EER500 Up and Running

I study via distance education, which means that all my study materials and all my communication with teaching staff and other students is online. This semester, one of my subjects is EER500 "Introducation to Educational Research"; and though the semester doesn't begin until March 1st, the subject coordinator already has things up and running on the website. Bless you Beverley Moriarty!

I've been able to read through the subject outline, which goes into great detail about the study schedule for the subject, as well as the requirements for the assessment items. I've even been able to make a start! Hooray for enthusiastic subject coordinators that prepare early! The earlier I make a start, the less stressful the deadlines will be.

The main thrust of the subject is to prepare us to undertake our own educational research, from the point of view of both "how to" design a research question, and bigger research issues such as ethical issues and paradigms of research. It sounds fascinating to me, and I'm very eager to get started.

Our beginning point is to find a recent media release, government report, or similar, relating to an area of interest for us. Students studying this subject have many different areas of specialisation. Mine is librarianship, so I'll be looking for a report that relates to libraries in schools. I've got the idea that I'd like to focus on the implications of the Federal Government's Digital Education Revolution for school libraries and the teacher librarian's role. Wish me luck!  

My assignment has been submitted, for better or worse. I still don't have my mark for my first assignment, so I have no feedback on my work to help me improve yet. Hopefully I'll have something back soon, so that I can use the marker's comments to inform my work. I really want to do well.

I am starting to form a mental picture of the TL's role. I feel it would be very important for me to be well organised if I were to have any hope at all of fulfilling the role. I think I would need written policies for Collection Development and Information Literacy, a clear set of short, medium and long term goals, and some sort of weekly/monthly timetable so I get everything done! I'm thinking back to Covey's 7 habits and I'm imagining setting out my goals and then timetabling things in that I can do each week to move forward on each of the goals.

For example: Monday - attend Stage 3 planning meeting, Tuesday - weed junior fiction A-B, Wednesday - write weekly Library update for school intranet, Thursday - you get the picture...

On another topic...Loving the new King of Leons' single - in fact am loving the whole album. Also still enjoying Britney's Circus and Pink.

Books I fancy re-reading: Gone with the Wind (it's been ages!) and Pride and Prejudice.

Let the editing begin!

My ETL401 assignment is written. Hooray! I've done my best and feel like I've done a pretty good job. If only I had my ETL503 assignment back so I could use the mark and feedback from that one to help me evaluate this one!

The only problem; my word count is 2339 words and the limit is 2000+10% i.e. 2200 words. So now I must carefully find the 139 words that are superfluous and cut them out! I might have a cup of tea and then re-read to see what gets the chop.

As for continuing my discussion of the role of the TL, something that bothers me a fair bit is the fact that as a TL, there is usually just one of you in a school. Which means that as a newly appointed TL, you really don't have anyone on site to show you the ropes. I would much prefer to start out in a junior role and work my way up. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to do a really good job of things, and I feel like as the only TL, I would be very hard on myself and might give myself a nervous breakdown.

Possible solutions I can see include getting a job in a public library to be under someone, and spending a lot of time at my kids' school getting hands on experience. Hmmm.

I'm having a really lousy morning. My 8 year old son cried his eyes out as he left with his sister and grandparents to go to the zoo because he wanted me to come with him. That's pretty bad.

I guess I am supposed to use this blog to organise my thoughts about the role of the teacher librarian. So far I haven't done much of that.

To be honest, before starting this course I thought of the TL job as quite peaceful. I imagined it as lovely to have my own domain and be able to potter away at relaxing tasks like reorganising bookshelves. I'm a little disappointed (to say the least) that the vision for a modern TL is so dynamic!

Having said that, though, I can't help myself from feeling a little bit excited about the possibilities for collaborative teaching and using innovative technology and methods in teaching. (Once an idealist, always an idealist.) In my teaching experience, I never had the opportunity to collaborate with others, share ideas, teaching materials and support one another. It was my biggest disappointment, and probably the main reason why I didn't last too long in the classroom. I had a lot to give, in terms of enthusiasm and ideas, and other teachers would have been lucky to have me to collaborate with. Their loss, but also mine, because I never felt happy as a teacher.

I also never taught in a context that allowed me to experiment with different methods and resources. It was just not done. The first priority was always keeping your classes under control. The second was getting them to pass tests. I used to be scared to even pass out compasses in geometry lessons for fear that the students would stab each other, and I could not be myself with students because they did not respect a smiling, young, female teacher.

Wow! It feels good to get this stuff off my chest. As a teacher, I never once even spoke to the teacher librarian or visited the library. (As a maths teacher that's possibly easier to understand than if I taught some other subjects.) I don't remember anything at all about the libraries from either of the two schools that I taught the longest at. I wouldn't have a clue what their collections were like, or what wonderful resources, help and support I passed up by not being involved with the TLs.

Might post again later today with more...

