Before I embarked on this Master’s Degree at the beginning of the semester, my personal perception of the role of the Teacher Librarian was very narrow- minded. I am ashamed to admit that I thought that the Teacher Librarian’s role was of one of shelving books; reading to students when they visited the library for their weekly visit; overseeing borrowing and generally wondering around the library. My perception was based on what I had seen as a relief teacher taking classes to the library over the past 3 years since I obtained my degree. This was documented in my blog dated 19 July 2011 ‘Reading – My Reflection on Chapter 2 Teacher Librarians and the School Library’. Since completing this subject I am so proud to say that whilst this is what I still see on my rounds as a relief teacher I now know that a Teacher Librarians role is so much more and this is based on the different topics presented each week, readings, forum discussion, podcasts and research.
Below are some reflections of my views of how the role of a Teacher Librarian has changed:-
Assignment 1 helped me have a greater understanding of a Teacher Librarian’s role especially since my experience was generally nil. The Teacher Librarian is faced with many, ever changing, roles and requires each teacher librarian to wear many ‘hats’. This was outlined by both the Purcell (2010) and Herring (2007) readings. This was the start of my thought process of how wrong I was about the role of the Teacher Librarian.
One area of a Teacher Librarians role which I took a while to grasp was collaborative practice. This is noted in my blog dated 26 September 2011 ‘Topic 5 – Collaborative Practice’. As in my blog my understanding of collaborative practice was a Teacher Librarian working collaboratively with teacher’s however through my own experience and discussions with Teacher Librarians this appears to not be a standard practice. Views were all mixed on the forum about this as it appears there are schools which do collaborative practice well, yet some felt time was a factor. Ironically during this topic I asked a Teacher Librarian at one of the schools I go to whether they do any collaborative teaching and the answer was that they use to until a change in Principal!!!!! That poses the question – What can Teacher Librarian’s do about this? I find that this could be an obstacle of a Teacher Librarians role.
Another area of a Teacher Librarians role which surprised me was as an Information Specialist. As stated in my blog ‘Topic 2 – The Role of the Teacher Librarian’ in the schools that I relieve in there are IT Specialists employed by the school who handle all the computer issues. With technology having wider dominance at schools today, Purcell (2010) acknowledged that it is the teacher librarian role as a teacher to teach information and technology literacy skills to both students and teachers. I reflected on this comment and thought that one of the first activities that we had to do was create this blog as stated in my blog ‘I did it!!!’. (Lamb & Johnson, p. 3) state “the teacher-librarian also facilitates student use of technology in both formal and informal learning situations and is able to weave technology tools and resource throughout the curriculum to address content area standard, while also promoting information and technology fluency”. This lead into the topic of Information Literacy which if I am to be honest was very limited. As stated in my blog ‘Topic 4 – Information Literacy’ there appears to be no ‘universal’ definition however many theorists agree that it is a tool which incorporates questioning, defining the type of information which is required and having the ability to locate, select and able to relay the information in some form and to reflect. During this topic I reflected what it was like when I was at school when it came to completing assignments and how far we have come with technology and the way we teach and learn.
As highlighted above there are many roles to a Teacher Librarian and they certainly differ from my original picture of what a Teacher Librarian was at the commencement of this course. A Teacher Librarian plays a vital role in every school and that role should not be underestimated. Whilst there will be many obstacles along the way one thing is for sure a school and their library hopefully do not have librarians who patrol classrooms with a trolley as Arthur Winzenried posted in the Topic 5 forum.
References
Herring, J. (2007). Teacher librarians and the school library. In S. Ferguson (Ed.) Libraries in the twenty-first century: charting new directions in information (pp. 27-42). Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Purcell, M. (2010). All librarians do is check out books right? A look at the roles of the school library media specialist. Library Media Connection 29 (3), 30-33. Available via CSU Library’s Academic Search Complete database.
Lamb, A; Johnson, L. Teacher librarian, Dec 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 2, p74-78, 5p; Abstract . Available via CSU Library’s Academic Search Complete database.
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