Self-promotion for school librarians: Do we need to write about it?

Yesterday I heard with great sadness that Walsall Schools' Library Service was closing. Yet another library facility being closed because of funding and underuse and I just don't understand it. If you are a teacher reading this (I hope there are at least one or two!) look at the questions below.

• Do the schools that were supported by this SLS have amazing school libraries? 
• Do they have all the resources that they need? 
• Do the teachers not have to buy books with their own money? 
• Do all teachers have the research skills to access online academic online resources? 
• Do all their students evaluate and reference the information they find on the internet?
• Do the teachers not need advice and recommendations of the latest fiction? 

If the answer to all of these questions is yes then obviously this service should have closed but I am sure that this is not the case so what can we do about it. Why is this service closing? Is it because teachers do not understand the reason that school libraries are important and should teachers and schools be the ones fighting to keep these resources open?

I have often written about the changing role of the school librarian in the UK and how we have had to find different ways to engage teaching staff and it seems to me that it is more important than ever.

I recently read a FaceBook post questioning the promotion of Future Ready Librarians but primarily the need to self-promote and it got me thinking. Why do I feel that school librarians need to self-promote and should we not just be able to do our jobs well and that be enough? I think if you look around twitter and facebook school librarians are not the only ones on the promotional route. Teachers constantly share best practice, digital leaders are there telling us what they do, authors share their books and information about their school trips so is self-promotion really that bad? 

The difference is that other professions are promoting what they are doing in order to tell the world about it. Librarians, on the other hand, need to self-promote to help teachers understand what they do in order to do their job but more importantly to be allowed to support the students in their schools. 

Why do I feel the need to write blog posts to encourage school librarians to self-promote more? 

I posted my latest blog post on advocacy on LinkedIn recently and have had some really interesting comments. One of these suggested that there should not be a need to write such a  post because we, as school librarians,  should already know how to do this anyway because it was taught in library school. The good thing about comments is that it does make me think about what I have written and why. Was she right?

I replied to her that I don't think that self-promotion is covered in library school. Unless of course, I did not read this myself. I did do a distance learning degree and masters so maybe the courses are different of course. I don't think the specialism of school librarianship is covered in the UK library course and this is where things should change. I did one module about school libraries but it was out of date and I had to write a report to the board of governors as far as I can remember. Self-promotion certainly was not covered. Many of us are learning as we go along rather than going in with full knowledge of working in a school library alongside teachers.

Apart from that I also know that many of the people who are working in school libraries do not have a library qualification and are learning as they go along. They are doing amazing jobs but again self-promotion is something that they are having to learn about rather than knowing it is part of the job. I doubt that anyone of us has self-promotion in our job descriptions.

Being a loan librarian in a school full of teachers takes a lot of self-determination and bravery to move beyond the comfort and safety of the school library. If writing a blog post about how self-promotion can make a difference and highlights ways to do it and gives even one library worker the confidence to do something different then it will be worth it. I think we need to encourage all our colleagues to get out there and talk about what we do.

My best lessons have come from me talking about what I do with teachers. A conversation in the staff room or corridor has led to me helping teachers connect their students with India for example. Very rarely am I contacted by a teacher asking for support it is always the other way round. If the only way to get into the classroom is to advocate for what I do then every time I get into a new teachers classroom it has been worth it.

Where next?

Let's keep talking and sharing what we do. If this is the only way to ensure that teachers understand what school librarians do then I am happy to keep self-promoting and encouraging others to do the same.

I am off to the Practical Pedagogies conference in Cologne in November. The only librarian at a teachers conference and I am really looking forward to it this time. No more feeling I don't belong, no more worrying that I might upset a teacher. I have something to share that will make a difference to their students and I am prepared to say it as loud as I can. 

In house professional development for teachers. Start with your school library.

