So why did I decide to study the Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship)
From being a Circus trainer visiting schools and feeling the limits of operating from outside the formal education system.
To completing a Bachelor of Arts with a vision becoming a teacher through post graduate study.
Beginning my Graduate Diploma of Education (Middle Years) in a remote indigenous community with the intention of doing all my placements and study through the Ngaanyatjarra Lands School
Then leaving that community and living the life of an itinerant scholar while maximising the learning opportunities that I could meant travelling to a private boarding school, regional district K-12 school, urban secondary school, in addition to the Indigenous school observation days.
A key development was during one of my block courses at the La Trobe campus in Shepparton when we had a session with the education officer of the Shepparton Arts Museum who had graduated previously from the same course I was doing which opened my eyes to the possibility of being a qualified teacher in non-school environments.
Once I had run out of resources to continue as an itinerant scholar I took the opportunity to move back in with my parents in Canberra to get the support I needed to finish my course.
Though I did complete a 5 week placement in a school I also cycled around the lake ringed by national cultural institutions and approached who I could for opportunities to calibrate my learning pathway with pathways available at their institution.
It seems like such happenstance that the third institution I visited happened to have a visitor services officer on the front desk that called the right person in the education team who outlined multiple possibilities that could work if I was flexible enough with my timing.
I became a registered volunteer for the National Museum of Australia but only did a couple of sessions before taking on an internship for two weeks as the final part of satisfying my teaching course requirements.
The exposure to being in a museum was electric.
When I had achieved my goal of teaching circus as an elective in a school as a qualified teacher over the first two terms of 2015 I faced myriad challenges of an institutional and bureaucratic nature.
But when I received a phone call out of the blue one Friday afternoon that there was a 3 month contract with the team I had done my internship with at the National Museum of Australia and that as I had already had my security assessment completed earlier I was the perfect fit for the time frame of recruitment they were looking at I jumped at the opportunity.
Working at the NMA exploded my understanding of what work could be and fulfilled deeply my need for research, connectivity, and working across different disciplines while being able to bring in my personal experiences.
The museum library also supported me with this journey allowing me to delve into museology and museum education while adding to my personal professional library through their take what you want deaaccession shelf.
It was while working at NMA and going through the contract impermanence that the seeds of becoming a qualified librarian took root.
I recieved a grant to attend the AMaGA National Conference and found a number of librarians in attendance working with various collections. I searched through available jobs as I approached the end of my contracts and saw positions right across the GLAM sector that had ‘eligibility for ALIA associate membership” as a way to fulfill the preferred qualification requirements.
After moving to work for the museum operated by the MCC in Melbourne I eventually found enough stability to take on study again. I wanted to broaden my skill set. I wanted to become more employable across GLAM. I wanted to understand certain things that I thought Librarianship might answer. I also felt that Librarianship might be the way for an Arts and Education graduate to become slightly more STEM aligned at least with the technology part due to the constant drumming of the importance of this in employment discourse.
I have always found the most fertile thought in exploring the boundaries of systems and especially where things break down. This in addition to picking the pathway that leads to the most pathways has led me to some interesting places.
The alternative qualification I considered was the RMIT Graduate Diploma of Information Management which has the benefit of satisfying professional requirements for both ALIA and RIMPA. But I feel confident that moving upwards to a masters rather than sideways to another Graduate Diploma especially due to the noted breadth and number of qualifications held by library professionals such as multiple masters in addition to a PhD.
Though it is traditionally difficult to get ones first library job I am hopeful that by following the pathway of ascending qualifications I have completed consisting of diploma, bachelor, graduate diploma, and now extending the graduate diploma into a masters through further study I have maximised the breadth of the pathway I have chosen.
The last 5 years have been an exceptional time in my professional journey from working as a secondary teacher, museum educator, volunteer manager, and visitor services specialist running programs and dealing with the change management of a museum closing, redeveloping, and reopening. And not to mention the last 2 years of studying the MEdTL expanding my knowledge and understanding and encompassing this last couple of semesters pandemic affected process.
It still feels like I’m making the right decision even though I’m not sure where it will lead. My choice of pathways to myriad pathways leads me to succeed.