As I have mentioned before, being the only librarian in the school can be a very lonely job. We do not have anyone to share our ideas or thoughts. Therefore, when we get together with other librarians we tend to share our good ideas or complain about the teachers that do not understand what our job entails. This is why I enjoyed last week's discussion. I think that we came up with some great ideas of how to get beginning teachers on board with collaboration. I walked away inspired and also thinking about what I can do.
One of the things that I think I have to continue doing is to keep up with things that are going on in the classroom. As a classroom teacher I subscribed to the Reading Teacher journal and I need to keep doing that now. I also thought about what I can do to get teachers in my building to collaborate. As I mentioned before, I am going to take small steps. However, I appreciated the ideas during class. I especially appreciated the idea about keeping in touch with other librarians so that we do not feel alone in our job.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Ibett, I think it's essential that we librarians keep in contact with each other! I'm actually a little nervous about graduating and losing the opportunity to share ideas with my classmates. I said in class that I plan best with other people. I'm just going to have to do it electronically rather than in person. I am looking forward to getting to know the librarians in my district. There are 8 elementary librarians, 2 middle school librarians, and a couple of HS librarians. We will be getting together once a month to share ideas and learn about resources available to us. I think we also need to keep up with blogs (in our spare time!) reading journals, and not losing contacts we've made at Dominican. Another way we can stay in touch is by getting out to conferences and workshops. Hmm... does LISSA have an alumni section?
I think the education field in general can be a lonely place. I remember when I was teaching that I felt isolated even though I had a team of five other kindergarten teachers. But this is especially true for the librarian who is alone in the building. From what it sounds like from others who are already in the libraries, we need to be the ones to reach out to make the relationships - with other teachers, other librarians in the district, other librarians in the area. I think that if we don't make an active effort to make ourselves visible, then the community might sort of forget we're there. I think you're right - small steps sound like the way to start. Taking small steps to make solid relationships with a few people would be more meaningful than trying to take large steps to try to reach everyone and not really getting to know anyone.
Post a Comment