I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted. What a strange year! Since I last posted, I have been trying to "Lead from the Library." I read Leading from the Library: Help Your School Community by Shannon McClintock Miller and William L. Bass last summer after attending ISTE. This book helped me combine my 2 roles of librarian and tech coach to find a focus that would best serve our school community. In May 2017, I was asked to take the librarian position in addition to tech coaching. For 2 years, I was overwhelmed trying to balance the 2 positions. They integrate well, but I was struggling with managing an outdated collection, offering tech support, PD, and making the library the hub of the school. The library clerk who works with me also helped tremendously with her creativity and enthusiasm. She kept me going and motivated. The book helped me figure out how to funnel everything through the library and find my love for librarianship again. Now, I cannot imagine being anything else. To be a librarian is to be able to do things I love such as collaborating, technology work, teaching, reading and recommending, and so much more.Last year, our administration added an Instructional Coach position and an academic support person (both were classroom teachers as well), and that has made a huge difference. Our principal is super supportive of the library (she was a former librarian 😊), and has included me in meetings and discussions regarding curriculum and remote learning. I feel like we are now addressing the whole teaching experience instead of being tech-isolated. I also feel like my role is more of a "Tech Help Desk" and "How To" role, which works great in the library. I do talk about integration and get the teacher to ask themselves questions to see if a certain technology adds value to the lesson, but the Instructional Coach is able to take it even further and help the teacher focus on engaging students. It's a great partnership.
I am proud of the things we accomplished this year:
- We added a Help Desk to the library. I had 2 periods in which a student worked the Help Desk. This was an independent study for them. They helped me train new students who came in during the year and made tech tips and videos.
- PD was a group effort by the academic team, so I wasn't the person solely responsible (much to my relief), and we had many Lunch n' Learns in the library.
- I started reaching out to teachers to collaborate with me:
- Skype experiences in the library
- Scavenger hunts and activities where students need to move around
- Media literacy lessons with Civics and AP Government & Politics
- Research including databases (English Department is great about this - hoping to get more departments collaborating with me next year)
- We focused on purchasing fiction to get more books into the hands of our students who were able to have free choice reading thanks to our wonderful English teachers. We also started working on getting more diverse books and authors into our collection. There is still work to be done.
- We removed a shelf to make more flexible seating space and added a charging station for students (we are a 1:1 school - 1 computer per student).
- We heavily weeded the very outdated literature section of non-fiction, thanks to our senior English teacher. Her offering to help made me realize that we have many content experts on campus who are happy to help move the library forward.
Next year, the academic support person will be our Director of Academics and our Instructional Coach will continue to work with teachers. I am looking forward to the year collaborating and serving with them. Thanks to our supportive administration, we will be able to purchase more books (including ebooks) next year with an increase in our budget and inclusion in grant money allocations. I really appreciate how much of a library advocate our principal is. After all, everything the library does is for the students and faculty, and the library clerk and I will work hard to provide what they need in services and materials.
