Reflections on Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

I entered into a teaching career before the standards movement. As a fledgling English teacher in 1993, whose classroom instruction seemed dictated by what textbooks were available in the backroom of the library or the core novels deemed appropriate by my English department, I often questioned, “What am I asking my students to do and why?” I even had this as an acronym, WAIASTD + W jotted in the margins of my journal for lesson planning, mindful that I didn’t want my students to do busy work and to be engaged in meaningful activity that produced learning. When only a couple years later, the California State Board of Education produced English-Language Arts Content Standards for California Public Schools Kindergarten Through Twelve, I embraced having clear academic standards and an articulation of what skills students should have as opposed to a curriculum based on what novels and grammar texts they have covered. Later as I entered into a school library career in the fall of 2007, I likewise appreciated that there was a document entitled Standards for the 21st-Century Learner from the American Association of School Librarians though I had also turned to the Information Power (1998) and other publications left in my office by my predecessor about information literacy, about curricular integration, and about the value of libraries and librarians in a knowledge society.

The first common belief that “reading is a window to the world” is more expansive than the usual school library mission of fostering a love of reading, for it instead assumes that a student will read not only for enjoyment, but also “for learning and personal growth.” This standard of reading to learn, which includes an understanding of “text in all formats (e.g., picture, video, print) and all contexts” inspires me because it expands the role of the school librarian beyond that of just recommending a novel or finding an Internet source, but to also facilitating a student’s information literacy. Students read constantly though they’re not always reading a hardcover book. I see them in the school library reading Facebook, YouTube, blogs, emails, and their cell phones as much as I see them using their textbooks, and I believe that digital texts and e-readers will become the predominant format for digesting their core curriculum before I retire from education. My concern lies in the illusion that everything a student sees on screen is valid and truthful because I know that the merging of screens and sentences won’t do away with the hard work of critically reading texts and images and the even harder work of synthesizing information into former conclusions and evolving it into other information. This reading act of synthesis is connoted in the statement that “reading goes beyond decoding and comprehension to interpretation and development of new understandings,” and as a school librarian, I am most excited that reading is further defined as an activity leading to the construction of new knowledge.

The second belief, “inquiry provides a framework for learning” suggests that a process of seeking truth, information or knowledge is the basis for independent and lifelong learning; I also believe that this belief could be combined with the eighth belief that learning is socially contextual. This second common belief is most intriguing and probably constitutes the backbone of what is taught in the library and yet seems most vaguely worded. I understand the belief of “independent learners” to mean that students go beyond the skill of memorizing facts and instead have the inclination of constructing understanding necessary to producing deeper learning. However, the “understanding of their own responsibilities and self-assessment strategies” conveyed in the introduction appears unclear until one further examines the standards that follow.
The broad statement of the second belief about a more effective paradigm of learning becomes clearer when one looks more closely at the “skills,” “dispositions in action,” “responsibilities” and “self-assessment strategies” or the four components of 21st-century learning in the rest of the document. Had this second belief encompassed a description of learning based on questioning or of generating essential questions and then predicting, investigating, recording, reporting, reflecting, generating more questions, and connecting information to apply concepts in new situations, this common belief would be more lucid. Also this idea of what constitutes a more effective pedagogical practice in the school library could have also been juxtaposed with the eighth belief that learning with a social context is more powerful. The second common belief that learning is knowledge-seeking coordinates with the idea that learning should also produces understanding for others or include an audience outside of student and teacher.

The third common belief on the ethical use of information is self-evident in an age of rampant copying and pasting, plagiarism, copyright infringement, and intellectual property, for it directly ties in with the third standard to “Share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society.” Though a school librarian would explicitly be agreeing with this belief when teaching students how to attribute or create a bibliography or even showing them how to use a technology product like Turnitin.com, this common belief additionally entails electronic citizenship. As a school librarian, I would instruct students to seek multiple viewpoints, participate in public discourse—both electronic and face-to-face, respect differences, and responsibly use information in decision-making. On a school issue of bullying, for example, a school librarian would employ this common belief when creating a lesson of what to do and what not to do with a social networking tool like Facebook.

With regard to the fourth common belief, I am ambivalent although its following explanation that “today’s students need to develop information skills that will enable them to use technology as an important tool for learning both now and in the future” emphasizes that how technology is applied to information use is more important than technical skills per se. As an educator, I use my SmartBoard, Flip camera, iPod in the classroom, but I think I’m also judicious with the use of technology. Have you heard of death by PowerPoint? Could a real-time Socratic discussion be more powerful than posting to a wiki? Is watching a YouTube trailer of The Crucible really going to contribute to student performance on essay exam test? It’s not that I believe technology illiteracy is acceptable in an educator, and I do believe that even a seasoned teacher should continue to strive for excellence in their work and seek improvement of technology skills. However, I see technology as a means to a larger end. I’ve seen too many teachers who use a computer lab to entertain or warehouse their kids. As a school librarian, I want to be able to demonstrate learning technology like the clicker or a classroom response system, for example, to enhance student engagement during a teacher lecture not because it’s the digital du jour.

The fifth common belief about equity resonates the most with me because I am most conscious of the effect of socioeconomic status on academic achievement; however, I also think that it could be combined with the ninth common belief, which offers one solution of school libraries providing “equitable physical and intellectual access to the resources and tools required for learning in a warm, stimulating, and safe environment.” Krashen has posited that “the finding that the impact of the school library was nearly as strong as the impact of SES suggests that the library can, to at least some extent, mitigate the effects of low SES on reading” (2010), and I can informally attest to seeing this phenomena in the two different school libraries I work at, one in which the students are working class while the other has more affluent students in attendance.

