This course reminds me of a pick-a-path book. There are so many adventures and it’s impossible to go on all of them. Searching articles on one topic would lead to new topics just as exciting and worthy of study but eventually one had to make a choice and go with it until the end.
I have found new ways to run library lessons. Not that I wasn’t using quality texts and activities before but now I see another way of doing things that can work better than the stand alone approach I have used in the past. I can support units being taught in classrooms by incorporating quality literature and response strategies. What students learn from me may help in the classroom and vice versa.
The learning that sticks with me most was around Indigenous Literature and what that actually means. There is no one answer. As a Teacher Librarian I need to be able to back up my decisions when questioned and I took away from my readings one simple statement that I will apply to future purchasing decisions that deal with any specific group Aunty Joy Murphy (Allen, 2016) said It should show respect. If I make my decisions based on that statement I can’t go wrong.
As I said in my blog (Condrick, 2021) I have always tried to find books with characters that looked like my students. All the reading I did on mirrors, window and sliding doors reinforced that I had been doing the right thing. I have been able to gather a great deal of “book learning” in this course, I think I often forget what I know or why I started doing things and in the past when someone questioned why I was using a picture book for stage 3 I would back down even when I knew I had the students learning at the forefront of my mind. Many of the readings both prescribed such as Literacy: Reading, Writing and Children’s Literature (Winch, 2014) and ones I have discovered on my own are now in a file ready to produce when I need them. Why is there a LGBTQ collection? Read this. Why did you give yr 12 a picture book? Take a look at this article. I don’t like conflict but I am also not one to back down if I can prove I am right. This subject has given me lots of ways to back up my actions.
This course has allowed me to find evidence of why Teacher Librarians are important, what direction I should move in in the future, and thanks to Jennie’s online presence, how I need to publicise it in the future. I will be preparing kits to support units, putting together how to pages for strategies that can be used with various books and send these out to staff and gain a deeper understanding of the senior curriculum so that I can inform teachers of what we have in the library that can support their teaching. I’m hoping it will be a case of if you build it they will come.
References
Allen, N. (2016). Cover book – Welcome to country. Magpies, 31(4), 12.
Condrick, T (2021, January 10). Reflections on Assignment 1 ETL402. Tracey’s Thoughts: Are you ready to fall down THIS rabbithole? https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tcondrick/2021/01/10/reflections-on-assignment-1-etl402/
Winch, G., Ross, J.R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2014). Literacy : Reading, writing and children’s literature (5th Ed.). Oxford University Press.