Saturday, September 3, 2011

TL as a Leader - thoughts...

So here I am studying a unit on leadership. This has come at and opportune time for me as I have just stepped into a significant leadership role at my school where I am running the Year 7 Team. My research on transformational leadership further supported the understanding I already held about leadership. This is how I prefer my leaders to opperate and how I strive to opperate in my various leadership roles. When you are the leader of a team, you must start with a vision and have an understanding of how to achieve that vision. But, it should be the team that makes important decisions, who feels like they belong and are listened to and who feel empowered in the learning process. The leader opperates more as a facilitator and guides the learning process and decision making by the team. The leader should also identify areas within the team that require growth and development - perhaps a specific team member needs support in a particular area and it is the leader's responsibility to identify this and assist them with this development.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Task C in Assessment Item 2 ETL401


Initially my thoughts on the role of the teacher librarian were simply to view the teacher librarian as a resource for other teachers and students to assist them with understanding how to use the library and access resources. This was particularly evident in my blog post entitled ‘Role of the TL and Function of School Libraries’ where I stated that the role of the teacher librarian was to act as “...a resource for both staff and students to assist with student learning” (Easter, 2011). However, I now understand the importance of the flexible nature of the teacher librarian’s role where the teacher librarian has a multitude of responsibilities in the school. The Australian School Library Association’s (ASLA) (2004) ‘Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians’ lists a wide range of skills, qualities and attributes of excellent teacher librarians ranging from managing and evaluating library facilities and information services as well as implementing and evaluating library policies and procedures through to understanding and empowering students and teachers to become information literate and life-long learners. This range of skills of the teacher librarian is about more than merely managing the library; it signifies the importance of having a well-rounded knowledge of the curriculum, positive pedagogical practice, a knowledge of how students learn as well as the leadership and instructional partner capacities to be able to “...collaborate with school staff to provide the best learning environment for the student” (Purcell, 2010, p. 32). Understanding the various responsibilities of the teacher librarian has helped to shift my original thoughts to a more complex view of how teacher librarians operate in a school to influence student learning both directly and indirectly.

Harvey (2001 as cited in ASLA, 2004) notes that “library education is becoming more focused on users and their needs and less focused on the library and its particular practices.” This statement comes from a review of literature examining the impact of school libraries on student achievement which has found that the role of the teacher librarian is moving away from simply managing the library collection and teaching library skills towards more learner driven needs including information literacy education, collaboration with staff to integrate the curriculum and supporting inquiry learning (ASLA, 2004). A traditional view of the teacher librarian as the library services manager is probably closer to what my original understanding of the teacher librarian’s role was all about. This was despite having worked closely with teacher librarians in a teaching role for more than five years. John Williams’ (as cited in CSU Forums, 2011) forum post supports the view of the changing nature of the teacher librarian’s role where “...the TL’s roles and duties [now] need to be in collaboration with the teaching staff and in alignment overall with the school’s goals and the overarching pedagogical framework. The more traditional roles such as shelving, circulation and cataloguing seem to play a much more minor role in the 21st century TL’s job...” The multi-faceted and the developing nature of the teacher librarian’s role is also supported in Emma Wundersitz’s (as cited in CSU Forums, 2011) thread ‘Initial thoughts on Purcell reading’ on the ‘Topic 2 The Role of the Teacher Librarian’ forum discussion. Wundersitz (as cited in CSU Forums, 2011) and others in the forum thread substantiate the idea that the teacher librarian of today has a significant number of responsibilities in the school and as Purcell (2010) states “Media specialists’ roles have evolved with the changing times. School librarians are now expected to be leaders, program administrators, instructional partners, information specialists, and teachers” (p. 33). The evolution of the teacher librarian’s role in recent times needs to be better communicated to assist staff and students to understand how to utilise the skills and expertise of the teacher librarian to prepare students for learning in the 21st century (Purcell, 2010, p. 33). If this communication can occur then better partnerships between teachers and the teacher librarian can be developed which can aide student learning by building on the skills of all involved.

After studying the role of the teacher librarian and reading many different views on the subject the two most important parts of the role that I wish to implement and develop in my new teacher librarian role is to collaborate more with staff and to embed a culture of information literacy education across the curriculum in the school. These two aspects of the teacher librarian’s role remain the most significant for me as I can see these aspects currently lacking my current school environment and through researching I have seen how they are integral in developing students as learners and the teaching capacity of staff at the school. If all parties involved in the school can work together on these two aspects, the school can further develop into a “learning organisation” or learning community (Senge, 2007).

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Why the big gap in the posts?

Holiday overseas, start of Term 2 and NAPLAN. That's all I have to say about that!

What do I want to achieve this year in my TL role?

After reading a lot about collaborative practice to become a professional learning community I have decided that this will be my ongoing mission in the Library. I want to be able to work more closely with teachers to implement all of the wonderful ideas that we as teachers have but do it in a collaborative way. Together we can achieve more! Isn't that the saying?

And with regards to information literacy, this is one big area that needs a lot of work at our school. There is no system and most of us go into our classes blind and guessing as to how best to teach research skills (though I now know there is more to it than just research skills). If we work collaboratively to change this though, we may just have an impact.

Missions:
1.Collaboration
2. Information Literacy

Off to ponder some more!

Monday, March 28, 2011

Time Management

Obviously I'm not great at managing my time. I have mastered the art of procrastination quite successfully. So I feel like the Management Implications topic was written especially for me! The 'Effective Time Management for Teachers' article was exceptionally helpful.

Check it out at http://www.time-management-success.com/time-management-for-teachers.html

The most important message I took from it was setting aside specific time the day before to plan my next day for Zone 2 (unstructured time). I have more time in this Zone now that I have been allocated some Library time and have other responsibility positions at my school, so this will definitely help. I plan to sit down for 5-10 minutes at the end of every day at school before I leave to go home and create a priority list of things to achieve in my Zone 2 time, that is, the time not allocated to meetings or classes. I suppose I already do this to some extent, but I am not consciously planning my day, just writing a to do list. Here's hoping it works out for me!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Database thoughts

I've just been playing around on some of the uni databases and I have to say "why don't we utilise these more often in schools?" I'm going to find out!

It's fabulous how much information is out there - not just all on the internet or books but through these databases a new world is opened up! I accessed some journal articles when I was doing my Undergraduate course, but I'm loving what I'm finding out through my Masters course.

Role of TL and Function of School Libraries

I see the role of the TL as being a resource for both staff and students to assist with student learning. At my current school, the TL assists students and teachers with finding resources for classes/studies and teaches others/provides information about information skills. This includes research skills, referencing, how to use digital resources, etc.

I worry about the role of TL being one that will last into the future as we move into the digital age. Many schools are beginning to ask the question "why have a library when everything is on the internet?" This, I fear, will be a constant battle we will have to argue and make others aware of critical role of school libraries and how they can evolve in the future. The information about leadership in the TL course should help me understand how to ensure that I can manage my role as a TL into the future. Should be interesting!