The Library is My Happy Place

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...

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...

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...