ETL401 - The role of the teacher librarian

It is obvious from the readings that it is hard, perhaps even impossible, to create a role description for a teacher librarian. This is due to the many roles that a teacher librarian can undertake –

leader

information specialist

teacher

instructional partner

program administrator

collaborator

teacher leader

technologist

librarian

information services manager

information literacy leader

curriculum leader

website developer

budget manager

staff manager

fiction and non-fiction advocate

And that’s only out of three readings!

The key idea that keeps popping up is that of collaboration. TL’s need to work with and support everyone in the school community. Everything they do in the library needs to be transparent and reflect the needs and values of the school community. As Herring states “teacher librarians must take a proactive role in influencing the development and innovations in schools” p. 4.

The problem for the TL is deciding which role is most important, and how to allocate their time effectively. The juggling of educational roles and administrative roles seems difficult to balance. Both roles are equally valid and even where a TL has support staff the decisions and responsibility for the administration side of things ultimately resides with them.

With so many roles to fill it seems as though the TL is often overlooked when it comes to leaders within the school. Most teachers seem to view the TL as being in their domain, called upon when necessary but ultimately outside the teaching and learning practices. It seems hard for TL’s to break out of this mould and prove themselves to be vital leaders within the school context.

I still don’t know how I feel about this myself. We are almost finished one term and I feel that most of what I have done in the school library has been administrative and cosmetic.

I have not created any programs to improve student learning or put in any policies to support information literacy in the school. And truthfully I don’t really know how I would going about doing this either.

One thing that did interest me from the module notes was the fact that “there is often a call for research evidence…[and] this is where our profession needs to build its expertise.” This is something I think I would be good at and something I would like to do in the future.