Catholic school, I wondered if I would face some challenges around this, but so far it has not been a problem. In fact, students have commented how much they love seeing rainbow flags on the spines of books. In conjunction with this, I have offered the library space as a place to display our support for students during Pride Week and days of celebration, like Wear it Purple Day. Students hang the Pride flag in the library window, come in and select texts to display, and use the space to hold events and meetings. By making the literal space visibly welcoming, we play a part in helping students know they will always belong in the school library. We have also built up a picture book collection for a Year 7 English unit, in collaboration with teachers, by selecting texts which are diverse in manners of race, gender, sexuality, religion and culture, as well as adding to our First Nations and Asian voices YA collection. We often promote female empowerment as well – being a girls’ school, it is imperative to include female voices and experiences in our collection.
Students genuinely appear to love our library (see pictures below – apparently it even smells nice?). We offer book clubs, host Write a Book in a Day fundraising events, expose students to professional writers and illustrators through our Girls Write Now Literary Festival, games for those wanting a break from laptops, Lego, and puzzles to work on individually or in groups, which all contribute to creating a space students want to be in. A new deputy principal commented recently that it was one of the loveliest, welcoming libraries he’s ever seen in a school – I often like to say that while we are small, we are mighty!
Teacher Librarian as Leader
For me, ETL504 Teacher Librarian as Leader was my most challenging subject throughout the course. Looking back, I think this may be because I did it quite early on into the degree, when I had only been a TL for a few months, so I couldn’t see at the time how I was leading in any way when I was just finding my feet. I have since come to realise the power of the quiet or unnoticed leadership of the teacher librarian. For me, it has been demonstrated through the organisation of multiple events where I am the sole leader; through the hundreds of questions I am asked daily; leading my library technician and asserting my decision making skills; and learning to advocate for budget increases, amongst many other things.
In my blog post from September 30 2020, I discussed the words of Danielson (2009), in which they stated that teacher librarians often rise from the teacher ranks to lead from the middle. I feel this is something that has absolutely applied to my practice, particularly recently with the arrival of generative AI and all the complications that brings with it. To put it bluntly, no one in my school seems too concerned about AI and what that means for our teaching practices, yet from everything I was reading, I couldn’t understand how this was not at the forefront of our leadership team’s mind. Put simply, it’s going to revolutionise the way we teach. I began by looking at it from a referencing and plagiarism point of view, posting information to our whole-school Teams page whenever new information arose. My principal then approached me and asked me to investigate this further, in collaboration with our head of IT. According to Oddone (2023), leading learning and teaching about AI means looking at the ‘big picture’, while teaching with AI gives many opportunities for library staff to take an active role in what this may look like for their school. I am quite book-ish and find technology to be one of my biggest challenges, yet here I now am I leading the investigation into how this is going to be handled as everyone realises how important it is. I have taken it upon myself to attend multiple PDs around generative AI in schools, and my principal is now looking to me to take the lead, despite the fact we have a middle leader of pedagogy who could really sink their teeth into this. I tend to be a reluctant leader when I don’t feel 100% competent in something, and I certainly don’t feel competent in Generative AI; however, Strachan (2023) argues that now more than ever, with teacher shortages, burnout and fatigue, the teacher librarian can be the one to step up as expert leaders, advocating on behalf of our colleagues for more professional development for every teacher in regards to AI. She also states that it is imperative that TLs keep up to date and share current research on AI tools and their pedagogical impact, something I have been doing now for months when no one else seemed too concerned.
I have come to realise I am a quiet leader, but I can speak up when I need to. The International Literacy Association stated in 2022 that teacher librarians as leaders fall into the following three categories: librarians as collaborators, librarians as advocates of literacy advocacy, and librarians as providers of access. I could write a whole paper about these three areas, but looking through the descriptors made me feel that I am, in fact, a leader in my school. My strength is in conversations and collaboration, as per category one; I empower students through ensuring our collection reflects them and their experiences, as per category two; and I advocate for student access to all kinds of resources, regardless of challenges I may face as I am a huge believer in freedom to information. My principal recently called me an “underutilised asset”, and at first I wasn’t sure if I should take that as an insult (in that I’m not doing enough or not putting myself out there enough) – instead, I chose to take it as a compliment as this was stated after a meeting where I discussed a variety of library based issues, such as AI and referencing, why we should cull some of our collection, and budgeting requirements for an upcoming writing workshop. I still have a way to go in prioritising where my leadership skills fit best in my school setting, but I feel I am on my way to clarifying that for myself and my colleagues alike.
