BigBlog

Part C Critical Synthesis and Reflection

Having nearly completed my last assignment, and therefore my first term of study at Charles Sturt University, a feeling of relief has come over me.  My perceptions of the role of a teacher librarian have not only changed since starting this course, and my new job as a teacher librarian at the beginning of the year, but also throughout my library journey over the past 22 years.

In getting my permanent appointment at my school in November 2009, I was ecstatic. Prior to being off teaching for 2 years to look after my two babies I had taught as a temporary teacher in an infants school doing library on one of my days and classroom teaching on the other days. It was a fantastic role and the admin person became a great teacher and friend who clued me up on Oasis, Scis and countless other small but important things that would help me in role.  Prior to retraining as a teacher in 2003, I had been a children’s librarian in Canada. I had an undergraduate degree in geography and a Masters in Library and Information Science, and worked in the map library at University of Toronto, the Ontario Veterinary College Library, the Hospital for Sick Children library, the Toronto Public Library, and started up a information and media centre (previously, and in other contexts, known as a library), at a cartoon television station.   Since high school I had worked in technical services at the central branch of my city’s public library. I felt like I knew libraries, and ticked off that I could do library when filling out my codes after I became a qualified teacher. After my interview for my current position, I was shocked to find out that according to the Department of Education (DET) I wasn’t qualified and would have to do this year long graduate certificate. That is ridiculous! I thought, what else is there to know?

A lot, I would soon learn.  After my initial reaction, and reading about the courses, I decided to embrace the challenge and opportunity to have someone else pay for me to learn and gain a qualification. Even when the DET coordinator suggested I could get exemptions from some of the courses, I decided not to bother to try, as I liked the sound of what I would be undertaking. I must admit, at assignment time, I was regretting this decision, but in the end it was a wise choice.

 As I posted in my blog, (Blog, 10/5/10), as technology constantly changes and evolves, so too does the role of the librarian, and teacher librarian.  I have seen the change from when I started a library club in my primary school at 10 years old and gave myself the job of putting the little bibliographic reference cards in order to now adding web records to my school’s library catalogue.  As teacher librarians, we need to keep up with the technology because our students have no problem adopting all the new innovations and in fact seem to embrace them .  Whereas as a child and even a teenager working in libraries I thought of librarians as older, stagnant, even old fashioned people who loved reading, this couldn’t be further from the truth!

Although I regularly use technology in my teaching and learning, I was more of a lurker on the csu forums.  I found the posts really valuable to me when doing my readings and assignments, however when I thought about posting I felt intimidated by the level of language of the other posters- I thought I would come across as not very clever because I don’t use all the jargon and acronyms.  Although I understand them they just don’t naturally form a part of the way I communicate.  I have resolved to be a more active poster during the next two courses.

Two most useful outcomes resulted from my first two courses, 503 and 401.  The first was the creation of a collection policy for my school’s library, which made me consider and reflect upon our collection, who maintains it and adds to it and whether it was meeting the needs of its users. I concluded we were doing a pretty good job but could do better!  This also made think more about the collaborative role I have with my fellow teachers, not only in team teaching during our library times but also in developing the collection.  Some teachers are really great collaborators, while others aren’t sure about what to do. I had read so much about the benefits of collaboration, and couldn’t understand why some teachers didn’t see it in such a positive light. Attending a professional development day around this same time, (Blog, 21/04/10), although I learned a lot from the formal sessions, the most important thing I came away came from an informal conversation with another teacher librarian. I was telling her about how some teachers thought that team teaching meant they would do running records while I taught the class and she said part of my job was to teach the teachers how to work collaboratively in the library.  Give them jobs to do and choices, for example ask them if they would like to teach the first part of the lesson or return the books.  What a great idea! I thought, and followed through with it. The outcome has been more productive library sessions and I think even the teachers like taking part in the lesson.

The second was thinking critically about the 12 standards of excellence for teacher librarians (ASLA, 2004).  I didn’t know these existed, and were a real eye opener. In fact the first time I read them they left me thinking how am I going to be all of these things all of the time? Then I realized I was doing most of them some of the time, which was a start. I have since posted them beside my desk and will often have a read of them when I have a spare minute to give myself a progress check. I would not yet call myself an excellent teacher librarian, but maybe a pretty good one.

I have just received my marks  back from my 2 assignments. Upon submitting the assignments, the first one I thought was fairly decent but I could have done better had I not been really sick the week before and then my kids sick the week it was due. The second assignment I was fairly happy with, although could maybe have improved it with more time. So the first assignment I did really well on, with great feedback throughout, and the second one I had virtually no feedback throughout the paper or on the marking sheet, with the exception of “You have a good understanding of key concepts” and a little bit more. I barely passed the second assignment. I would have been ok with the mark if the feedback was there to back it up. I can’t post anymore because I’m too irritated by my marker.I will have to have a look on the forums and see what other people's feedback is like...

