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)