Librarians are Teachers, Too: Why Schools Need Librarians Now More than Ever
5.24.11 | Like many who care about education and literacy, and especially in my new role as the parent of a child entering public school in California in the fall, I read the coverage about the cuts to school libraries last week with growing concern.
In case you missed it, the U.S. Department of Education withdrew federal support for school libraries last week, and in Los Angeles, the school district has sent layoff notices to 85 middle and high school librarians. If California’s budget cuts through, it looks like most school libraries in L.A. will be closed or left unstaffed.
L.A. teachers rally in March. Photo by Paul Bailey.
These cuts are not new—see this Google map of communities that have cut school librarians nationwide. But the tone of the discussion is changing, with some arguing that librarians, along with nurses and mental health counselors and music teachers, are “extras” schools can’t afford in tough economic times.
Despite the growing number of politicians and educational leaders calling with urgency for students to develop 21st-century literacy skills, these same leaders seem blind to the fact that school librarians are way ahead of the curve and are the most qualified teachers to lead that charge.
“I think there’s a lack of understanding as to what a librarian is, that kids can just go on Google or Wikipedia and get information,” Esther Sinofsky, director of Instructional Media Services for Los Angeles Unified School District, told the School Library Journal last week. “Yes, kids are computer savvy. But no one will be there to teach students how to be information literate. Somehow I’m not hearing that as a point of discussion.”
To add insult to injury, the librarians in L.A. are being forced to defend their teaching abilities in Kafkaesque hearings before an administrative law judge. LAUSD’s attorneys are attempting to prove that librarians don’t have recent teaching experience in order to be able to remove the teacher-librarians from the payroll entirely and not have to move them into classroom teaching slots.
We’ve written much on Spotlight about the powerful work many school librarians around the country are already doing to engage kids in all subject areas and to teach digital literacy. We’ve called out librarians like Jennifer LaGarde at Myrtle Grove Middle School, who’s teaching students how to find credible information online - emphasizing that Wikipedia should not be one’s go-to source for information about how to prevent pregnancy, for example, or to find help for a friend with an eating disorder. We’ve also written about Laura Flemming, a library media specialist in River Edge N.J., who’s using transmedia books such as “Inanimate Alice” to help students forge powerful connections with literature. And in her spare time, she’s writing on a transmedia collection for the National Writing Projects’s Digital Is site and sharing what she knows at her own blog, EdTech Insight.
Writing in the L.A. Times, Nora Murphy, a teacher-librarian at Los Angeles Academy Middle School, says school librarians perform “the toughest, and most crucial, kind of teaching.”
Murphy described how she helped transform an eighth-grader named Mario, a struggling reader for whom English was a second language. Mario came to the library on his vacation to sit for hours reading, at first with audiobooks, at Murphy’s suggestion, to build comprehension and fluency, and then moving on to more challenging material on his own.
I think there’s a lack of understanding as to what a librarian is, that kids can just go on Google or Wikipedia and get information. Yes, kids are computer savvy. But no one will be there to teach students how to be information literate.
– Esther Sinofsky, Los Angeles Unified School District
At Creekview High School in Canton, Ga., librarian Buffy Hamilton is leading the way in digital literacy education with her Media 21 project. A collaboration with English teacher Susan Lester, Media 21 is a year-long program for 10th graders who learn how to search for credible online resources and create their own information sources collaboratively using social media and cloud computing.
I often hear arguments about the role of librarians presented as a dichotomy between teaching kids to love great literature and teaching research fluency in the digital age. But today’s students need all of the above. As Digital Youth Network founder Nichole Pinkard put it: “In essence, literate in 2018 will mean being multi-literate - the ability to critically consume and produce media such as print, video, sound and screen.”
“It’s not enough for children to know how to read – they must be able to select, evaluate, and use information appropriately and effectively,” Roberta Stevens, president of the American Library Association, and Nancy Everhart, president of the American Association of School Librarians, said in an open letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Educators tell me these issues need to be tackled school-wide and librarians are among the few in the school community who can provide much-needed leadership.
Public libraries are fighting the same fight for funding and access for all. (Read Christine’s Spotlight post from last week on the new Geek the Library campaign.)
Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin’s call to arms on his blog last week about the future of the library argues that we need our librarians today more than ever. His post got a lot of attention on Twitter, including valid criticism from librarians. But his main point is well taken and useful in thinking about the role of teacher-librarians in our public schools:
The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
“In many ways, I see myself as more of a teacher now than I did when I taught high school English as I find myself continually exploring emerging and expanding concepts of teaching, learning, and multiple forms of literacy,” Buffy Hamilton wrote in a recent blog post.
Teachers in Los Angeles took to the streets last week in a large rally to protest teacher layoffs. Join them in the fight to keep librarians in our public schools. You can find resources at the American Association of School Librarians and the California School Library Association. Take inspiration from successful grassroots campaigns for school librarians in Chicago and Washington State.
And if you are a school librarian, or have been inspired by one at your school, or know other ways folks can get involved, get in touch in the comments. We’d love to continue to get your stories out there.
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Comments
Marie Slim (California)
5/25/11
2:30pm
Yes! We are ready and able to lead the charge in better teaching and learning. Teacher Librarians teach students and their staffs to apply critical thinking and information literacy skills in innumerable contexts. Plus we foster reading, an essential skill. My libraries, although having been cut dramatically (I have 6 next year!) are havens for learning, learning, learning. I am a Teacher, but I learn from my students in our community of knowledge creation!