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

We all assume that teachers know and understand the value of school libraries. We would hope that they encourage their students to check out books, use the online resources and credit what they find. Although there are many teachers that do, there are also an equal many that don't. We regularly talk about advocacy in the librarian world, how we should be out there reminding teachers about the support they can get from the school librarian but there is only so much one school librarian can do in a school to encourage use. In many schools this advocacy is through talking to teachers individually which can be very time consuming. 

I recently took part in a twitter chat about teachers Professional Development (PD) and the question was  "What professional development should teachers have to assure we are eliminating the achievement gap? #satchat" and my response was this:- 

All teachers should know and understand how their school library and librarian can support teaching and learning. Do you? #satchat

How can we achieve this? Once a year the school librarian should be asked to provide compulsory PD to all teaching staff to:-

·       Remind and inform teachers, who do use the library, about new resources and lessons available

·       Inform new teachers to the school about what the school library provides and to let them know  about the collaborative teaching available.

If this happens student attainment will increase. How do I know this? There have been several studies about this, this one especially is worth reading.  

Williams, D; Wavell, C; Morrison, K (2013) SCHOOL LIBRARIES on LEARNING. Robert Gordon University Institute for Management, Governance & Society (IMaGeS)

Teachers can't use something they don't know about so it is up to the senior leadership team to ensure that a resource they are paying for gets used to it’s full advantage. Not all teachers feel comfortable with using the school library catalogue or online resources and that is where the school librarian can support them and their students in the classroom.


Collaborative teaching with the school librarian can lead to impressive student learning, we just need to make sure that teachers know how to start the conversation with the school librarian and to open the doors of their classroom to extra resources and support and PD is the perfect starting point.

School's Library Service in Guernsey recently ran a whole inset day on raising accademic attainment through your school library. Read about it here.

Inset training - How librarians can support teaching and learning.

This blog was written as part of the #futureReadyLibs #blogchallenge which can be found here. I agreed to write about professional development and hopefully have demonstrated how we did this by providing training for our teachers in their inset day. Enhancing their skills through using the school library and its online resources and demonstrating how information literacy linked with the curriculum.                                                                                                                                                                                    #FutureReadyLibs #bloggingchallenge

10-week #FutureReadyLibs #blog challenge, where librarians are invited to reflect upon the different cogs of the Future Ready Librarians Framework. Please join in on the conversations by posting your own blog responses and by joining the Future Ready Librarians Facebook group, where a new weekly blog .

Making changes

St Anne's school library in Alderney has undergone some big changes in the last few months. Schools’ Library Service (SLS) supports this school from a distance as we are in Guernsey which is a short flight away. This means that we only visit twice a term. On one of our visits, last year, we discussed how we could support the school library and help create a space that was well used by both students and teachers. We agreed to weed and renew the resources and gave them some ideas to move the library around to suit the needs of the school. It was lovely to go back a few months later and see how they had been empowered to change it again.

Creating opportunities

This led to conversations about the importance of information literacy and how it can support and encourage students to use the school library to become independent learners. Exciting discussions have been had about embedding information literacy into the curriculum, meaning that the school library, its staff, SLS and teachers will become a hub of teaching and learning for the students of St Anne’s.

Will you run our inset day?

Early last month Martin Winward, headteacher at St Anne's, and I were chatting about how we could ensure the changes in their school library could continue to have an impact on students and teachers. We both agreed that after the initial excitement and interest in the changes, it was important that we found a way to continue engagement. Martin asked me if I was willing to run an inset training day about information literacy and the school library because it was apparent that unless we had teachers on board, who understood what we were trying to do, nothing was going to change. We needed to share out vision.  I jumped at the chance, how often does the librarian get the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of the school library and librarians to teaching and learning. This was especially important as the new Guernsey curriculum is due to be implemented in September.  It is very much skills based curriculum and this is what information literacy is all about. it was perfect opportunity to talk to teachers about how we can support them and have an impact on student learning.

