What is a Teacher Librarian?: A Showcase of Work
Literacy. Technology. Innovation and Creativity. That is the path that I have been following for the past two decades as a teacher librarian.
My job has grown and transitioned, but it has not really changed. When I started, I collaborated with teachers around literacy and books. I still do, but now our collaboration conversations are bigger. They include technology and how to embed it into teaching to turn our students into 21st Century learners with the skills and dispositions necessary to succeed. And increasingly, the conversations are continuing to grow into discussions of innovation and creativity, and how to make Universal Design for Learning and Personalized Learning the framework.
This showcase of my work shows my growth over the past two years in each of these major areas of my position.
Literacy
One of my major responsibilities is providing professional development for my teachers. In this MOOC (Massively Open Online Course), I introduce my teachers to diverse literature representing a variety of cultures and lifestyles. It is important for all students to be able to see representations of their lives in the books that they read. This course is designed to allow teachers in grades K-12 to develop the skills necessary to critique both new and classic literature in its representation of different cultures.
One of my goals for students is that they become independent users of the library. As a result, I teach the Dewey Decimal System to help them become more efficient and effective users of the collection. It is not an exciting subject, so I am always looking for new ways to engage students. I wrote this lesson plan as a way to combine the principles of Universal Design for Learning as well as technology into the process.
Technology
Networked learning was never a way I considered learning prior to teaching myself to knit using youtube videos. It turned out to be a fantastic experience that allowed me to teach myself on my own schedule. I have been able to use this technology a variety of ways - creating videos for teachers to use, developing youtube lists for my students to use in our MakerSpace and training students to create their own instructional videos to teach others.
Supports for students with specialized learning needs is one of the most effective uses of technology in an educational setting. I explored using Evernote with students who suffer from anxiety disorder in order to provide journaling opportunities to allow them to work through anxiety triggers during the school day.
Creativity & Innovation
Circuit Sticker Constellations
A maker kit and found objects were put together to create a lesson in astronomy and mythology. Using circuit stickers, I created an activity where students created their own constellation and authored the mythology story behind it.
Creativity is a skill like any other and needs to be practiced. It is also easier to be creative when you can find the connections between two unrelated pieces of learning. This song is the combination of a well known favorite hymn and an article I had read on creativity.
The library is not a place that most people associate with creativity. In examining how I can inject more creativity into my role, I have written a tweet, recorded an elevator pitch and authored a white paper on specific ways to encourage creativity and innovation in the library environment.
This project explored innovation in schools and developed a vision for how to create an environment where innovation can be a learning ethic in the same way as reading and mathematics.
Images courtesy of Wix and BigStock.