… that’s how one of my grad students described the history of school libraries as told by Blanche Woolls in The School Library Media Manager. Funny how I hadn’t noticed that, but most of the students did. 

Right now, this is a time of high highs and low lows in the profession.  As many prepare to head to chilly Boston for ALA Midwinter, we anticipate the high highs: noshing with long-distance friends, chatting with vendors, picking up free gallies, and — for those luckier than I — hearing the Youth Media Awards (Newbery, Caldecott, et al) announced live on Monday. 

But many will return home to the low lows: reconciling the credit card balance accrued by paying one’s own way, teachers whose own stresses have turned them inward instead of seeking collaborative partners, and an uncertain perspective about budgets and job security for the coming school year.

And then there are the high highs again: the promise of the AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and what full implementation would mean for our students and our school’s culture of learning. Or the school administrator who said to me yesterday, “I don’t just want our school librarian to be an instructional expert.  I want her to be an instructional LEADER.” Or reading my grad students’ work and having an absolute certainty that they are the kinds of leaders that our schools and public libraries need to grow and thrive.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 11:02 pm and is filed under ALA, Role of the SLMS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.