Doing What's Best for Students Requires Peripheral, Not Tunnel Vision
... buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Any fan of The Good Place knows that the seemingly polite and reassuring greeting above belies the true nature of the situation in which the characters find themselves. I'm still trying to figure out a way to convince administrators that I am indeed as valuable to students as a full-time librarian as I was to my kindergarteners as their full-time teacher. Regular readers of my blog know that like so many others in education, I'm not immune to the stressors and incredulities that have multiplied in schools across the nation. I've been ranty here and here, but I can sum it up by offering a simple question:
Why are many of the tasks I obtained a master's degree and licensure qualifications to perform considered menial, to the point where I'm expected to train volunteers to do them (giving them the information and training for free that I had to pay college tuition for) because for whatever reason the results of those very tasks somehow aren't considered of significant benefit to library patrons or to our district's brand? Meanwhile, the kitchen staff isn't being asked to rely upon volunteers to clean their workspace so that they can go read with students. School psychologists aren't encouraged to train volunteers to write up their testing reports for them so that they can facilitate quarterly progress monitoring assessments for students who missed them the first time. Principals aren't urged to invite volunteers into the office to pose for quarterly leadership awards with recipients so that they can go and provide intervention opportunities for various students using curriculum materials for a grade level or subject that they've never taught. Yet shelf reading, correcting errors in the catalog, weeding, repairing books, managing holds, creating resource lists, updating book displays and reading promotions, developing library lessons and activities, evaluating students' understanding and creating learning centers to reinforce library skills, creating digital content for students and their teachers, reteaching students after extended absences, helping individual students and staff locate specific items, scanning books in and out, putting books in shelf order, returning books to shelves, printing out and distributing overdue notices, communicating with other librarians regularly, replying to communication from families, and even straightening bookshelves are considered significantly less important than the tasks performed by other educators daily, so much so, that I am denied time to complete many of them.
I have no aide, my one volunteer for the year must begin planning for her family's summer move and will no longer be helping at the school, and the time I need to perform all of the tasks listed above (error-free, because I am the professional trained to complete them effectively and efficiently, with precision being of significant importance in libraries) continues to be redistributed elsewhere in the building because somehow it's believed that ignoring the tasks that support 450+ school members is a worthwhile trade for the one to seven students with whom I work or most often, monitor, during intervention time. I'm not a school administrator, but I am a former classroom teacher who knows exactly how beneficial it is to have extra hands (qualified, effective, purposeful, receptive) on deck when needed. As a kindergarten teacher, I was fortunate to be able to cherrypick from wonderful parent volunteers and I provided them with calendars of activities a month in advance so that they'd be able to plan ahead for specific dates and know exactly what their responsibilities would be. My volunteers were also able to choose tasks that best suited their strengths: proponents of healthy snacks prepped snack bags; creative types signed up to help during monthly crafternoon sessions; fans of storytime volunteered to be weekly guest readers. Volunteers who had to work from home pulled workbook pages or cut out construction paper templates for lessons and centers. But I never asked those volunteers to teach my class or to take groups of students to reteach or provide interventions because they were not trained professionals. I provided instruction, enrichment, and interventions while volunteers guided students with centers.
So I have additional questions: If students could be effectively supported in my kindergarten classroom by volunteers or aides, why aren't other grades utilizing them in the same way? Why aren't all teachers taught how to plan activities in advance so that they too, can have extra student support provided by volunteers while they themselves teach targeted interventions? Why is robbing Peter to pay Paul (allowing library resources to fall into disrepair and without needed evaluation and updating, and making requested instructional and collaborative time to support the schoolwide population within the library unavailable) regularly touted as "what's best for students?" Why is the library constantly lumped together with Art, PE, and Music, aside from its ability to provide teacher prep times?
