Baby teachers
Top Ten Things Baby Teachers Should Know About School Libraries
Head for the Edge, April/May 2002-03
Dear First Year Teacher,
Welcome to school. Is it ever nice to see your fresh, smiling face! I hope some of your eagerness and enthusiasm rubs off on the rest of us who have been here awhile. (A couple of us still yearn for the days of the one room school.)
I am the school media specialist. Or librarian, if you prefer. I answer to both. I recognize that your teacher preparation may not have given you much information about or experience with working with me or using our library’s resources effectively. There is also a pretty good chance that the school library you used during your own school days was different from our program here.
To help get things off on a positive spin, here are a few things I’d like you to know about the library, our program and me that can help us both form a great partnership…
1. The librarian doesn’t own the library. You and your students do. You can recommend materials and have a voice in library policy making. Volunteer to become a member of our school’s library advisory committee.
2. The library should be considered an “intellectual gymnasium.” It’s not a student lounge, study hall or baby-sitting service. The students in the library, including the ones you send, should have a reason for being there. Whether for academic purposes or personal use, students should be in the library because they need the library’s resources, not just because they need to be somewhere.
3. The best resource in the library is the librarian. I can help you plan a project, solve a technology problem, find professional research, give insight into an ethical problem, or answer a reference question. And if I can’t do it, I will help you find someone who can. I can help find and inter-library loan materials you need that are not in the school library itself. Helping others gives me a huge sense of satisfaction so please never hesitate to ask me.
4. Planning is a good thing. Advanced planning with me will greatly increase you and your students’ chances for success with projects that require information resources. A well-planned research unit or technology project will greatly decrease frustrations for everyone involved. With my experience, I can let you know what strategies work and don’t work.
5. Recognize that the library provides access to both print and electronic information. I can determine which one best suits yours and your students’ needs. Students do not always realize that print resources are the best for many purposes. It breaks my heart to watch a student spend a frustrating hour trying to find the answer to a question on the Internet that could have been answered with a print resource in minutes.
6. The librarian can be helpful in evaluating the information found on the Internet. One of the greatest challenges of using the Internet is determining whether the facts and opinions found there are credible. I have the training and tools to do just that. And it is my mission to teach students effective evaluation skills as well.
7. The librarian can help create assessments for your students’ projects. The findings of research projects presented in electronic form, conclusions drawn from primary resources, and research that calls for higher-level thinking to be demonstrated, all call for good authentic assessment tools rather than a simple gut-reaction comments or an objective test. I can help you find examples of these sorts of tools as well as help you create and administer them yourself. Let’s work together to make your students’ learning experiences as meaningful as possible.
8. The librarian can be your technology support center. I’m no technical guru, but can help you and your students with technology applications. Need to use a scanner or digital camera? I can show you how. Need to create a multi-media presentation? Let me give you a quick lesson. Looking for effective ways to search the web? Ask me. I’m not a technician, but I can sometimes help locate that kind of help for you as well.
9. The library can help your students’ performance on standardized reading tests. Research has proven that children become more adept at reading by extensively practicing reading at or just below grade level. The library contains a wide range of material in print format that students can use to improve reading skills. And I can help match just the right book or magazine with just the right reader. If you need a book talk for your class or help with a student struggling to find something of interest, just say so.
10. The librarian will be your partner when trying new things. It’s been said that some teachers during their career teach one year, 30 times. Can you imagine how long those 30 years must have seemed? If you need somebody to share the glory or the shame of a new unit, activity, or methodology, I’m the one.
I hope your next thirty years will be exciting and gratifying. You’ll be influencing the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of kids in incredibility positive ways.
The subtitle of my professional standards document is Building Partnerships for Learning. I have truly taken that concept to heart. I am here to help you and your students do things you can’t do alone.
Again, welcome,
Your library media specialist.
Doug Johnson
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Reader Comments (9)
Hey there,
I think #8 is really interesting. I didn't realize that librarians felt that understanding new technology and being able a type tech guide was part of the role.
That helps me understand why librarians are so active in adopting new technology (or at least from my experience)
-Kristine
Hi Kristine,
Librarians need to see themselves as technology USE specialists, since to be truly information literate means being able to use information technology.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Doug
Dear Doug,
This is a great letter for new teachers. As a new Librarian myself, I am eager to do 100 things at a time but that has only brought me frustration, stress and anxiety so I'm taking it at a slower pace as I learn to do all of the above in a more professional way. I know there is a lot to learn and do in my new profession but I am very excited about venturing into a brand new world! Reading some of your articles has really helped me put things in prespective. Thank you sooo much for your inspiring and insightful information! It has really helped me as a new librarian and I will forever read your writings about Library issues.
Norma G. :)
Hi Norma,
Thanks for the very kind comment. Glad to know you found this helpful.
All the very best,
This post is marvellous. And timely, advocacy is on my mind at the moment. I am often shocked that staff recently graduated from universities, have no idea of how to use school libraries and how we can work with them and their students, it is particularly shocking that many of them (even those who teach English) have very few information seeking skills themselves. It seems many can get away with a bare minimum of library use while they are studying and this lack of awareness gets passed on to their students. I had the comment from one recent trainee teacher "I didn't realise that school libraries had so much to offer". Thanks for the fantastic posting Doug.
Bridget
Hi Bridget,
I think you may find this lack of knowledge about libraries shared by administrators and parents as well. This is due, in part at least, by the fact libraries are changing so rapidly.
Thanks for you kind comments,
Doug
May I "borrow" your letter for my new teachers? I'd love to post a link to this on my website.
Hi Michelle,
Everything on both my blog and website are has a Creative Commons license. So long as it is for non-profit use and the source is cited, you may use, modify and distribute anything you find here.
Good luck,
Doug
I like everything about this post except its title. I think it's important to remember that no professional in the workplace likes to be considered a "baby" anything. You are speaking to adults, and while some of them may be the age of your children, some new teachers are career changers and come to this profession with a wealth of experience elsewhere. And either way, these are adults who should be addressed and treated as such. Your post asks new teachers to respect you, which is incredibly important, but your title, I'm sure totally unintentionally, disrespects them.