We at SLM are so honored to have Jami Jones as a guest blogger today.  Jami has sparked a lively discussion on the ELMSS listserv (ELMSS being the group within AASL comprised of university instructors in school library media) about her decision to further her studies and interests in resilience and caring in school libraries. The conversation shifted into a conversation about the education and credentialing of pre-service school librarians.

Jami, along with Gail Bush, has been conducting fascinating research about the dispositions (some might call it “habits of mind”) that school librarians should have.  One of their initial collaborations together was this book, Tales Out of the School Library: Developing Professional Dispositions (Libraries Unlimited, 2009).

Jami’s committed focus to emotionally-attuned librarianship always gives me a chance to reflect on times when I, as a practitioner, slipped and let my own frustration or stress get in the way of really making quality, resonant learning experiences for kids. We need colleagues who do this: whose words and ideas help us reflect and rethink our practice, and I deeply value what she and Gail have created in this book.

Jami starts her blog post by connecting to my blog post a few days ago quoting Stephen Krashen quoting John Gardner:

Twitter / Stephen Krashen: John W. Gardner on educati … via kwout

Here’s what she has to share with us today:

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What a great comment by Gardner that provides a great segue into the recent active discussion on the ELMSS (Educators of Library Media Specialists Section of AASL) listserv about the education of school librarians. For many reasons, school library programs are more vulnerable now than ever. I don’t want to be Chicken Little of “the sky is falling” fame, but a perfect storm could be in the offing. The present economic situation has brought our vulnerabilities to the fore. Likewise, the Internet, Web 2.0 tools, and the ease of finding information levels the field–we aren’t the only “gig” in town–students have many other options . Rather than embracing these changes–and change is inevitable, the response of many school librarians is to outlaw Google and put down Wikipedia. All this leads me to feel more certain than ever that a different type of school library education curriculum is needed - one that focuses on the development of dispositions of school librarians to work effectively in a changing school library mileau.

In 2003, I started to write about resiliency after a young woman, Amanda, died. The question I posed then, and continue to ask, is what do school librarians perceive as their responsibility to care for students. Two educational philosophers who embrace the concept of care as the foundation of learning are John Dewey and Nel Noddings.

Dewey writes in The School and Society, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children” (p. 20 in the slim volume The School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum). This seems like a good goal for us.

Nel Noddings (2005) posits a need for “changes in the structure of schooling, and especially, of curriculum that will provide a climate in which caring relationships might flourish” (p. xv in The Challenge of Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education). To this we could add Gardner’s notion that we should be focusing on planting, not cutting flowers.

The notion of climate and environment is especially meaningful to us and is represented in our standards. For me, Mr. Fridley, the janitor in Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw, represents the type of individual needed in schools if caring relationships are to flourish. Do you remember the scene in the book about Leigh Botts, the young boy who is struggling with his parents’ divorce and hides in the bushes in front of the school because he arrives earlier than the rules allow? One morning, Leigh calls out to Mr. Fridley from the bushes that he is hanging the state flag upside down. Mr. Fridley asks for Leigh’s help and suggests that the boy “should come to school a few minutes early every morning to help him with the flags” (p. 35). What a wonderful example of care. But the most important words are Leigh’s acknowledgement that “it was nice to have somebody notice me” (p. 35). Wow, is it too much to ask in American education that children be noticed?

In this book, the librarian is a helpful character, too; however, in some schools the librarian is viewed not as a carer, but a formidable adult who imposes seemingly arbitrary rules about what kids can and cannot do. I contend that it is the quality of relationship with students, faculty, and administrators that has hurt us, not the economy, technology, or budgets. School librarianship is highly relational and knowing our students and their interests is crucial.

When I first started writing about the importance of resiliency, which Bonnie Benard defines as the ability to bounce back from challenges, I did not understand that care is the essence of what we do. It is the essential disposition of school librarians. Because we care about students we create safe environments to help them bounce back. Because we care we help students to develop their interests, thus promoting self-esteem. Because we care we collaborate with teachers to ensure that projects of inquiry are compelling and lead to learning. Because we care we do not waste students’ time on what David Loertscher calls “bird units” that don’t require thinking. Because we care we teach students to plant. There are many ways we show we care, or we should show we care, but the first step is understanding that the more important role of the school library program is relational, not collecting and housing resources. It is more about the planting, not the cutting.

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What do you think? How does this resonate with your practice?

The Michigan Association for Media in Education has released new school library evaluation guidelines that can help us evaluate the success of our programs. Specifically skirting “library-only” language, the new document can help us jumpstart conversations with building and district administrators.

Per the Michigan Department of Education Web site:

This tool is to be used to measure the quality of School Library programs within individual school buildings in Michigan. To achieve Qualified and Exemplary Status for their School Library program, completed criteria measurement evaluations are to be submitted to the Library of Michigan, an Office of the Michigan Department of Education. School administrators are to evaluate their building’s School Library program in conjunction with their School Librarian and submissions require the signature of their District Superintendent. Status earned will be valid for two years. This tool is a companion to the Michigan School Library Media Program Guidelines approved by the Library of Michigan Board of Trustees in January 2007.

