I *WAS* a Classroom Teacher. I *HOPE TO BE* a Librarian.

I recently received praise from an administrator, praise that I believe was sincere and heartfelt when it was initiated. My decades of classroom teaching experience were noted. My ability to connect with young learners and quickly identify their strengths and areas of need were mentioned. My licensure and certification as a teacher were specifically cited as assets. Unfortunately, this praise was offered to me as a counterpoint to a proposal that I was sharing during our meeting regarding my roles and responsibilities as our school's librarian for the upcoming school year.  The intention behind the praise originated from a place of support, but in my mind and heart it quickly changed trajectory. 

Since the beginning of the year, I've been upfront that as the only teacher-librarian for my school, without a library assistant, and with the much-appreciated help offered by one parent volunteer who donates an hour or two once a week (except for when Omicron made an unwelcome appearance in her home), that my job encapsulates the duties and tasks of three people. I've shared the great things that have been happening in the library to benefit learners and readers of all ages and backgrounds, and I've been honest about the challenges that I'm experiencing not only as a newly-minted librarian but as a person with very little tangible physical and budgetary support.  Just as I have effectively identified the strengths and needs of students in school and classroom settings for almost thirty years, I feel competent identifying the pros and cons of how the current utilization of my time affects the state of our collection and necessary resources to support students and teachers.  Factually, there happen to be more cons.

Utilizing this year's specialists' schedule as a template to illustrate my proposed changes to the library program, I reiterated that I was keeping my school's students and staff as the focus for available contact and collaboration with me and was not suggesting that the changes be applied one-size-fits-all for P.E., music, art, or science teachers. They know best how to advocate for what students need and benefit from within their content areas, and I know these colleagues regularly do just that. I also articulated several times that I was not speaking on behalf of all of our district librarians, as my expert colleagues know best about what their school communities need.  I provided several examples of maintenance tasks that take a longer time to complete as they arise and which of those tasks must be completed by either a certificated, masters-degree-holding librarian or a trained and contracted employee library assistant, bound by confidentiality.  Unqualified volunteers, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot effectively do a librarian's job, and neither can a lone teacher-librarian doing the jobs of three people.  I don't have three times the number of hours in each day to maintain our library, and I still question why the few hours that could be available to me to do just that aren't viewed as vitally important and of real educational importance.  Teachers should have as much time with their students and within their learning space as possible.  So should librarians.  Students should have the benefit of targeted, necessary interventions not only for curricular skills but for information-seeking skills, too.  Let a curricular interventionist drill times tables, review letter sounds, correct pencil positions and facilitate spelling practice, and let librarians provide research support, resource maintenance, collaboration opportunities, and reading promotion.  A robust educational program requires significant support by the library making it imperative that it accommodates an entire population of diverse learners in an equitable fashion.  Hobbling libraries puts learners at a disadvantage, no matter the public rhetoric or private affirmations. 

I know I'm lucky that my administrators make the time to meet with me, they read my email inquiries, and they answer my questions.  Perhaps they've come to appreciate that I stay out of their hair and business as much as possible, and trust that as an educator I am a qualified professional whose purpose is aligned with what's best for students and our district's and state's objectives and mission for learners. Where many administrators nationwide falter, however, is in their outdated and inaccurate assumptions about what teacher-librarians (and other education professionals) actually do and often HOPE to do to effectively support learners.  By purposely choosing to not reflect upon and challenge their biases and practice of lumping certified and classified staff into cookie-cutter categories, administrators run the risk of glossing over the essential diversity and purpose behind the different roles, responsibilities and skills that staff members contribute to the architecture that supports students.  Insisting that it must be done, many administrators regularly cut corners and skimp, robbing Peter to pay Paul, minimizing (or completely negating) tangible, beneficial returns for students while engaging in a lot of spin, assuring that students, no matter what, are receiving the very best.  Many families, communities, and states consider the burden of these decisions and their outcomes acceptable. 

I love my job and the potential of what it could and should be.  I will never see the appeal of having to talk out of both sides of my mouth as an administrator. To put it bluntly and to continue my analogy of education's architecture, I don't wear rose-colored glasses, and I don't appreciate it when others toss pairs of them at me when I ask for help to shore up a warped wall in danger of crumbling which will leave a terrible, gaping hole in our students' learning.  In fact, I rate that response right up there with rewarding kindergarteners with candy multiple times a day, every day.  It's not best practice, no matter what PD-for-Administrators courses preach, and it doesn't work on me.