Martin sent me an outline of the areas he wanted us to cover. Improvements in the school library, Information literacy and the framework, resources and tools to support learning and examples of best practice. We also wanted to demonstrate how this all fitted in with Educations ‘big picture’. After a couple of conference calls I started to create my presentation and shared it with Martin and Wendy, deputy head.  Luckily for me, Wales is currently creating a new curriculum and have decided to incorporate information literacy into it so I was able to incorporate their slides into my presentation. It was important for me to make sure that the day was full of information but hands on too so I made sure it  included :-

• Innovative games/ideas that they could use in their own lessons
• Google Hangouts
• How social media can have an impact

Inset training day

I felt It was important to start the day by demonstrate that this training and message was not just coming from me. That schools all across the world are using their school libraries successfully alongside the internet and that the two can and should work together, it is not about one or the other, it is both. It was also important for me to show that there are many school librarians out there doing inspiring things and working with teachers so I started with a demonstration of how social media was important to me and my own personal learning. I explained that I had sent a message out to my followers on twitter asking the following:-

I had some wonderful responses which I shared with the teachers but the one that I finished with was this one. A brilliant message!

I then moved onto information literacy and how the framework SLS are currently using links and supports the new Guernsey curriculum. We were able to show how the framework and SLS staff can support students to becoming independent learners through using the school library. We demonstrated how we could support and train teachers to use the school library in an innovative way, opening their eyes to the countless possibilities of using resources that were already in their school and just waiting to be used. All at no extra cost to the school and with full support and training included.

Kahoot

We played Kahoot an online quiz that you can create yourself. We wanted to demonstrate how easy it was to create a quiz but also use it for our own purposes. Our quiz made sure teachers knew about the support available from SLS and how to use the school library. It caused some great discussions especially around the thorny issue of using pictures without credit. We will be following up with some guidelines on this for teachers.

We had planned to play breakoutEdu after break but we began to realise that we needed to help the teachers understand what was available from the school library and how to access it otherwise they would not be able to play the game so we spent some time showing them how to find their way around the resources that we provide, how to access and use their ebook collection and their school library catalogue. We explained that they needed this information to play the next game.

BreakoutEDU

Julia created our breakout game for this inset day. Breakout is based on a gameshow in America where contestants had to break out of a locked room. As it is not appropriate to lock students into a room this game has been adapted by school libraries, especially in America, to challenge students to unlock a box, using clues.   Ours was set up to ensure that teachers used the school library in order to work out the clues but teachers can use this game for their own subjects too.  They had to work as a team in order to get into the box in under 30 mins. It was great to see how fully engaged all the teachers were.

The box is in the middle of the teachers!

They managed to breakout in 23 mins...

Photo's by Martin Winward

Google Hangouts

I am very lucky to had made some very strong connections with librarians from twitter, so we decided to invite a couple to our inset day through Google hangouts. It was important to demonstrate how easy it was to connect with others around the world but also to help them understand how other school librarians support teachers in their schools. We invited Stony Evans a library Media Specialist at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Caroline Roche , a school librarian at Eltham College, South East London to give a 15 min presentation about how they collaborated with their teachers. Both gave really interesting presentations and shared lots of idea with us. We were very grateful for their time and enthusiasm in sharing their best practice with us.

Stony, talking to us at 7am in the morning!  

Photo by Stony Evans

Finally

The day ended by giving teachers the opportunity to feedback on what we had covered during our inset day and to decide how they would include any of this in next term's lessons. Several teachers commented on trying to use the Kahoot and Hangout within a lesson. There was also a lot of feedback on using the SLS website more and asking for support.

“I feel more confident to take a more immersive approach to topic work. I will utilise the SLS website and will liaise more closely with them.”

"Loved the cross curricular approach / opportunities…. MORE / MORE / MORE PLEASE" 

We look forward to supporting St Anne's more in the future. We are very grateful for this opportunity and for your enthusiasm throughout the day.

