Category Archives: ELT401 – Introduction to Teacher Librarianship

Forum 3.2 Role of the TL

Posted on by

 

Firstly, thank you Lee for including Valenza’s (2010) ‘Revised Manifesto’ in this module, hers was the practical application of the role of the teacher librarian that was outlined in the other readings that spoke to me.

Sometimes I feel as a teacher librarian, I am a jack of all trades but a master of none.

One thing I do know is that people are important, and I felt this was reflected in Lamb (2011) article stressing the importance of “building dynamic relationships” to achieve the myriad of roles that are encompassed in the title of calling ourselves teacher librarians.  I do not feel that in any way this negates the other elements of being a teacher librarian, but instead is the foundation of a good teacher librarian.

I am lucky enough to work as part of a fantastic team under a head librarian who manages her team effectively knowing our weaknesses and using our strengths.  This is the one aspect of being a teacher librarian that I think is often missed when outlining our role.  The aspect of being a ‘team manager’.  If we can become good team managers it would not be a case of “What existing tasks/roles do you think you as a TL could give up in order to be as proactive as Lamb and Valenza want you to be?” but one of which tasks do you think you could delegate and still achieve the ultimate goal of being a teacher librarian – providing a school environment that helps students to be information literate students and lifelong learners.

The role of the teacher librarian is dynamic and expansive, clearly illustrated in Nicole Moore’s (2017) diagram below.  Central to every aspect of this role is collegiality.

 

 

(Moore, 2017)

Role of Teacher Librarian (Moore, 2017)

 

 

Lamb, A. (2011). Bursting with potential: Mixing a media specialist’s palette. Techtrends : Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 55(4), 27-36.

Moore, N. (2017, April 17). Role of the teacher librarian [Image – Online discussion group] Retrieved from https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&forum_id=_84749_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_42098_1&course_id=_23912_1&message_id=_1116708_1#msg__1116708_1Id

Valenza,  J. (2010) A revised manifesto. Retrieved from http :// blogs . slj .com/ neverendingsearch /2010/12/03/a-revised-manifesto/

 

Forum 3.1 – AITSL Standards

Posted on by

As someone who is new to the field of working as a teacher librarian and at the same time new to working in a secondary school setting I find the ASLA evidence guides extremely useful.  They ensure that we keep the professional teacher within us accountable. We are both a teacher and a librarian.  The tasks that we perform as ‘librarians’ need to be rooted in the education of our students and therefore directly tied to the curriculum and professional standards.  We are afforded the rare opportunity of peeking beyond the curtain and witnessing all the key learning areas in all the year levels engage with the curriculum.  They can guide my practice, show me what I am achieving well and where I need to improve.

Engaging with teachers in formulating and implementing guided inquiry tasks with the students, teacher librarians actively display all professional standards outlined by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2014). Australian professional standards for teachers. Retrieved from https://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/standards/list

Australian School Library Association (ASLA). (2012). Publications. Retrieved from http://www.asla.org.au/publications/evidence-guides.aspx

Information Literacy???

Posted on by

jambulboy / Pixabay

Behavioural or Sociocultural approach?  Skillset or concept?  Information literacy is a complicated and has a diversity of definitions and understanding.  What has become apparent to me through reading the literature in this module is the importance of perspective and context.  These two factors determine our view of information literacy.  If our job as teacher librarians is to prepare students for the workforce or further study, we need to focus on the metacognitive skills that will allow students to be adaptive in the changing information landscape that is determined by the context they will be engaging with it.   This will give students a broad skillset that is applicable to them in whatever context they find themselves in.

Information literacy instruction needs to instruct students using a behaviourist approach engaging them in contextual applications of the skills required to engage, but include sociocultural aspects of the world we now live in.  Context and purpose of information literacy needs to be visible to our students if we want them to transfer their school based information literacy skills into their wider life.

