Lean on me: the TL supporting the school supporting the TL.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Photo by Josh Sorenson on Pexels.com

The teacher librarian is in a unique role.  We provide support for our staff (designing assessment, developing programs of learning, finding elusive resources), our students (developing their info and digital lit skills, finding ” the book with the yellow cover and blue writing”, reading their drafts, listening to them when they need an ear), and our parents (providing the best fit book for their child, running parent workshops, giving them a workplace to develop their skills while home with children). In our isolation, we connect with other like minded specialists to improve our practice for our individual communities, and advocate for our role.  But yet none of this is possible unless WE are supported by our principal, senior leadership and those very same people we provide support for.

Let me preface the rest of this post by making the grand claim that this is my DREAM TL JOB and that each and every year is different because we grow our services and face new and exciting challenges.

At my school, we are supported by having a team of four: library assistant, library technician, and two part time TLs (all now fully qualified).  We also have a wonderful volunteer who has been coming to help us half a day a week since before my arrival, taking on those long term projects related to collection management and record management.

This has all been in place since my arrival almost seven years ago, but we only became REALLY busy in the last 2-3 years.  Why?

• Greater communication with the principal and senior executive (deputy principals) as to how we fit into the school community
• Ongoing communication with staff at meetings, informally over a cuppa or in the corridor, and via email
• Offering ed tech support to staff who needed it
• Developing our Keys to Success program for students
• Encouraging students to seek our assistance with one on one appointments on their study lines: reading of drafts, assistance with resources, help with file management.  Word of mouth then has seen this side of our work increase.
• Broad range marketing of our library as ‘LTC Library’ through flyers at Open Night, parent teacher interviews, O Week at the beginning of the year.
• Creating the LTC Library website, developed with input from teaching staff, leadership, and students.
• Embedding ourselves in programs of learning for a term with supportive classroom teachers
• After discussion with our Head of Faculty, developing role statements for all library staff – and sticking to what we each did best in our team.

All of this was possible because:

• We aligned our services not only to the school’s strategic plan but also the ACT Education Directorate’s Strategic Plan and the ACT Government’s Future of Education strategy.
• In doing so, we shared this with our principal and demonstrated that we could influence student outcomes across the entire school.

Our principal, Julie, is a huge supporter of school libraries, teacher librarians and qualified library staff.

Along with her open door policy (if the door is shut: she’s out, in a meeting, wandering the school chatting with students, or needs to work uninterrupted), we feel comfortable knowing that our sometimes harebrained yet well thought out plans will be considered with respect.  Nine times out of ten, our principal will say yes to our proposals or offer an alternative solution that still works for all.

These videos from the Students Need School Libraries campaign give you an opportunity to hear Julie eloquently speak about how and why she values the role of the TL, and the place she feels the school library has in a school community: The Common Room of Knowledge (1:39-2:30) & The Importance of Experts in Schools. (0:00-0:30).  We are so lucky to have her in our corner!

With this support from the principal and other leadership members, we have a ‘seat at the table’ in the curriculum team, the assessment team, the professional learning team, and Heads of Faculty meetings, and our suggestions are welcomed. Fingers in many pies because we are uniquely positioned with a view over the entire school’s teaching and learning.

Another lovely outcome is that we are supported to improve our practice as teaching professionals, and Julie often sees the possibilities in what we can achieve before we do ourselves.  An example of this is her support of my HALT certification this year.

As I mentioned earlier in my post, our TL role often sees us isolated from our fellow specialists (usually being the only TL in the school).  As mentioned in Module 3.3, we need to reach out and support other TLs for this very reason, and contribute to advocacy to support ALL teacher librarians and their positions across Australia and internationally.

Holly and I do this by:

• Keeping up our PLNs (as mentioned in last week’s post)
• Being active within our local school library network (SLNet ACT): via mailing list and on FB
• Being members of professional associations and professional networks (nationally): ASLA, Australian School Library Network; Teacher Librarianship@CSU)
• Lecturing and marking for CSU (keeps our practice fresh and exposes us to new ideas from up and coming practitioners)
• Participating in local and national advocacy for our profession (so important!).
• Attend and sometimes speak at conferences to maintain networks in person

Our school has recently become a University of Canberra (UC) Affiliated School . In doing so a team of our staff are now able to take the opportunity to participate in the UC Teachers as Researchers project for action research purposes over seven months in 2019.

Of course, Holly and I saw an opportunity to gather data around the services we offer as part of our broader school focus of engagement, and hey presto, our school accepted our expression of interest!  We’ve only just kicked off this week but very much looking forward to working with the other teachers in our team to develop our research topic, design and methodology through practice.

Closer to home, we like to collate smaller pieces of evidence to inform our practice from day to day.  This can look like:

• Exit cards and surveys at the end of each Keys to Success session to gauge effectiveness of content, and a further survey at the end of the Keys to Success program to obtain student feedback on the current and future sessions students want to see delivered.  We have changed or withdrawn whole sessions from term to term because of this.
• Google Forms filled in after each student and teacher appointment to collate content to start tracking patterns across: types of student (those doing a tertiary or accredited package), year group,  type of request (drafts, referencing, file management, ICT support), teacher faculty, task type etc.  This is new this year and we hope to feed this back to staff.

Regardless of where the support comes from: staff and students using our library services regularly, the principal approving our plans, being part of whole school teams that affect teaching and learning, fellow TLs, or evidence based on short term/long term practice – we need support to do our job in supporting others.