Advocacy for school librarians - Training and Personal Learning Networks PLN

Helping teachers set up their own Personal Learning Network (PLN)

As a librarian I am never sure what I am going to be asked to do next. My own skill set is broad and this being the case I am able to do many things which includes training. Recently, after a conversation with a teacher about Personal Learning Neworks (PLN) I realised that my own skills in setting up my  PLN enabled me to support this teacher and potentially support him to train other teachers in his school.  Is this an important part of my job? Absolutely, teaching and sharing my own best practice,  enabling and inspiring teachers to find the information they need themselves is essential. If  I can work alongside teachers to enhance their learning it allows me to talk to them about their students learning too. Raising my profile and skills set helps me to raise awareness for the school library. I can't be in every classroom but I can teach and up skill the teachers which is very definitely my role.

My own personal learning journey. 

It started in 2009,  I had qualified as a librarian in 2003 and after chartering in 2008 it was time to take responsibility for my own development and learning rather than having to do it because I was studying. My own reading, at the time, started and stopped with the CILIP Update magazine but I needed more and really had no idea where to look.

My decision to use social media for personal learning was for two main reasons. Firstly, I had children who were wanting to use Facebook and twitter and at the time I felt that I did not know enough about these resources. Rather than saying no you can't because they scare me, I realised it would be better to find out about social media and how it worked. Secondly, I was aware of the potential for using social media for more than following your favourite pop star and was interested in finding out if I could use them for work. I was particularly keen to know enough about social media so that I would be able to talk to students about it.

In the beginning I decided to use Facebook for friends and family and twitter for work only. This has changed overtime and my Facebook has expanded to special interest groups to share knowledge too. Twitter has enabled me to learn more and connect with people around the world that I would never have been able to otherwise. Some of the most exciting things that I have done in the last year has been because of Twitter. Trips to Toulouse to present about using school libraries across the curriculum, talking to librarians in Arkansas via Google Hangouts and  requests for articles all have come from my PLN on twitter.

So how did I start? I set up an account, worked out how to follow a few librarians and teachers and then I lurked. I read the threads that came through and have to admit that not much of it made any sense. Hashtags and @ and bad English was what it seemed to be all about. I was not sure how this would help me but then I became aware that some of the people I followed were sharing articles that were very useful and because of this I began to read more.  The idea that other professional have read something and thinks it is worth sharing is very powerful. I then became braver and began to retweet and share articles that I found interesting. Finally I took the plunge and sent out my first tweet. It makes me smile when I read it now as I can't stand anyone who writes about that they are about to do.  I do think there may have been a little sarcasm in my first tweet. I had to start somewhere and this was what I chose to write:-

I used the discover twitter to find this. I admit I did get a little distracted by putting in some of my twitter friends in and laughing at their first tweets. Nearly all are as bad as mine :)

I slowly  began to understand how powerful this tool was. I began focusing on the group of librarians and teachers I was following and started making decisions about unfollowing those who were tweeting rubbish. I did not have time to waste so my focus has always been quality. If someone is not useful to my goal I unfollow. This leaves me with a quality group of people who I have learnt so much from. They share their best practice with me, answer questions that I could not answer myself and through this I began to grow in confidence. It gives me a place to share my ideas and enables me to learn about new teaching practices and help me grow as a professional. My PLN is essential to my role as a librarian which enables me to learn and discover more every day.

Where can I start?

If you are looking where to start here are a few suggestions from my social media friends.

PLN on Pinterest

Twitter tools

Twitter for teachers

Education chats on twitter

Educational hashtags

Teachers - digital literacy and school librarians. Innovation at it's best!

I am very excited about the opportunities digital literacy is creating for every school librarian. At last we are able to demonstrate how we can work alongside teachers with our skill set being used to it’s best advantage. Together we can create independent learners who can find great resources and improving academic attainment. 

When I think about digital literacy I can’t think of it in isolation without the overarching skill of information literacy. Schools and teachers, however, seem to have decided that digital literacy is the overarching skill for all subjects so where does information literacy fit into this?Does it matter whether we call it information literacy or digital literacy? Let's find out how they differ. 

