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The Demise of School Libraries: Creating a Culture of Collaboration by Sara Zeller

The Demise of School Libraries: Creating a Culture of Collaboration

By Sara Zeller 



    If I were to ask any parent, teacher or administrator to advocate for the “why” of a school library I would be inundated with personal stories of the benefits the library provides not only the students but also the teachers.  Depending on the demographics of the neighborhood I might hear of how the availability of the intranet and use of computers in the library is essential to students who don’t have it at home, or I might have, at least before COVID-19 shut schools down and demanded the distribution and purchase of technology to all students who didn’t have access. For the remainder of this blog post I am going to do my best to reference a pre-COVID school experience based on available articles and data, but I will not ignore that the push to help all students get access to the internet and have working laptops or Ipad’s could change the needs landscape yet again of the school library. 

   

     According to the California Department of Education Website, in fall of 2011 the ratio of credentialed librarians to students was 1:1,023 and in 2015 that ratio was 1:7,187. California ranks at the bottom of professional library staffing numbers for the nation. Many blamed these numbers on legislation and national policy, In Building the Strong Foundation, the list the following as some of the changes that created the trouble we are in: “1.) The non-instructional classification of school librarians by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  2) The “65 percent solution”: regulations that required schools to spend at least 65 percent of their funding on direct classroom instruction, which, under currently prevailing NCES definitions, did not include spending on school libraries. 3) No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which did not include school librarians in the “highly qualified” teacher classification.  The National Center for Education Statistics classified school librarians as instructional support; therefore, as they were not identified as instructional, no funding for school libraries was available and school librarians were not included in the “highly qualified” teacher category in No Child Left Behind” (Christie, 2017).

   

 While these 3 catalyst events are not the entirety of the problem with the demise of school libraries they were a driving force in the loss of funding and hiring of credentialed librarians.  Without funding specifically for the libraries it became the librarians and volunteers jobs to advocate on behalf of their jobs and these sacred spaces. In The End of the Teacher Librarian, Herring writes, “Library staff needs to understand the challenges faced by parents, administrators, and community in order to demonstrate how the school library can be part of their solutions. Oftentimes this requires the library staff to schedule time outside of the school library that is convenient for their decision makers” (Herring, 2005).   And again later, “Therefore, to remain a key player who is central to the school curriculum as information literacy and resources expert, the teacher-librarian cannot argue that the responsibilities of the current role do not allow time for new ones. Embracing, exploiting, and sharing new technologies is an effective way for the teacher-librarian to promote the position's vast contributions to the school.” Confirming that it is on the Librarian to do the work of reminding those in power of the their value to the system as a whole. Williams in Building a Strong Foundationsays, “Twenty- First century students have an ever-increasing need for the skills that school librarians bring to the school setting. As always, to ensure that the school library remains an integral part of the educational process, school librarians must work collaboratively with teachers and administrators” (Williams, 2016). 

    The need for reframing the school library is seen here in the article, Creating a Climate of Voracious Readers: The Impact of Major School Library Funding“As school libraries and librarians have gained greater national attention, outdated misconceptions about the purpose of the school library program have been reimagined, and the role of the school librarian is continually reinvented. It is now better understood that the core mission of school librarians and the school library program is to prepare students for success in academics, career readiness, and life. As schools consider the skills their students need for success, school librarians should be recognized as learning leaders who can transform learning” (Christie, 2017). Creating new goals for the mission of librarian is vital to keeping programming and funding. In the article, Advocating for the ‘Why’ of School Libraries: Empowering Students through Inquiry the advocacy falls to the librarian to develop and implement ways to redefine their roles, “School librarians must move from traditional collaboration (planning an instructional unit or lesson with a teacher) to a proactive role in analyzing the school curriculum (perhaps through curriculum mapping), engaging in conversations and detective work to identify current projects and assignments, using test scores and other data to assess the current status of student skill development, and mapping an information fluency curriculum that draws from library and content standards. In other words, school librarians develop an instructional plan for teaching inquiry/information fluency skills that are most appropriate for their specific school they can be refined and developed further in conversations with teachers. In this model of collaboration, librarians are not dependent on time to meet with teachers to draft an instructional plan, but rather use their professional expertise to craft an approach they can bring to the collaborative conversations” (Stripling, 2020). As seen represented in these passages, collaboration within the schools, teachers, and districts becomes essential to success.

For a quick promo video on the changing face of librarians and their roles see this video from NJASL School Libraries 


Works Cited:

KAALAND, CHRISTIE. “Creating a Climate of Voracious Readers: The Impact of Major School Library Funding.” Teacher Librarian, vol. 45, no. 1, Oct. 2017, pp. 26–29. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lxh&AN=126080402&site=ehost-live.

 

Herring, James E. “The End of the Teacher-Librarian.” Teacher Librarian, vol. 33, no. 1, Oct. 2005, p. 26. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ728090&site=ehost-live.

 

Williams, J.Linda. “Building the Strong Foundation.” Knowledge Quest, vol. 45, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 44–49. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1113803&site=ehost-live.

 

Stripling, Barbara K. “Advocating for the ‘Why’ of School Libraries: Empowering Students through Inquiry.” Knowledge Quest, vol. 48, no. 4, Jan. 2020, pp. 14–20. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1250013&site=ehost-live.

NJASL. "School Libraries Video." YouTube, 27 Sept. 2012, https://youtu.be/KTslgjLEzLw.

"Kids Have Fun Creating their Own Computer Games." Tribune Content Agency Photos, 2019. Gale In Context: Middle School,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/XFLQMT932304656/MSIC?u=sddp_main&sid=MSIC&xid=33b73837. Accessed 29 Apr. 2021.Gale Document Number: GALE|XFLQMT932304656

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