Perhaps I'm unaware of how often those teachers collaborate on curricular and instructional content and resources for staff. Is it weekly (sometimes daily), like I do? Do they manage requests, holds, transfers, donations, and purchases of their equipment every day like I do? While they may be able to ask for students to help pick up and store their equipment and materials, students in grades K-4 haven't yet mastered the Dewey Decimal system, nor are the smaller students able to manage the weight of some books or the force needed to situate bookends firmly to support a shelf's worth of titles, so it's up to me to straighten and maintain one of the building's largest investments as well as those resources made available thanks to purchases by families during past book fairs. Are the Art, PE, and Music teachers answering multiple phone calls weekly from teachers asking for resources to be pulled, needed sooner rather than later because of spontaneous information inquiries posed by their students? Because I am. Are those specialists having to educate fellow staff members about the benefit of student choice, and how to support reading growth by not only utilizing Lexile levels but by developing other reading strategies, such as being allowed to return a book a day later rather than the following week to select another that might be a better fit? Those conversations and pedagogical supports are a regular part of my job. Are the other specialists helping entire grade levels of students to evaluate information found in books and online to complete research projects assigned by the classroom teachers in addition to teaching their own content standards throughout the year? I am. Do the Music, PE and Art teachers have to sort through ten-thousand-plus items to repair, or correct storage discrepancies due to the differing cataloging styles of their four predecessors daily so that students and teachers can find and use specific materials quickly and without frustration? I do. Do those specialists need to change their decor monthly and the materials they promote weekly in order to engage students and encourage them to make connections as they explore new topics, genres, or types of materials while supporting grade-level content aligned with state standards for all students in grades K-6? And do those teachers have to donate ten to fifteen minutes of their prep time DAILY to accommodate anywhere from six to eighteen students who are speedy readers or who were absent on the day of their class visit, like I do? Again, I'm just guessing here... but no, I don't think they do. It might not be essential that every absent student make up a viewing of an artist's presentation or sing a song that their classmates performed in chorus without them, but every child must not be made to wait for his or her "turn" to obtain reading material on a minimal-needs-met schedule. It's just as important to differentiate and accommodate for students' strategic reading needs via the library as it is to provide them for other skills.
Don't want to take the word of a first-year school librarian? Check out these posts articulating how school libraries and their highly qualified, full-time librarians positively impact student achievement:
School Libraries are the Only Thing That Matters: A revolutionary new study shows that when it comes to a student’s reading, there is no question that school libraries — and their librarians — play the most critical role in helping them succeed
Academic Library Impact on Student Learning and Success: Findings of the ACRL's Assessment in Action program and how libraries help improve student success*****
Finally, it may just be my Vulcan logic getting the better of me, but I have a difficult time wrapping my head around the fact that my current experience in librarianship has even been allowed to devolve to this point, considering that our closed community is made up almost entirely of academics and their families, here to learn, teach, and conduct research through a graduate program that trains and develops leaders for our country and for many others by hosting international students and their families, some from places where equity in education is purposely discouraged or non-existent. A community whose culture is steeped within libraries, books, digital resources and a global view is having its own childrens' school library programs minimalized... oh, the irony.
As the wife of a retired Army SGM, I can tell you that while we did indeed, purchase books for our children and make regular visits to public libraries and bookstores, much of our money was set aside for emergencies and future vacations, thanks to the number of deployments we had to endure. School libraries were important to my children, and I know they're even more essential for those students whose families for whatever reason can't or don't make reading a priority. Robust, rather than minimal school library programs benefit every learner, be they teachers or students, and the community. Imagine if a library's doors were revolving or perpetually open, rather than closed for business multiple times each day. I have no idea who sold administrators on the idea that limiting access to or shuttering libraries completely was the best way to support students' reading development, but I'm certain the same shark has a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them that can instantly improve students' math scores by three-hundred-and-ten percent, too.
Preventing highly qualified staff from performing essential tasks for which they were trained contributes significantly to the rapid disintegration of some of the most important and pivotal components of a child's educational environment, in this case, the school library, which happens to require hourly, yes, hourly maintenance to remain adequately useful. A readily accessible and capable professional librarian is the person charged with the care, maintenance, and promotion of this environment as well as the reading development and overall learning and growth of its patrons. Instead of diminishing libraries, why not invest in teacher training regarding how to create effective volunteer opportunities? And yes, before you ask, I certainly would welcome qualified, enthusiastic volunteers into the library to handle non-instructional, non-teacher-collaborative, and non-confidential tasks, which are FEW. Might such a shift possibly offer actual benefits to students in more ways than one, as well as serve to provide yet another feather in a district's branding cap? A focus on students requires peripheral vision, which can alert one to the possible negative impacts caused by seemingly safe/beneficial decisions made by those with good intentions who don't yet realize how their extreme tunnel vision hinders the bigger picture.
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