Showing Leadership in the Library

 

This is my second year as a Teacher-Librarian.  I spent much of my first year learning where everything was, cleaning the place up, improving the fiction collection and getting to know the students. This year we have moved over to a new computer system and I have the opportunity to be more of a leader within the school in this regard. In particular, I have made an effort to use the new technology with the Science 8 class I teach and then share what I have learned with anyone who will listen.

  People won’t listen and learn from you if they don’t first respect you.  As a new member of a well-established staff, I have looked for ways to get to know and help the members of my staff.  I have gone out of my way to take on jobs that help others in the school; one of the responsibilities I have taken on is that of the Pro D Rep.


.

 

 

Although the job I initially volunteered to do was to handle the Pro D money, I quickly became the go-to person for what was going to happen on Pro D days.  So far, my staff seems very receptive to my approach which encourages teachers to form small inquiry groups based on their professional development needs or interests.  In my role as Teacher-Librarian, I would like to get involved with a few of these inquiry groups and to help them find any resources they need to further their professional development.

One such group in my school is a book club that was formed to discuss current research in education.  The group includes individuals teaching different subject areas and each person has chosen their own book to read and discuss with the others.  From this group I have gathered some good titles for the Professional section of our library.  Books by David A Sousa (How the Brain Learns Mathematics) and Kelly Gallagher (Reading Reason) came highly recommended by this inquiry group. I have also requested that the books be donated to the school library once they are finished with them and if they feel like sharing them.

I found quite a few resources devoted to the topic of how Teacher-Librarians can engage teachers for collaborative inquiry on use of ICT in the classroom.  One useful research paper titled “Collaborative Inquiry” was written by a group of Teacher-Librarians in Windsor, Ontario. In this research paper,

 

“fifteen teacher librarians from fourteen schools, along with classroom teachers at each of those schools engaged in collaborative inquiry to learn ways to improve their practice and student achievement.  Projects addressed current educational issues such as technology implementation, student reading engagement and attitudes, parental engagement and how teacher librarians provide support to classroom teachers.” Collaborative Inquiry
 

This year, what I would like to do to support teachers in their ICT professional development would be to start the process described in the “Collaborative Inquiry” research paper. The first step would be to give the teachers a survey to establish their comfort level in performing a list of ICT tasks and then determining which teachers would be open to using collaboration to further their learning in this area.  We could also form small inquiry groups based on these tasks and use the results of the survey to focus our future school based professional development.

School Libraries Matter: The Changing Role of the School Librarian
 

I also came across a Pinterest site titled “Teacher Librarian Resources” which highlights many of the hot topics in ICT education such as “7 Ways to Teach Digital Literacy Skills” (ipadeducators.ning.com) and “15 Lesson Plans for Making Students Better Online Researchers”(edudemic.com).

Pinterest - Teacher Librarian Resources

Lastly, although the internet has endless resources on these topics, I would like to make use of the more experienced high school Teacher-Librarians in my school district.  Most of my colleagues in the library have been doing the job for at least twelve years and have favourite lessons they do with classes and teachers they collaborate with.  Their wealth of experience should not go untapped.

Fart Research - Highly Effective School Librarians Cultivate 21st Century Learners