The aspects of skill transfer or lack of it really interested me. Herring (2010) found that although both teachers and teacher librarians recognised the importance of information literacy skills, there was not a collective understanding of what they were, how they should be taught and reinforced with students (p294).  If a school as a whole cannot define what it is they want their students to achieve, how can we ask students to be information literate?  As teacher librarians I believe that we can be instrumental in initiating and pursuing that our schools have a whole school approach to information literacy as we are specialist who see the across all curriculum covered in the school.  Only when students are getting the same instructions and similar experiences across all classes will they understand that the skills they are learning can be transferable not only across subjects but into their personal lives.

 

Herring, J. (2010). Year seven students, information literacy skills and transfer: a grounded theory (Doctoral dissertation, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga). Retrieved from http://bilby.unilinc.edu.au:1801/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1491002155919~448&usePid1=true&usePid2=true

Are school librarians and endangered species?

Posted on by
Full hand print

Are School Librarian’s and endangered species?

In Karen Bonanno’s (2011) speech at ASLA conference she addresses the issue of how many teacher librarians are viewed within the education sector as the “invisible profession” and the steps we as a profession need to take to change this by implementing a 5 finger plan for success.

THUMB – Strength of Character – establish preeminence, blog

POINTER – F.O.C.U.S – Follow One Course Until Successful

  1. Know your outcome
  2. Take Action
  3. Test
  4. Realign
  5. Go until you reach your goal.

MIDDLE – Brand – Who are you?  Know what you stand for?  Are you who you say you are?

RING –  Relationships – Build them and work with those who will work with you.

LITTLE – Little things you do – do the things others cannot do.

 

Thank you Karen for your words of wisdom that I will treasure.

CSU-SIS Learning Centre. (2011). ASLA 2011. Karen Bonanno, keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point: Time to change the game plan [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/31003940

 

Forum 2.2 – Information Society

Posted on by
globe with gold lights
globe with gold lights

geralt / Pixabay

Information Society is as hard to define as information itself.  Webster (2014) describes it as a concept with multiple definitions changing according to the perspective we approach it from:  Technological; Economic; Occupational; Spatial; or Cultural.  Like information, it is constantly evolving according to our needs and wants.  The relationship between the information society and information is symbiotic as the society changes to meet our information needs (demands) and these solutions (supply) continue to fuel new demands.

Information Society to me is just like society itself, multi layered, multi-dimensional and stratified according to your ‘informational IQ’.  Informational IQ is my own term (as far as I know) that I would use to define a person’s ability to interact with information whether it is online or offline.  It is important for teacher-librarians to have an understanding of the information landscape, so that we can build our students information IQ.  Misinformation is the trap that is ever lurking to seduce the unsuspecting researcher.  Arming our students, and fellow teachers, with skills to navigate for themselves through this vast, ever growing landscape is a crucial part of the role the teacher-librarian of the 21st century will play.

Webster, F. (2014). Theories of the Information Society. Florence: Taylor and Francis. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=1656811

The Role of the Teacher Librarian – Blog task B

Posted on by
blank white figure balancing yellow puzzle pieces
blank white figure balancing yellow puzzle pieces

Peggy_Marco / Pixabay

The role of the teacher-librarian (TL) within an educational setting is as varied and complex as the definition of “information”.  My career has evolved from teaching in a Primary School setting to, being a parent relying on the library services, to now working within a secondary school.  Through my experience with teacher-librarians across those three aspects, I have seen teacher-librarians who are seen as critical to the operation of the school and those whose skills are underutilized and undervalued.

As a teacher, I used my TL as my collaborator in educating my students.  She assisted me in resourcing my ideas for units and seemed to instantly know which resources would be perfect to help me convey my idea to my students.  We planned together and during the library lesson I was allocated for my “non-contact time”, my TL provided my class with lessons that were crucial to the development of their skills required for the unit of work we were completing at the time.   This was the teacher-librarian exhibiting all three of the main roles of a teach-librarian:  information specialist; information service manager and a Curriculum leader (Australian School Library Association, 2014).  I remember being quite shocked when I discovered that this was not how all the teachers used their time.  Many saw the library lessons as “baby sitting and borrowing”; as they had no idea what the teacher -librarian was doing with their class.  To me this was disrespectful to the professional nature of the teacher-librarian role.