My poor little blog has been neglected of late. The double dose of uni assignments and creating my program for next term mixed in with 2 bouts of gastro, 2 toddlers and a large puppy to look after and a very understanding husband.  I was having serious undergrad uni flashbacks from gasp 1994- 16 years ago, was it really that long ago that I started studying? I couldn’t help but think about how uni study has changed throughout my degrees. In my first year of university at a medium sized academic university in 1994 they had dial up modems in the dorms and the email system was an ancient and fragile program called Pine.  It looks like a dos screen, and whenever people tried to send you an image it came up as a screen full of comic strip expletives a la %$#@!.  I subscribed to a few listervs and some of my courses had forums but no one ever posted on them! The whole dialing in thing made it a bit of a lengthy process.  During my studies I worked as a library assistant in the veterinary college.  In my last year there, 1998, they made the big move to a web based catalogue.  People were cranky that their beloved old opac would be history and fought for to the option to use it through their desktops as long as they could before realizing it was a lost cause.  In those days a big part of my job was to photocopy interlibrary loan articles to send to other universities. I also would request them myself for research papers sometimes, although I had to be very organized because it could take up to 2 weeks for an article to arrive.  It was easier just to find the journal in the library and photocopy it or else use the microfiche machine and print out a copy.   Since I was doing my degree geography I did a lot of GIS work, geographic information systems, which involves using mapping software to create maps by layering information.  My university used programs called Atlas and Idrisi- they are probably long obsolete! And the amount of thought, typing, planning, etc that went into putting one layer of information on a map was ridiculous! It reminded of my primary school days using Logo – typing in pages and pages of commands on the black screen with the green cursor all to make a little turtle icon draw a circle on my vic 20.  I’m sure it’s a whole different degree now.  After this degree I did a Masters in Library Science at the largest university in Canada. It was now a new decade, so surely things would have changed…. Somewhat.  I had a hotmail account now, and my university gave me an email account too and both could receive images! How novel that was at first.  Our library catalogue was web based and we could access it from the comfort of home.  As a library assistant once again, in a large map library, I no longer had to photocopy articles. Rather I could scan copies and send them on via email or else fax them.  Microfiche readers were becoming a thing of the past and the university had begun to subscribe to some ejournals. My flatmate loved these and would only include references in her paper that were available electronically as she hated visiting the library.  The university library itself was a big imposing building and parts of it were open 24 hours a day, like an American supermarket. They also introduced self check out systems, much to the dismay of our union.  While in my undergrad I had taken a computers 101 type course where we were taught how to email, how to use word and how to use excel, this next degree introduced us to the world of HTML.  We had to make our own websites using HTML codes, no using ready-made programs to assist with the task.  (Although if you were clever enough you could use a web page program and alter the code before handing it in).  We also learned about Excel, Powerpoint and Access.  A little bit about Boolean searching and using different search engines and we were sent off in to the world as qualified librarians.  I forgot to mention that dreaded cataloging course, creating marc records.  I think I’ll leave that memory alone.  As I moved out into the library world I ended up working at a cartoon network, starting up a library there.  I used pagemaker programs and lots of other things to make my life easier, although my superior insisted on me going through each magazine and newspaper and cutting out with scissors any reference to our programs and putting them in little folders.  I often wonder what every became of my folders of clippings when I left that gig to travel around the world and eventually become a teacher and later a teacher librarian.  It also makes me think of how different it will all be in another 20 years, and it’s a good thing I’m (trying) to keep up with it all!

These 2 assignments I have just completed have me thinking about my roles as a teacher librarian.  In fact when I was listing all of the things my position required of me I was feeling quite pressured and it’s school holidays! I have also notices that teachers and principal’s perceptions of my role at my current school and my last school where I was also teacher librarian, is extremely varied. To some I am simply a slacker who reads a story and checks in and out the students books, who doesn’t have to write reports or do parent interviews and might not even have teacher qualifications. To others I am someone who can provide them with teacher and student resources, collaborate with, teach research skills, provide advice, etc etc etc.  Others aren’t too sure and seem surprised when I email them the library program for the term or approach them about attending stage meetings.  So for some teachers when I am doing things that are actually part of my job they are pleasantly surprised or even blown away that I am helping them, while others have clearly come from schools with competent teacher librarians and have much higher expectations.  In doing my research about my role it is clear that the one who puts the most pressure on me is myself, particularly as I become more aware of what I can and should be doing as well as what others are doing...

Having just completed a paper about information literate school communities, I am suddenly panic struck, which is odd, since I am finished the work required of me! Am I information literate? Is my school? Of course I am, I am a qualified teacher and librarian, I am a highly functioning adult who uses computers every day. Am I a critical thinker? I am not sure, not always that is definitely the case. Are my students information literate? Some definitely are, many examples of this come to mind, particularly when the teach me something about a program they are using that I never knew about. Some I am not so sure.  A couple of my students don’t have internet or tv at home, and need me to help them log in to the computers at school for them.  A few had never done a google search and don’t really have an understanding of  what the internet is. And I have learnt it is a tricky thing to explain!  But these same students do possess good research and information skills which I have observed when they access the print collection of the library.  In fact when I presented a group of stage 3 children with an unknown object and invited them to use the library resources, print and electronic, to find out what it was, the ones who accessed only the books were quicker to find the answer to my question than those doing frantic google web and image searches.  So I guess that if children have basic research and information skills they simply apply them to different sources of information.  The staff at my school are an information literate bunch.  About five years ago I worked for a year in an inner Sydney school where the school newsletters and notes home were still written on a typewriter! I had brought the typewriter in to my class as an example of the “olden days” for an HSIE unit and the secretary was frantically searching for it to type up a letter.  Casual days were still submitted manually and there was no internet access in the school.  Out of curiosity I just checked out their website and it looks like they have come a long way in a short time.