ETL 504 Teacher Librarian as a Leader

This course subject was “Teacher Librarian as a leader”. It brought two assignment tasks. For the first assignment we had to reflect on different leadership styles and how we would deal with these leaders. Also we had to write a planning brief about a PD that we would like to offer, using the CBAM model.

To read about the different leadership styles was an eye opener. If we can develop an understanding regarding different leadership styles, we can answer to these leaders in an appropriate way – which in the end will be our benefit.

The second assignment was more related to direct library work as we had to formulate a vision statement , describing where we see the library in three years time.

I found this assignment challenging and did not as good as I hoped, but definitely learned a lot.  It was a positive experience to visualise “my” library in the future. However some of the readings were very theoretical and I sometimes wonder when was the last time some of the authors have actually set a foot into a public school library and worked with today’s students.

Half of the Master course is now over and I certainly look back on a very steep learning curve. I enjoy to become more and more knowledable and be able to communicate my ideas to school members and leaders. I can see the effect as colleagues more and more often come to seek advise or help.

Leadership Lesson from a dancing guy

How can teacher librarians build effective teams?

After reading Law and Glover’s article about “Leading effective teams”  it becomes even clearer that the concepts of teamwork and flatter hierachies are key levers for school improvement and effectivenes.

Once a team has been created (and survived the Forming and Storming period) the above goals should be reached. 

For the teacher librarian there are different teams that he /she should be a member in and or a leader for: Firstly the library team itself. The TL has to be a leader to a group of peaople, often non academic, such as Library assistant, library technicians, etc. Certainly here the focus is more on operationalthan educational decisions, but one of the teams where I personally had to go through tough times in order to become a true leader!

Other teams a TL should be part of are e.g. the Literacy Teacher Team, English Domain, E-Learning Team. In my case these teams already excist at the school, so being a leader here is possible as “leading from the middle” and through gaining more and more influence by demonstrating knowledge and the willingnes to collaborate.

Here we go again… ETL504

Happily finished ETL 503 and no off to ETL 504: The Teacher Librarian as a leader.

After all my bad experiences last year with the library assistants at my school, this will be an interesting topic. Although I am aware that the focus is on Leadership in relation to the principle team and colleagues, for me also the fact of being a “boss” to somebody is important and a topic I will hopefully read and learn a lot about.

This subject seems to be much more theoretical than the last one and the amount of readings seems sky scraper high, so lets see how I do with the assignments.

I liked the differentiation I read in Winzenried’s text about the Charismatic leadership theory and Transformational leadership theory – always have my principal before my eyes, comparing her with those two kinds of leaders… interesting.

Writing a Collection Policy

ETL503 is about to finish and although I did not feel positive about my first assignment I actually did really well and got a good grade. For the second assignment we had to write a collection policy for our school library. I liked this task because it is so very practical and directly related to “real life”.

My reflection:

Kennedy’s words “(…) the task of formulating a policy is seen as a learning experience for those who undertake it (…)” (2006, p. 14) has proven true for me during the last weeks. The extension of my knowledge has been significant and writing a collection policy has been one of the most pertinent activities for me in learning about the role of the Teacher Librarian. I have gained knowledge regarding:

Responsibilities: I learnt that the Teacher Librarian is responsible and accountable for the decisions s/he makes (Kennedy, 2006, p. 11) in every aspect regarding the collection in their library. 

The responsibilities are versatile and complex when it comes to selecting resources with the aid of selection tools and using selection criteria who guarantee that the resources added to the collection meet the needs of the curriculum, the students and the teachers (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, pp. 46-47). The contrary process of weeding the collection follows the same guidelines – learner-centred deselection forms the centre of decisions (Dillon, 2001, p. 248).

Another responsibility is to set in place an acquisition process in which I provide optimal funding for maintaining and further developing of the collection (Debowski, 2001, p. 310), quickly and cost-efficiently obtain selected resources (Crotty, 2012) and be aware of new ways of purchasing electronic resources (Latham & Poe, 2008, pp. 261-264).

Learning about evaluating a collection helped me gain a greater understanding of the various categories and formats a collection should maintain to cater for the needs of all users. It also became very clear that a collection evaluation is long overdue in my library and needs to be one of my priorities in the near future (Hart, 2003, pp. 88-91).