As good librarians do,  I went looking for a definition for digital literacy 

“Digital Literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.”

Then the definiton for information literacy 

“Information literacy is a crucial skill in the pursuit of knowledge. It involves recognizing when information is needed and being able to efficiently locate, accurately evaluate, effectively use, and clearly communicate information in various formats.”

Interestingly there are many similarities between the two, if teachers feel more comfortable with the term digital literacy than information literacy, I am beginning to realise that the terminology is not as important as the skills it ensures the students learn. As long as find, evaluate and use information is in there and teachers understand the need for research skills it works for me. Both literacies demonstrate the essential role a librarian is required to play.  

School librarians supporting digital literacy

I have recently been asked to support schools trying to increase their use of digital across the school curriculum. Just this week I was sent a document from Northern Ireland that schools are using as a guide for this. It is an old document as it gives examples of CD ROMS but the overview is fairly good so it just needs new examples fitted in. I am being given permission and the opportunity to demonstrate how library professionals can enhance teaching of research and wanted to share how schools and teachers can use the expertise of the school librarian to support digital literacy.

Digital literacy is not

• ·      Being able to type a question into Google and get an answer.

• ·      Being able to cut and paste into your homework

• ·      Steal information and pass it off as your own

A colleague I was talking to recently put it perfectly when he said ‘none of this is about how good they are at using tech. It’s about selecting good quality resources. Yet within education the importance is being put on the tech and not on the resources found.  

Going back to the Northern Ireland document level 5 is high end year 6 = 11 year olds the overarching skill was to:-

Research, select, edit, use and evaluate assets from a range of digital sources

The suggestion attached was the following.

•    Research internet sites of their own choice to find and select information, images, movie and audio files to support the production of a short film about their local area.

How does this explain to the teacher how to teach this? It is making an assumption that these skills have already been taught but if teachers are not confident of these skills themselves how can they be really taught and assessed. I would like to challenge many of the teachers I know, to find and use their school library catalogue within a lesson to find good resources. I would bet that many of them would struggle at finding the library catalogue in the first place. 

Collaboration essential.

At Schools’ Library Service we have spent the last couple of years creating lessons that demonstrate progression to this stage. Our lesson and session cover all lessons from year 1 to year 13. Here is a case study for the type of lessons that we would cover for a year 6 group. It includes selecting good quality information from the library and online, note taking and referencing. The teacher was so pleased with these set of lessons that I have been asked to repeat it again this year. This only worked because the teacher gave me some time to plan this with her. 

Why are school librarians so important to digital literacy?

School librarians are constantly sharing and keeping up to date with new resources something that teachers don't have time to do themselves. My own PLN (Personal Learning Network) is constantly sharing good practice and resources. A perfect example of this recently is I found out about Infotopia which was recommended by my network, which is a search engine that I was not aware of for children. It is created by librarians and finds websites at the appropriate level. This is a brilliant resource on two levels. One, it is now something that I will teach in a class where I am being asked to teach website evaluation and it is also something I will use myself when I am searching for appropriate websites to add to our school library catalogues.

At every level I am able to collate good resources for my teachers, I am able to teach in the classroom to show how to access our online resources and I can also teach referencing and plagiarism. Along with all of the basic research skills I am also making connections around the world to ensure that I include innovative ideas within my teaching too. 

Interestingly, I recently came across a blog post that talks about innovative teaching which I feel links nicely with what I am trying to say. “Innovation is NOT synonymous with the word technology, but how we create and use technology can lead to innovative practices in many elements.” For example after a lesson on creating a good question I invited an expert into the classroom via Skype and the students were able to ask their questions directly. This lesson had such an amazing impact on the students who could see the impact of a good question that it inspired them to change their questions to better ones. The technology enabled the lesson to happen but it wasn’t the lesson itself.