Thanks, MAME!

OK, so I’m in the online dating game again. That awful meat market parade. The fate worse than a root canal. 

Don’t get me wrong — there can be excitement and fun conversation and joking and a cup of hot chocolate thrown in sometimes.But other times, it can just be horrid. Like when a guy just insists that you’re going to love bow hunting OR monster trucks OR drag racing OR things I can’t discuss on this blog (but you know what I mean). Sure, with the right person, you might go out on a limb and try those things. And you can tell they’re really excited about converting you, so excited that they ignore every, “I don’t think that’s me,” or, “I’m uncomfortable with this line of conversation,” or, well, you get the picture.

And it was in the midst of one of those “conversations” that it hit me, something that Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary said to me one day years ago, when I had a summer gig driving musical artists around:

Sometimes, what the other person is offering isn’t what you need.

I remember those words from 20 years ago with crystal clarity. He went on to say that it doesn’t matter how enthusiastic, generous, or sincere the giver is. Sometimes, the recipient just doesn’t need/want/have to have it. And no matter how much a guy wants to teach me to bow hunt, I just really plain old seriously totally don’t want to do it.

Yarrow’s perspective reminded me (you are glad I’m transitioning off the topic of online dating, aren’t you? You’re literally exhaling with relief?) of the whole brou-ha-ha over on the Tempered Radical blog in which blogger Bill Fassiter asked librarians to tone down their librarian-as-superhero rhetoric and consider the unseen impact of their words.

It wasn’t that the original post bothered me, really. I quickly bookmarked it to share in my school library management class.  His perspective as a non-librarian was important for us all to hear.  However, LibraryLand quickly pulled out all its guns to fire back and the post was pulled, then put back a few days later. Fassiter felt assaulted in his email account, on Twitter, and on blogs.(As I say when potential dates question librarianship as a leadership profession, never doubt the power of the Library Mafia.) Fassiter was making a point that in our zeal to save our jobs, school librarians sometimes oversell themselves and oversell products (like being the building’s “reading expert”) that the buyers (especially colleagues) didn’t want to hear. You’ve got a great incentive program? Great, but it doesn’t fit with our standardized tests.

You throw poetry jams? Great, but I don’t have time to spare to bring my kids.

You think you can teach reading? Great, but what do I teach?

You can find me 1000 articles on response to intervention? Great. I wanted two. 

As a reading teacher, he doesn’t want to hear librarians describe themselves as the cornerstone of the reading program. That’s what he thinks his job is, and he’s having a pretty hard time doing it given all of the NCLB-related assessments and instructional constraints placed on him that are not placed on classroom teachers. Just like Yarrow says. What was being offered wasn’t what was needed.  Just like I kept trying to say to these guys who were looking for a neon-manicured, lusty NASCAR fan. What you want, I don’t have. What I have, you don’t want.

Fassiter has been through quite the proverbial ringer, so I won’t quibble with the ancillary points he makes that ruffle my feathers (I’ll leave that to bore future dates with). They’re there, and I think the online conversations on listservs, blogs, and Twitter feeds point out some concerns.But let’s get back to his core point: that classroom teachers might resent us if we say we’re the Thneeds of a school.  It stings, but it’s a fair point.

In 2010, it’s getting harder and harder to use the word “the” in describing ourselves. We’re no longer THE non-fiction folks, THE readaloud folks, THE tech folks, or THE guide to resources.  “A” would be much better than “the.”  We may have specialty skills, both those common to the profession (database searching) and as individual as we are (writing reader’s theatre scripts for a class to use), but we’re rarely the ONLY person with that knowledge.Stop for a minute and think about the librarians you know.  Can we really say we’re the ONLY folks who do any particular task or function? Good librarians fill in the gaps in the school they’re in … but so do great administrators, counselors, Enrichment specialists, or classroom teachers.  

The only thing I think we can safely say is that we are THE ONLY folks who do MARC bibliographic.  And frankly, we don’t even do that very much anymore. And even more frankly, I’m not sure MARC matters much to administrators.

I’m saddened that Fassiter doesn’t envision that a librarian could help him with the obviously arduous tasks he faces in meeting a highly-codified, highly-standardized, highly-assessed curriculum.  Would splitting his class in half let him give an intense test-prep session to each half while the librarian engages in some of the holistic language arts activities both parties think students are missing (or vice versa)?

Still, I tell the future librarians in our class that our job is to meet needs where they are.  If the teachers need help with standardized test prep, we should be there to help.  And we should all be advocating that a curriculum based around test prep does not benefit students or teachers in the long run. In the meantime, I’m off to polish my profile. Maybe listing that I’m skilled in MARC has been what’s missing all along.

Nah.