Flexibility: Electronic resources are the way of the future for school library collections. As  Johnson (2010) notes, many people now  learn and communicate using non-print media. TLs need to be flexible and ready to embrace technology to provide access to quality online resources. Developing a quality online collection also means that students are gaining access to useful, reliable and appropriate learning resources and will be able to develop digital literacy.

I learnt that a library collection policy needs to provide transparency in several ways. The policy is a “public relation document” (Kennedy, 2006, p. 15), answering the question why and how resources in the library are selected and managed for the school community. It also guarantees an open, traceable and comprehensible way of dealing with complaints about challenged materials (Williams & Dillon, 1993, p. 104).

It was reassuring that collaboration with teachers is not limited to planning and conducting research or literature classes, but also extends into developing and managing the library collection (Cherepon & Sankowski, 2003, p. 71). This will not only help me to learn more about the curriculum, students and teachers needs, but will also give me the chance to demonstrate expertise to my teaching colleagues and the broader school community.

In conclusion I can say that I found the process of writing a collection policy challenging and professionally rewarding, especially as it will be my working document for the future.

ETL 503

It is March already and the long summer break  did me good. After the first session, where I studies 2 subjects, I decided to cut back one and that was definitly the right decision.

Now week 4 of ETL 503  (Resourcing the curriculum) is about to start and the first assignment is due in 2 weeks.

I find it positive that I know now how things at CSU work. How is the workload, how is the structure of the course….. 

And also – as I gather more and more information in the school library and doing all the acquisition and selection myself, this course is very helpful and eye opening to me. In the acquisition section I was relieved to read that I am doing everything right and regarding the selection I could see that I made too many”ad hoc” decisions and that my understanding of the Australian curriculum still has to grow. I do not think that I selected bad resources but I definitley could have selected resources that were more curriculum related.

I am conquering new land when it comes to e-resources. My library does not hold a single e-book or serial and very few, old databases. So this is going to be the real challenge for this first assignment and the future.

Assignment 2, Task C:

A critical synthesis of my reflection on how my view of the role of the teacher librarian may have changed during the subject

I am not Australian. I do not come from an Anglo-American background. Until eight month ago I had never even heard of the profession, teacher librarian.

Now I do have an ongoing position as a teacher librarian at a public high school, studying to gain a Masters in Teacher Librarianship.

When I began studying I did exactly what the cliché says: I checked books in and out and catalogued them. I began to realize many different expectations colleagues, the principal team, staff members and students have of a teacher librarian. My role has since expanded significantly.

For these reasons I felt very motivated, curious and relieved to start this course (Moreno, 2011a). The readings from Herring (2007), Purcell (2010) the AASL (2009) and Boyd (2006) were the experiences I had made every day were expressed in words helped me to clarify my multifaceted role.

While reading in preparation for the first assignment I was able to explore the various roles of a teacher librarian. I was critical when I wrote that I could see many challenges and role dilemmas (Moreno, 2011b). It is one task to recognize the different roles and to describe them, quite another to adequately apply them to everyday librarian life (Moreno, 2011b).

 I would like to highlight two roles of the teacher librarian which are most important to me: The role of the teacher and the role of the information specialist (Herring, 2007 and Purcell, 2010). I very much believe that these roles build the foundation for a successful implementation or cultivation, development and extension of information literacy throughout the school.

I admit that I completely underestimated the role of the information and media specialist. The use of Web tools such as Web 2.0 is a true challenge, but I am proud of every achievement I make towards developing my own 21^st century technological literacy skills. I know that effective technological integration is not only critical in school libraries but also for learning (Lamb and Johnson, 2008).

My view of the teacher librarian as a leader is developing every day. I did not recognize a teacher librarian as a leader, but after reading through topic 6 and works from Gruden ( 2001), Hartzell (2002) and Hainstock (2010), I realized how important it will be for me to develop leadership skills (Moreno, 2011c).