Diane Alexander (Discovery Bay, CA)
5/28/11
7:38pm
The school librarian does more than any other teacher in the school to encourage students to read. One method I used was to gather books that had themes similar to the classics being read in the English classes. Then I created assignments for teachers where the students compare the classic to a modern book. Many students told me that was the first time they read a booked that they liked.
Connie Williams (California)
5/28/11
9:22pm
There are so many stories that exemplify the learning that goes on in in strong school libraries. Now is the time to get those stories out to decision makers - you can become a library advocate: join the California Campaign for Strong School Libraries (http://librarycampaign.csla.net). You can listen to our stories (and send us your story) at Circulate This! Stories from the School Library - (http://www.circulatethis.posterous.com).
The research is clear; and the evidence can be seen across the country in countless school libraries where school librarians are teaching, guiding, and creating dynamic learning spaces for our 21st Century kids.
Sandy Schuckett (Los Angeles, CA)
5/28/11
10:14pm
The school library is the most cost-effective room in any school. The teacher librarian is the educator who not only helps students in selecting exactly correct books according to what they want and need, but also teaches them to navigate the world of information…..to evaluate websites, to use what they have found in new and creative ways, to gain confidence in their own abilities to learn. The teacher librarian works with ALL kids and ALL teachers in the school….in instruction, in lesson planning, in evaluating materials….AND, in creating a haven where the main thing that takes place is learning. To cut their positions is a travesty and a tragedy that this nation cannot afford.
Sharon Hallberg (Davis, Ca)
5/28/11
10:15pm
School librarians are teachers in the largest classroom on campus. Teacher/librarians do “just in time training” for the students and even other teachers when their projects need resources. They know how to answer the unasked question of what the student really wants. They conduct reference interviews and determine the best fit for the learning style and need for different information. More than that teacher/librarians teach how to distinguish good information from poor. In the information glut teachers/librarians stress critical learning and accurate attribution of ideas.
Caroline Gill (Palms Middle School, Los Angeles, CA)
5/29/11
8:05am
Great article! With very limited funds we manage to keep the collection current and constantly promote the really great titles while directing our student researchers to valid web sites…all in a very exciting learning environment…the school library!
tobia schuster (clearwater, florida)
5/29/11
10:26am
certainly learned so much from the librarians at school and public libraries…they enhanced my ability for research, for reading more of a variety of books with suggestions, discussions etc. sad that children would have this experience taken away from them. all they think about are $$.
Joan McCall (California)
5/29/11
10:40am
Thank you for this article pulling together the sad events of recent days in the world of school libraries. We should be adding more teacher librarians instead of cutting them. In Southern California, very few elementary schools have ever had a teacher librarian and the four middle schools in my district reduced their staffing from four teacher librarians to one (me). Our university colleagues are complaining about the lack of preparation students bring for college research yet the “reformers” fail to recognize the one person, the teacher librarian, on a campus who brings that skill to the table.
Mark Williams (California)
5/29/11
11:35am
Well stated, Sarah J.! Although I am now retired, I can categorically state that nearly all of every working day as a school librarian was teaching… everything from the simple use of the catalog to the selection and evaluation of reference sources to the interpretation of literature to the location and use of primary sources. Cyber safety, database search strategies, all of it, every day.
The school’s library, headed by a trained professional librarian, is central to a schools success. It is the one place that ties together all the strands of learning and teaches and reinforces the skills that will propel students for the rest of their lives. Cuts here gravely wound students and schools, and the scars cripple for life. When it comes to schools and libraries, the phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ is taking on an increasingly ominous urgency.
Sarah’s concerns are well-founded. Districts, not just in California but nation-wide, are making foolish cuts to the most essential tools for success, while continuing to fund things such as ever-increasing testing that are marginal at best when it comes to student achievement.
David F. Elaturoti (Abadina Media Resource Centre, Univresity of Ibada)
5/31/11
8:20am
Will like to have articles on school libraries particularly training of school librarians,media use in education, information literacy skills& capacity building for teacher-librarians among others.
Lorraine
5/31/11
2:01pm
The attempt to fire all of the school librarians at the Los Angeles Unified School District has inspired my thoughts. No one has discussed the brilliance of this move. You see now that no one is trained in how to use a library no one needs a library anymore because no one will know how to use it and everything is available for free on the computer.
This philosophy is genius. We no longer need college libraries either. This means that law libraries are not needed, as anyone can go into a room of books and chose one. Besides anyone can be a librarian therefore anyone can be an attorney because anyone can interpret the law to suit their needs.
The genius of the removal of libraries also transfers into medical libraries, as well. In fact this genius goes even deeper into medical school. We can eliminate the entire portion of medical school wherein students work with a cadaver. As we all know, we can find simulated bodies on the internet. Medical students can practice on virtual bodies instead of the real thing. Think of this. Now even the black market for body parts will be affected by this brilliant removal of libraries because students need only the internet.
It appears to me that Caesar was way ahead of his time when he burned the Alexandria library down. Who needed all of that knowledge anyways?
The shear brilliance of eliminating libraries from our society is staggering. Seriously, has anyone considered, dare I say, a Nobel Prize to the genius of these people? …and if you think that I am serious check your dictionary for the meaning of satire.
Annette Scherr (Kagel Canyon, CA)
6/7/11
8:29am
LAUSD Libraries have been deteriorating over the last 40 years. At least at the schools that are built post war. Then they build new schools and they have beautiful state of the art libraries, but no money to staff them. This is an example of poor to no planning at all. I often wonder, how will these kids go from using a paper and pencil to getting a job. Information Literacy and Technology are essential job skills in today’s world last time I checked. There is obviously a huge disconnect between education and society.