The Library is My Happy Place

Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of geralt on Pixabay Relationships are Essential The importance of building relationships with students, staff, and other teacher librarians has been a theme of my coursework throughout this diploma. My research and reflections in Phase 2 of this course reinforced the essential nature of working on connections with others as a librarian. When you have strong relationships with the school community, it is easier to build a reading culture and collaborate. If you reach out to others, you will learn more and develop your ITC skills. When you have good connections with teachers at your school, they'll be more interested in coming to your lunch and learns or other pro d opportunities. Finally, when you reach out to global librarians, you will learn about how libraries function around the world. It all comes back to relationships. Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of Foundry on Pixabay The Learning Never Stops As a new teacher lib...

Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of GDJ on Pixabay In researching global libraries, I came across the Beyond Access  Bangladesh program, sponsored by IREX and Save the Children , and read about their work in libraries in Bangladesh. This program started by working with twenty libraries to develop library programs for children. Before this program started encouraging children to come to the library, the library had no activities for children and very few of the visitors were children . The pilot program libraries were given supplies for a children's area in the library as well as four Samsung tablets loaded with books and games. Librarians received training and worked with children to encourage them to visit the library. I found an evaluation of the Beyond Access Libraries Program in Bangladesh and it included infographics stating that children used tablets 60,000 times between November 2015 and June 2017 and the monthly average number of children visiting the library ...

Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of aitoff on Pixabay While watching this week's course update video, I was captivated by our professor, Aaron Mueller's image of teacher librarians as explorers, going out to learn about the newest technologies and trends in education to bring them back to the staff. I aspire to being one of these explorers and I'm confident it will happen, over time. As a brand-new teacher librarian, I feel like I'm learning so much myself that I haven't had time to think about how I might share my knowledge with my colleagues. It seems intimidating to think of giving workshops on topics that I've just learned myself, although it would likely be a good way to cement my learning. However, I am fairly technologically savvy (despite my ignorance about the term ICT skills) and I have previously had a job as a technology coach. I have a Smart Board at my disposal in the library and could easily give talks about using Destiny, our new li...

My initial inquiry into resources related to information literacy led me to an article by Copeland and Jacobs in the journal Teacher Librarian entitled, "The power of collaboration between school librarian and classroom teacher". This article describes a successful collaborative relationship where a teacher librarian and classroom teacher taught students research skills to elementary school students. Copeland and Jacobs write, "the school librarian and teacher planned the unit together, determining student goals related to social studies content, information literacy skills, and communicator/collaborator skills." (Copeland & Jacobs, 2017, p 23). One reason this article is an excellent source is that it lists challenges that teachers may face when considering collaboration and offers possible solutions. As I'd had success finding articles on my chosen topic of information literacy in the journal Teacher Librarian, I narrowed my search within the L...

I am old enough to clearly remember using a card catalog when working on research projects. Library research has changed dramatically since I was in elementary school. Back in the 80s, when flipping through the cards in the catalog, the only books I would have seen would have been library books that had been selected by a trained librarian. Nowadays, students searching on the internet are likely to be overwhelmed with resources of varying quality and reliability. A trained teacher librarian can teach information literacy skills that will help students find what they need and assess the information they discover. I have spent time studying this topic in previous courses (see my symbaloo webmix on digital literacy created a year ago), but I feel that it is a vital topic that is worth revisiting.  UBC Library By searching for information literacy on the UBC Library website, I was overloaded with over 350,000 journal articles, nearly 325,000 newspaper articles, 125,00...

As a first-year teacher librarian, I feel like there are dozens of topics that I would like to research further and it's challenging to narrow down my research focus to just one. I will do my best to weigh my options and select an essential question that will immediately be put to use in my teaching practice. I have just started a job at an elementary school in Vancouver and I will be working with students from kindergarten through Grade 7. My position is a job share and I will be working closely with my teaching partner to make decisions about the library. My main priority at this time is developing relationships with students and staff and learning about the school community. I know I will be collaborating with classroom teachers in order to support students in researching their inquiry projects this year. I feel that building my knowledge of information literacy and library skills (e.g. effective internet searching, using databases, spotting "fake news") would be...

Quote from http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/collaboration-and-reflection.html Image created in Wordswag app by Holly Broadland Collaboration It is widely acknowledged that there are huge benefits to collaboration in school libraries. The Canadian Library Association's Leading Learning document states, "The library learning commons plays a key role in cultivating and facilitating collaboration to provide rich experiential learning opportunities. It provides not only a physical space to develop skills and engage learners, but is also a portal to virtual connections, both local and global. It is important to acknowledge the diverse needs and contributions of all players within the school learning commons community, both in terms of resource formats and access to information and collaboration opportunities." (Canadian Library Association, 2004). My current position is as a classroom teacher in a primary class. Unfortunately, I am not able to collaborate wit...

Image created by Holly Broadland for LIBE 462 using WordSwag app As I am currently a classroom teacher anticipating my first days as a teacher librarian, I look at the role of the teacher librarian with idealism and optimism. In past courses towards my teacher librarianship diploma, I have focused on the relationships a TL develops with students, teachers, admin, parents, and other teacher librarians as one of the major aspects of the role. I see the TL as the connector between people and knowledge. Teacher librarian as connector, image from FotographieLink on Pixabay I continue to believe that being able to develop relationships with the school community is an essential aspect of the job. If no one likes the librarian, people aren't going to want to go to the library and collaborate! Chocolate chip cookies, photo by Holly Broadland I created a Padlet in LIBE 462 entitled Collaboration in the Library . It includes my thoughts on how to encourage collaboration, and...

I chose to do a learning curation about Week 7's module as it meshed so well with my essential question for this course. This week's theme was "The teacher-librarian as educational leader: Supporting networks and partnerships in the library" and my essential question is all about developing relationships. I have used Padlet once before to collect links for a unit and this time I created multiple posts that were a mix of notes (with images to add interest and help make a connection to the topic), links to articles, and links to videos. I linked to readings from the course and then searched for some additional resources that were relevant to this module's topics such as the collaborative planning sheet from the BCTLA, the blog post about an Ontario TL finding ways to collaborate in the LLC, and a BCTF article on the benefits of collaborating with your TL. My notes from the readings built on the ideas I had expressed in my "Building Relationships...