Ok, so I've actually started writing my first assignment - hooray for me! My daughter competed in a ballet eisteddfod today and got third place for her classical solo - hooray for her! School fete was on today, managed to make an appearance during the lunch break of the eisteddfod. Will be back there (at the eisteddfod) tomorrow, then off to the doctor on Monday...things have not been conducive to study lately.

A lot of people seem to be asking a lot of very detailed questions about the assignment on the forum. It makes me feel like I'm not worrying about it enough. But I have to follow my own instincts and answer the questions in the way that I think is best. I can't be swayed by what other people are stressing about. I have a sneaking suspicion that no matter what, I'll have a mad rush at the end. There's nothing like a deadline!

Interestingly enough, while working through the assignment, which deals with the resourcing requirements of a unit of work, my mind is constantly turning to the teaching of the unit. I keep getting great ideas for activities and start feeling enthusiastic about it. But I'm not even a classroom teacher at the moment, and don't have any desire to be one! I guess I'm really putting the T into the TL. I hope that because my mind is firmly on the actual teaching and learning of the unit, I will be able to be very insightful about the resources that will and won't be suitable. Already I've found heaps of great books; more than I can include in my assignment. My biggest worry at the moment is all the books and other resources that I haven't looked at yet.

The Role of the Teacher Librarian

Each time I read something new, I am having to re-evaluate my thinking on this topic. A while ago I blogged about seeing the TL as a superhero, with so many hats to wear. Now my thinking has headed in a different direction, seeing the TL in a role as a "teacher to the teachers". Making sure that the whole school has a clear vision of the goals of the library program, coming alongside the principal as an ally in regards to the school's mission, and providing training for teachers in regard to collaborative planning and information literacy are now on the agenda.

I'm sure that as time goes on, other aspects of this complex job will come to the fore. Over time I will be able to sort through all the different ways of looking at things and develop my own philosophy about the TL's role.

I'm a little worried that the demands of my course and the rest of my life might make it difficult to have enough time to really ponder these issues. I have an assignment due date which is acting as a deadline.

I have had a chat to the Teacher Librarian at the local school and am starting to see the job from the inside, rather than the outside looking in. I have not spent enough time in the library to have a complete picture, but here are some of my initial impressions.

The school takes a very structured approach to the units of work that are taught. Every class in each year follows the same program of study, year in, year out. Younger siblings end up doing exactly the same projects that their older siblings did a year or two or three before! I imagine that means that teacher's planning of teaching/learning activities is reduced.

The school librarian has put together plastic tubs containing teacher resources for each topic on the program. Teachers simply grab the whole tub and take it to the classroom when they need it. These tubs do not contain any student resources eg: books from the student collection. The librarian refuses to send all the books to the classroom. She wants them to be on the shelf when students come into the library looking for them. But do they come...???

The school librarian does not engage in any collaborative teaching with classroom teachers. Her weekly library lessons are "Relief from Face-to-Face Teaching" time for the respective classroom teachers. She teaches a program of library and research skills. These are not tied to any of the curriculum areas being taught, but stand alone. She commented to me that the computer teacher does teach computer skills in the context of the curriculum. However, she did not feel that the methods employed taught digital information literacy (she didn't use this term) successfully because any websites used were handpicked by the computer teacher prior to the lesson.

I am still unclear as to whether when the librarian puts together the tubs of teacher resources, there is any communication with the classroom teachers. Does she just get told what the topic is and then choose whatever she likes, or is there some collaboration? I am also not clear of whether the computer teacher communicates with classroom teachers about what online resources and skills should be used when teaching particular topics.

It is clear to me that the teacher librarian takes her job in promoting information literacy among the students very seriously (again, she didn't use this term). But I'm not clear whether print media is seen to be her job, and digital media the computer teacher's job, or whether there is any crossover. And it seems to me that classroom teachers don't do much to promote information literacy (based on my experiences when my children bring home projects from school).

With each visit to the library and each communication with the librarian, I'm sure I will learn more.

There's a new superhero in town!

One of the main purposes of this blog is to explore my ideas on the role of the teacher/librarian in a school. Well, after only one week of study I have come to this conclusion: Move Over Wonder Woman! There's a new superhero in town - The Amazing and Multi-Talented Teacher Librarian!

She is simultaneously across all aspects of the curriculum and knows how to access the most current and applicable resources for all topics. Her collection is well-organised, attractive, up-to-date and easily utilised. She acquires new and varied resources as they are needed. The school library website is a work of art - allowing access from home to the online catalogue, a variety of reference tools and links to relevant websites. The school library itself is a welcoming, happy and stimulating environment with an ever-changing display of student's work. "Amazing" has a respectful and warm cooperative relationship with the school's teaching staff. She regularly meets with teachers across all stages and subject areas to collaboratively plan resourced based learning. She is an admired and respected leader within the school, and is responsible for developing the school into the information literate community it is today. She enjoys recreational reading (especially children's literature) and shares this love with her students by reading aloud and promoting award winning literature and Book Week. I'm sure there are other things too...

Is this Amazing TL a real person? Is she human? Is it even possible for her to exist?