The sixth and seven common beliefs that information literacy has evolved from locating and evaluating information to acquiring knowledge in numerous contexts, “including digital, visual, textual, and technological” and that information in the 21st-century goes beyond performing lockstep tasks to employing information for critical thinking and problem solving comprise the most powerful argument for making information literacy a learning standard at both the state and national level.

References

American Association of School Librarians. (2007). Standards for the 21st-century learners [Brochure]. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/learningstandards/AASL_Learning_Standards_2007.pdf
Krashen, S., Lee, S., & McQuillan, J. (2010). An analysis of the PIRLS (2006) data: Can the school library reduce the effect of poverty on reading achievement? California School Library Association Journal, 34(1), 26-28. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=12&sid=c7aeabad-b49d-4400-a159-86fbcfc01edd%40sessionmgr4&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=lih&AN=52595651

What does a school librarian do anyway?

Earlier this week, I had just returned from a faculty meeting at the high school where I work and where I had to facilitate a small roundtable discussion. One of the math teachers remarked to me, "Hey you're good at this, you ought to have a classroom" to which I exclaimed, "I do! My classroom is the library." I hope I didn't sound defensive because I am trying to contribute to a positive perception of school librarians. I also hadn't set out to be a school librarian. I had been an English teacher for eleven years, and when marriage forced me to relocate from one school district to another, I was still a passionate English instructor and was pursuing that vocation in my present school district. However, the principal who called me and eventually hired me said I had over the five years limit of experience they were looking for in new teacher hires, but could he interview me instead to fill a librarian position at his school? It never entered my mind to be a school librarian, which he seemed to sense because this principal then started "selling" the position, saying that I would enjoy the perks of teaching without having to contend with a heavy paper load and that I could teach research but not have to grade the research papers. I wanted a job and thought that I could eventually worm my way back into the English classroom and said yes.

Really I had no clue as to what school librarians did, nor had a favorable impression of them. When I was a high school senior, a librarian must have taught me how to use the periodical index and to find books in the card catalog though my English teacher was the one who made me purchase and use Kate Turabian's Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. When I became a high school English teacher, the first school librarian I worked with was a blusterer and didn't seem to do much but sit behind the circulation desk and spout factoids as he had previously taught history before finding his sinecure among the stacks. The second librarian I worked with was likewise pompous, but also cranky and mean. She used to icily repeat, "I am not a textbook clerk. I'm a professional." However, I was too intimidated to ask her to recommend outside reading to my students, and they told me that they were also too scared to ask for books though we noticed new books on the shelves with Accelerated Reader stickers that she must have put into the collection.

When it came time for me to teach students how to write a research paper, the school district had eliminated the full-time librarians from each high school and employed one school librarian to serve three high schools. I asked the school district librarian to show my English students the databases and how to evaluate Internet sources. My students dutifully brought their public library cards with them as she had requested, but alas the Internet in our school library was slow and not functional. We left the library frustrated and with the impression that our school librarian was not very technologically savvy though she couldn't have been to blame for an inaccessible Web. It wasn't until I met the retired school librarian who was my predecessor that I finally got a sense of the role and mission of school libraries and how the school librarian is the cog in this hub for increased student achievement. Two years into her retirement and my fledgling school librarian career, my school's former librarian approached me to suggest that I reinstate the Freshmen Humanitarian Research Project, which she had co-designed with the English Department and for which she had already built a powerful reference collection. With alacrity, I said yes and asked her to model for me the teaching of this project as well as the Big 6 Process. From her, I glimpsed what it looked like to integrate information literacy into a curriculum.

Three years later, I have one more graduate school class and a semester of fieldwork before I earn the teacher librarian credential, and I’ve also been influenced in my professional readings by Dr. Violet H. Harada, a coordinator of library media specialization at the University of Hawaii. She addressed how school librarians could become relevant in a school by “building rigor in what students learn, incorporating information communication technologies in the curriculum, promoting evidence-based practice, engaging families in literacy development and addressing the issue of diversity in our school populations”—all pressing concerns in the San Francisco Bay Area schools I’ve worked in (Harada & Hughes-Hassell, 2007). Dr. Harada has also stated that the success of a library media center and therefore the effectiveness of a school librarian is defined by improved student learning, evidenced by “the construction of deep knowledge through the exploration of ideas and information, conducting of investigations, and communication and evaluation of findings” (Zmuda & Harada, 2008a). And in a year where I’m observing more and more school librarian positions being eliminated in California, Dr. Harada enjoins librarians to undertake the mission of school leadership by becoming “learning specialists” or “partners with classroom teachers who play a central role in the continuous effort to improve the achievement of all students through the design, instruction, and evaluation of student learning” (Zmuda & Harada, 2008b). School librarianship certainly has come a long way from helping students find a book in the stacks or teaching them how to access electronic information through the Internet and databases, and I will admit that I am sometimes daunted by the task of taking on the mantle of instructional leader. However, I’ve also come to appreciate those professional times in my life where problems also turned into opportunities to learn and to change a system, and school librarianship then appears to be an exciting prospect in this new era of educational reform.

References

Harada, V. H., & Hughes-Hassell, S. (2007). Facing the reform challenge: Teacher-librarians as change agents. Teacher Librarian, 35(2), 8-13. Retrieved from Library & Information Science Literature Full Text database. (200733506345004)

Zmuda, A., & Harada, V. H. (2008). Reframing the library media specialist as a learning specialist. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(8), 42-46. Retrieved from Library Literature & Information Science Full Text database. (200809200762015)

Zmuda, A., & Haruda, V. H. (2008). Librarians as learning specialists: Moving from the margins to the mainstream of school leadership. Teacher Librarian, 36(1), 15-20. Retrieved from Library & Information Science Literature Full Text database. (200827506345007)