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...

Illustration c2018 Debbie Ridpath Ohi, DebbieOhi.com/printready, free to download and print for personal and school use I have been a teacher librarian for five weeks now and it feels like I've come home. If my job includes brainstorming ways to develop the reading culture at my school, I'm in the right profession! As soon as I met the students at my school, I realized that there is already a strong reading culture in place here. The library is abuzz with activity before and after school and our daily book exchange periods are busy. Teachers at our school give students time to read on a daily basis and it's obvious that most students at our school consider themselves readers. As Stephen Krashen states in his "Power of Reading" video, the most important ingredient in developing readers is to give them time for free voluntary reading. I would add that having access to a library with a friendly and responsive teacher librarian is also helpful in fosterin...