Another challenge for a teacher librarian is collaboration with teaching colleagues throughout the school. The importance of collaboration is a matter of fact for most teacher librarians. Supported through the works from Boyd (2006), Lamb and Johnson (2008) or Haycock (2007) and others, I mentioned in my blog (Moreno, 2011b) and on the forum (Moreno, 2011d), that I hope to see more of me being a teacher.  Even though my colleagues start requiring my help more and more I feel that for many of them the idea of collaboration is unfamiliar. It is certainly something that I will have to, and will heavily invest in.

One way to integrate the teacher librarian more into teaching and learning develops from a knowledge of the curriculum. It is crucial that the teacher librarian knows the curriculum. From this the learning needs of the students and needs of the teachers can be established. Reviewing the Australian curriculum connect website (2011) helped me to understand the Australian curriculum more thoroughly. I found Kuhltau’s works (2004, 2007) as well as Boss and Krauss (2007) very helpful when trying to understand the move towards constructivist learning, such as Inquiry based learning and Project-based learning.

When I started reading for topic 4, and this assignment, I became overwhelmed by the plethora of definitions and models, as stated in my blog (Moreno, 2011e). Especially the diversity of definitions was confusing. I decided that Herrings definition (Herring, 2011a) was the one that I could best work with. The definition includes his extension to “Information literacy practice” where students are expected to be “reflectively engaged in information related activities both in school and outside school” (Herring, 2011b, p.19).

I would like to rephrase the obstacle (transfer of information literacy) I mentioned in my assignment into a challenge: It is my future challenge to find ways to diminish this obstacle and to ensure a successful transfer of information literacy throughout school.

Definition of Information Literacy

After reading a plethora of definitions regarding information literacy I finally got an overall idea of the concept (or at least I hope so). As before, I find James Herrings ideas and arguments very convincing and following his concept it becomes clear that IL in schools can not merely be seen as a set of skills.

Society, globalisation and information are changing and spreading on the fast track, so it is a logical consequence to have a definition of information literacy that “flows” with this evolution and enables students to transfer their IL skills from one learning environment to the next.

Collaborate and Create, Web 2.0

Today I participated in a very useful hands-on workshop hosted by SLAV. WE were shown a range of web 2.0 tools and got information about cybersafty, digital copyright and a resource rich wiki.

My head was swirling after a while and unfortunately we ourselves became the victim of modern technology – suffering from a very poor server and slooow connection to the net. Anyhow I will share some of the useful links in the sidebar.

Since I posted the last time I have been ver very busy: writing two assignments and a job application! Now that is all done and I treated myself with a great adventure: I went flying in a Microlight airplane on sunday morning – it was absolutely wonderful!

So now it is back to the books, getting ready for the next assignment(s). The topic for ETL 401 is all about information literacy and the role of the teacher librarian. I have been reading a few definitions so far (Langford, 1998), Abilock (2004) and Herring / Tarter (2007). I found Langfords Definition interesting – also taking in consideration that the Articel is 13 years old and still very up to date. Also Herring’s / Tarter’s Definition is clarifying. i will have to choose one definition for Assignment 2, not sure yet which one. After reading the first 2 topics I seemed to have a pretty clear picture about what information literacy is, now it shows that there is more to this words, so I am curious, what I will learn.

The Teacher Librarian – Roles and Role Dilemmas

During the last week I have been reading, and reading, and writing and writing…. I got started with some ideas for the assignment, but found it more difficult than I imagined to write it in English.

I read different role description on the TL and I can definitely see a lot of challenges and maybe role dilemmas: It is one thing to recognize the different roles and to describe them, but quite another to adequately fill them out in everyday librarian life.

 As a teacher with more than 12 years teaching background I would love to see more of me being a teacher, but that requires two basic conditions: first, more time to prepare lessons and secondly colleagues who are willing to cooperate. Especially the cooperation with the colleagues is a point that I see skeptical at this stage, because for them I am, “the New” – their confidence in my skills, knowledge and experience (at least I do have them as a teacher) is not very high. I hope that this will change, slowly but steadily and will keep Ken Haycock’s “Collaboration: Critical Success Factors for Student Learning” in mind.

Today I participated in a  SLAV School Library Association of Victoria  meeting and was pleased to meet other TL and being able to start networking.

Now it’s time to dig into some more of Herrings and Purcells theses.

Finishing of with the translation of a poster from my school back in Germany: 

Shock your teachers – read a book!