ETL503: Module 2.1 Professional Reflection

Professional Reflection 

Think about responsibility for resource selection.  You may like to use one or more of the following questions to write some blog posts.

1. Discuss how the teacher librarian’s expertise and role is different from that required by all teachers.
   1. Where teachers focus on specific and narrow subject content, teacher librarians have a much broader, shallower focus on subject content, although this can fluctuate depending on experience and access to curriculum teams. Teacher librarians ‘subject content’ focuses on providing resources and library skills to their school community in an efficient manner.
2. Share ideas on how teacher librarians might effectively collaborate with the school community in the selection of resources in a school with which you are familiar.
   1. Teacher librarians need to use all the tricks of the trade to carve out time to meet with Learning Area Leaders and/or Teaching teams. The most powerful tool is providing timely support for the curriculum, and just in time support to readers. Knowing the students’ preferences, and matching that to your collection, is a skill that needs to be developed quickly. Emails, flyers, posters, meetings, monitoring Teams channels, attending faculty and curriculum meetings, are all effective ways of promoting your library services.
3. Consider also how to engage your learners in selection of resources for their school library.
   1. Displays, social media, posters, LearnPaths and Lib Guides, as well as all the ways listed above.
4. Who should have the final say on what is included? Why?
   1. The library staff should have final say on what is included in the library collections because they know the collection much better than anyone else in the school. Learning Area collections may be managed by the library as well, provide expert advice on the age, condition and usage of resources and sourcing resources at reasonable prices in a reasonable time.