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Hi Meg,
Why teacher librarian? What is our role really?
We are usually the only information specialist in a school community and
one of the few individuals to have an overview of the curiculum.

Our role is as a specialist teacher to support curriculum programs by:
1. Assisting teachers to design curriculum and assessment items that
foster independent, resource-based learning that embeds information
literacy and literacy development/learning outcomes in context.
2. Literature promotion and the development of literacy programs to
foster the development of literacy outcomes across the school. 
3. Providing specialist information/reference support for teachers, the
school community and especially admin (something few of us actually do).
4. Creator/producer of policies and curriculum support materials to
support 1&2 above.
5. Collaboratibve teaching with teaching staff.

Notice I haven't got to the kids or the library management so far.

6. Now we come to provision of a library environment that will foster
engagement by students with a range of learning resources and learning
technologies.

7. Managing the library - collection development to support 1&2 above,
managing systems so the library is functional and meets the needs  of
the school community.

This is why the teacher is first and the librarian second. Our role is
as a pro-actve teacher albeit a specialist one and a library manager
second - what I call my houskeeping. The importance of your housekeeping
cannot be understated, however, because if your library systems are
running poorly you will spend your entire time in crisis management mode
trying to deal with this aspect of the job. So you need to have your
systems running well and so you can delegate these to others (assistants
or parent volunteers) and manage the process. Then you can spend time on
the good bits of your role - being very a creative, dynamic teacher
librarian/information specialist. 

:)
BC
 


Vice President, Advocacy & Promotion, IASL: www.iasl-online.org
LIS@ECU: http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/portals/LIS/index.php
Australian School Library Research Project:
http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/portals/ASLRP/
Barbara Combes, Lecturer
School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth
Western Australia
Ph: (08) 9370 6072
Email: b.combes@ecu.edu.au

"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that
of an ignorant nation." Walter Cronkite

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-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of mchawkins
Sent: Tuesday, 3 March 2009 8:23 AM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [LM_NET] Teacher Librarian

Recently someone shared an article from the NYT about the changing role
of school librarian.   I forwarded the article to my principl and the
head of curriculum and rather facetiously suggested that perhaps my
title should be Teacher Librarian.

Now they want me to "make a case"  for their consideration.

This group has always been the best at helping us all avoid reinventing
the wheel.  I would appreciate any ideas and arguments you have for
changing the term.

My motto actually is "Librarian,  so much more than a teacher"   but I
haven't gotten that onto the letter head yet.  (that's a joke, folks!)

Thanks for your collective brain, always.


Meg Hawkins
Teacher Librarian
Librarian
Darby Township School 1-8
Glenolden PA 

caughey195@yahoo.com



      

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