Perhaps the way I expressed my proposal and the reasons behind it were interpreted as a need for affirmation, and maybe praise has been touted as best practice to indicate acknowledgment of staff members. But the praise of my instructional acumen, while nice to hear, segued quickly into the undervaluing of all of the things I need to do in order to be an effective teacher-librarian.  Paraphrasing, "Michaele,  I don't see you as just a tutor, you're an exceptionally strong teacher, and your grade-level knowledge benefits the students that you work with during WIN (intervention) times. You being a certified teacher brings so much more to the kids you work with one on one." There was not a single mention of my work as a teacher-librarian (I teach lessons aligned with our state department of education standards).  Not a single mention about the increase in student reading schoolwide. No inquiry about whether or not students require intervention and reteaching individually or in small groups regarding library skills. Not a word about giving up ten minutes of my prep time to provide library access to speedy readers or those students who missed their class visit due to an absence. Nothing about creating content for all students Pre-K through 6th that is shared with teachers for classroom use, despite not having pre-k students on my schedule.  No acknowledgment of my coming in early daily in an effort to plow through much-needed repairs of books requested by students that they have been patiently, oh so patiently, waiting on.  Not a single question about how new books have come to be added to our collection considering there's no budget for purchases and won't be until we're finally able to hold in-person book fairs again (just as teachers spend a considerable amount of their own money on classroom supplies, so too, do librarians when books and other materials are needed, if you were wondering how that "worked"). No credit for my calculations that I can, in fact, provide much-needed pre-literacy experiences for fifty or sixty additional students weekly, at the "cost" of no longer working as an interventionist for as few as one and what has been up to this point as many as seven students during the same blocks of time.  The only question that was asked was regarding if I was teaching research skills similarly as a fellow librarian in the district, after I had mentioned wanting to set aside two blocks of time weekly to offer collaborative teaching opportunities to the teachers and classes working on research projects so that I could teach my lessons during our regularly scheduled library visits and support grade-level curricular objectives with more than just a worksheet or quick YouTube video. 

Here's the latest batch of books I've purchased to donate to the library and its readers this year.

The newest Caldecott and Newbery winners are on the way.

I believe that correcting mistakes in the library's online catalog that potentially 450+ users could access is as important as tutoring two children on their letter sounds for forty minutes three times a week. As.  Important.  I believe that offering greater access to a library's resources including its librarian within the library itself addresses significant equity issues that are just as important as working to help an individual student understand how to multiply fractions, a student who should have the most qualified interventionist to make the multiplication of fractions accessible.  That person is not me. I have yet to see volunteers solicited to do the job of a superintendent.  Volunteer disciplinarians have never been implemented, and parents with an interest aren't allowed to volunteer as school counselors or nurses.  But when librarians advocate for learners by suggesting a robust library program, their expertise is downgraded or ignored (possibly subconsciously), because there's always something more important, more grandiose than anything a librarian could possibly have to offer to an entire learning community within his or her classroom, commons and physical bank of information. They're just books, after all.  Just.  Books. 

It's clear that my value as a certified classroom teacher/tutor is much more heavily weighted than my worth as a teacher-librarian.  When I have classes in the library, I'm fulfilling my mission, and yay, we get to smile when we see students march down the hallway hugging books to their chests.  The minute each class leaves and I turn my attention to the mountains of library maintenance tasks that need to be completed however, suddenly I'm not being utilized as "effectively" as I could be.  Do you understand this logic?  Because I certainly don't, and I won't be gaslit into believing that two plus two equals seventeen-and-a-half.

School librarians are educators. School librarians support education, educators, and the educated by keeping a sharp eye, able hands, and a flexible mind in constant use within libraries, both physical and digital.  Stop steamrolling librarians, libraries, and the learners who need access to BOTH with the weight of an education machine fueled by misplaced "appreciation." Neither gives us enough time or rejuvenating energy to do our singular job that encapsulates duties typically performed by three people.  Give school administrators the resources they need so that they, in turn, can recognize the necessities and benefits of both apples and oranges (pears, passionfruit, grapes...), show an interest in the diverse jobs that all staff members do, and offer specific recognition and honest appreciation of the resources that we are highly qualified to provide within our specialized areas of expertise. I know my administrator heard me, really heard me.  Despite finding ourselves at a bit of a stalemate at the end of our discussion, I trust that he'll look over my proposal, and am hoping that perhaps he'll even be able to implement some or most of it in some way next year or in the future. Until then:

I WAS a classroom teacher.  At the start of the school year, I thought I'd be able to joyously shout from the rooftops "I AM a librarian!"

At this point, I hope to be a librarian.