Just Venting

[Julia Steger <spanutr@CFW.COM>]

The content of the message about having to teach reading, including the bit
about the teacher who cheered, really gets on my last nerve, as they say
here.  Maybe some of us have wonderfully flexible schedules in elementary,
but there are others among us who continue to be seen as purely planning
time providers-- and any time without a class is up for grabs for extra
duties to be assigned, and teachers harp and complain make snide comments
and believe the job we do is "easy".

I was recently at a conference and listened to a  highly-educated speaker,
with many years of library experience,  enthuse about advocacy and about
effective collaboration in the upper grades between librarian and teachers.
When I suggested that some advocacy needs to be done for the elementary
folks who are under such stress and are asked to meet so many demands and
sometimes treated unprofessionally, and that if we were treated as more than
planning time and given time to collaborate, she would see REAL performance
improvement in the students we elementary people send on, the speaker looked
as though a completely new, unheard of light bulb had just come on in her
brain.

Why?why?why? does elementary school librarianship CONTINUE to drag on this
way?  I am transferring to a middle school next year and the person who
takes my job will have 6-8 classes a day, 5 days a week in a new school of
650 students.
A treadmill existence.  One clever person on this listserv described it as
the Death March.

I have been so fortunate to have principals who gave me as much flex time as
they were able to, so I am not complaining about my own experience, believe
me.  I just feel so badly for the people on this listserv who are treated
the way the aforementioned writer is being treated and I expect it would
take a national revolt of some kind to ever change things.

Just venting,
Julia Steger, Librarian, Clifton Forge Elem E&W, Clifton Forge VA
*******************************************************
A lap is a terrible thing to waste--adopt a
    pet from your local animal shelter.
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             spanutr@cfw.com
http://myschoolonline.com/VA/CliftonForge
                Our Libraries
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"Those are my principles.  If you don't like them...
...well, I have others."
                             --Groucho Marx
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