Studying by distance can be an isolating experience. However, ETL504 has provided opportunities to build teamwork and collaboration skills through group case studies. Admittedly, when I realised that some of the work would be done as groups I felt frustrated and resonated with the reading by Aguilar (2012) because I believed that I could get the work done faster on my own. However, like she suggests, strong teams can build ideas from shared knowledge and challenge and inspire each other. This happened in group one as we built our understandings in each task. This is an important aspect of distributed leadership which moves authority away from one individual and relies on strategic groups (Harris, 2014).  

The AITSL standards for teacher library practice include “to engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities” (Australian School Library Association, 2014). Since becoming a teacher librarian (TL), I have benefitted from networking opportunities within library groups and this subject has added an extra layer to this experience. Making connections with the people in group one has also resulted in us forming a Facebook group to continue to communicate, expanding the network of TLs that I can communicate with.   

The case study content provided opportunities to think about some realistic problems TLs can experience and I could identify with some of these issues. In the past, I have felt some of these problems were insurmountable, such as having to manage a very busy diary and library and dealing with conflict and communication problems. I reflected on this in my blog post Courageous conversations. The nature of the case studies forced us to come up with solutions and supported us to think deeper about leadership and when aspects of servant and instructional leadership could be used. 

Future learning in school libraries discusses how a TL needs to be an instructional leader (Australian School Library Association Inc, 2013) and this was reflected here and here in the case studies. The importance of leading the library into the future by planning and thinking strategically and using advocacy and marketing were also discussed.  In my first post in this subject, Leaders Who Lead, I reflected on my leadership journey and my thoughts on how I had moved out of school leadership when I decided to become a TL. This subject provided me with tools to advocate in a more strategic way than I had before and I posted about this in Advocacy Using Mind Mapping where I explained how I had created another mind map which summed up all of the work I was doing as a TL. I shared this with the leadership team at school when I proposed the idea of having a head of libraries. I had raised this idea previously with no success, but this time using my tools on advocacy, being more strategic in my approach and using data from my annual report I have experienced success. This new role is being created and my leadership journey continues… 

  References 

Aguilar, E. (2012, November 28). Effective teams: the key to transforming schools? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teacher-teams-transform-schools-elena-aguilar 

Australian School Library Association. (2014). AITSL Standards for teacher librarian practice. Retrieved from http://www.alia.org.au/sites/default/files/AITSL%20Standards%20for%20teacher%20librarian%20practice%202014.pdf 

Australian School Library Association Inc. (2013, April). Future Learning and school libraries. Retrieved from https://asla.org.au/resources/Documents/Website%20Documents/Resources/2013-ASLA-futures-paper.pdf 

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