Further insight into how TL’s are perceived by their colleagues and in particular administration was gained when I was a parent.  The enormity of the role of information management has been often underrated and undervalued by the administration.  The extra hours and time that Library staff engages in to manage their collection goes unseen.  As a parent, I would volunteer to assist in some of the menial, but crucial, tasks of covering books, sorting and culling the collection.  The continual flow of ‘hard’ resources that goes through a Primary School Library is hard to comprehend, that is until the aide gets sick and it piles up around the desk!  The only way for many teacher-librarians to cope with this is to use volunteers to supplement the often meagerly staffed department they are in charge of, even though what is really necessary is more time and money to allow for the teacher-librarian to embed themselves within each year levels’ planning meetings. Lupton (2016, p. 57) clearly demonstrates the school principal’s perception of the teacher-librarian impacts on the level of support given and therefore their ability to fulfill this dynamic role.

Currently I work within the secondary system, and in a world where many schools are underfunding their libraries and specialist teacher-librarians running these libraries are in decline, we are endeavouring to make ourselves indispensable within the school community (Matthews, n.d.).  Despite what many schools thought when individual computers became the norm in Australian classrooms, both teachers and students needed someone to help them gain access to quality information and programs through these devices.  The overcrowded changing curriculum has certainly made it difficult for individual teachers to be on the cusp of all things digital, so many are turning to their teacher-librarian for support and guidance.  This is where I currently see the role of the teacher-librarian – acting as a conduit between the “information”, the teachers, the students and the curriculum.

References

Australian School Library Association. (2014, March 2). What is a teacher-librarian? Retrieved March 8, 2017, from ASLA – Australian School Library Association: http://www.asla.org.au/advocacy/what-is-a-teacher-librarian.aspx

Lupton, M. (2016). Adding value: Principals’ perceptions of the role of the teacher-librarian. School Libraries Worldwide, 22 (1), 49-61. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.14265.22.1.005

Matthews, K. (n.d.). So where have all our school teacher-librarians gone? Retrieved March 8, 2017, from Kidspot: http://www.kidspot.com.au/school/primary/real-life/so-where-have-all-our-school-teacher-librarians-gone

Could the real information please stand up!

Posted on by

(DC Library, 2011)

Module 2 “The Information Environment” highlighted for me the many ways that information can be defined and exactly how complex it is in its nature.  The Data Knowledge Continuum (Fitzgerald, 2017) reminded me of the education process in itself, where students could be sitting anywhere on that continuum at any point in time.  We as teachers are endeavouring to help them navigate through by organising the data, building knowledge by understanding the information we are exposing them to and then using that knowledge to gain and show wisdom.

The importance that LIS (Library and Information Science) plays in the access of information and the three types of knowledge struck me in this module.  We as Teacher Librarians need to see knowledge and Continue reading →

And so it begins!

Posted on by

 

When I walk alone, I wish I could reach the end of the road soon. But, when a FRIEND walks with me, I wish the road never ends.

Footprints in the sand by Chris Lofqvist via Compfight

Welcome to my first ever blog.  Right about now I am feeling all the apprehension that anyone feels when embarking on a new journey.  I am questioning my ability to put a cohesive thought into a sentence.  I have never had a diary or written in a daily journal so this is all very foreign to me.  I know that I am capable, but I always find that beginning is the hardest step, and as Lao Tzu famously said “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step” (Lao Tzu, n.d.)… so I need to start walking.

I am currently working as a Teacher Librarian in an all boys High School after spending most of my life in a Primary School setting, doing supply  teaching and looking longingly at the Teacher Librarian position, wishing I was her.  Through a bizarre set of circumstances I began substituting for any position going at my current school’s senior library, including being a library aide.  This experience has opened my eyes to the workings of a library in a secondary school.  As a teacher, I am richer for my cross curriculum experience that I have had as a supply teacher in Primary Schools which allows me to adapt and change with the circumstances.

 

It was for this reason that I decided to call my blog the “Evolving Librarian”.

 

References:

Lao Tzu. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com Web site. Retrieved from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/laotzu137141.html