Community connections
During my practicum at North Lakes Public Library, I realised the importance of community connection as a reason for libraries to exist in the first place. It is my firm belief that libraries of any kind – be they public, academic, or school libraries – must form connections with the community they service. In a school library, the community is obviously students and staff, but those connections can reach further, via local businesses, local authors and illustrators, feeder primary schools, other schools in the BCE network, charities and more. As Yorio (2021) says, “librarians hold a unique role in schools that allows them flexibility and the opportunity to connect students not only to books, but also to technology, critical thinking skills, and the community.” It is this connection to community I hope to continue to create and build on throughout my time at the SJFC library.
While much of the collection development decisions are made by keeping up with what is popular (due to our limited physical space, the collection must be carefully curated), we also utilise the expertise of local bookstores to help build our collection. An excellent article by Kristen Proud (2020) discusses the ways in which independent bookstores can support school libraries – as the owner of one such establishment, she believes they are more in line with teacher librarians and schools than people initially realise, supporting collection development in a multitude of ways. We have forged connections with Riverbend, a Brisbane-based locally owned bookstore which boasts a YA “expert”, whom we meet with a few times a year to see what is new and diverse in YA literature. Likewise, when our students demonstrated a keen interest in Manga (a genre neither myself nor my library technician knew much about), we utilised the help of Zombster, another independent bookstore in Brisbane specialising in Manga, anime, and graphic novels. The owner Alistair visits our school twice a year to engage students in selecting what they want to see on the shelves; he also gives us advice about which series are appropriate for certain age groups, ensuring we don’t have anything on our shelves that could raise concerns. By building the collection this way, not only are we getting their advice, we are also supporting small businesses, something I see as vitally important in connecting with our community.
Another way in which we connect with community is by hosting a primary school event with local author Yvonne Mes, who presents writing workshops to six of our local feeder schools. We make this day easy for the primary schools by covering all costs, providing transportation through our school bus, and providing snacks and showbags for our little visitors. We have done this three years in a row now, and the visiting teachers consistently comment on what a wonderful experience this is for their students, and take teaching resources away with them. Our principal once suggested we invite only the local Catholic schools (being a Catholic school ourselves), but I really pushed to include our two state schools as coming from a state school background myself, I knew opportunities like this were not very often on offer. Not only do we make connections with the primary schools, we have developed a strong relationship with Yvonne, who recommends other authors for our Literary Festival. The event also serves as an important part of our school marketing, which pleases the principal and allows us to keep funding the event. Now that I have made these connections, I plan to organise visiting reading sessions where we take a group of our girls to local schools and entertain them with some fabulous reading!
Our Girls Write Now/Youth Write Now literary festivals are a huge part of the school calendar, and allow us to connect further with the community. Held biennially, the Girls Write Now festival happens during Book Week (our “grown up version”, as we market it to the students), and includes us booking professional authors, illustrators, song writers and actors from Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast to share how they create. We also use this an opportunity to hold a parent event, inviting caregivers to join us for an evening with a parenting expert who can share their knowledge around raising teens. It is one of the only events on the school calendar which includes parents, and well-received by the leadership team. Last year’s festival also saw the inclusion of a gorgeous mural on the wall of a new building, painted by professional artist Joel Fergie and our own First Nations Cultural Leader Jess – seeing this mural come to life in one week was truly special, and our students were in awe of the creative process.
The Youth Write Now day is a branch of the original festival, which we introduced last year after I realised we had very little connections with similar schools in the area. We used this day to book diverse authors and invited students from local high schools to join us in writing workshops. While it has a few kinks that need working out, I’m very proud that I have introduced this concept to our local community and hope to build it further in the future.
Being a Catholic school, we obviously aim to work with charities, and the library is no different. During COVID, with all our regular programming stopped, we started a book drive to donate books to students in Sudan, collecting over 1600 books to One Million Books of Hope. In the years we don’t run the literary festival, we host Write a Book in a Day to raise funds for the Kids’ Cancer Project. Forty year 8 and 9 students plan, write, illustrate, edit and publish a book in a 12 hour period (while we supervise and feed them pizza!). It has become a much-loved event in our school, with our senior students begging to be allowed to join the juniors for the competition.
While ‘community connections’ does not directly apply to any particular subjects taught in the Masters course, I believe everything I have learnt should lead to how we as a library can better our community – it’s something I’m very proud of in my own growth as a TL that I can use my position to connect with people beyond our school library, and something I am pleasantly surprised has become part of my planning process.
