and staff
October 18th, 2006 by Christopher HarrisTo ensure that students…are effective users of ideas and information.
What is missing from this school library vision statement from AASL’s Information Power? Just two small words…”and staff.” Mike Eisenberg, as part of his keynote for the 9th annual conference from the School Library Sytems of OCM and Oswego BOCES and Syracuse, explained the “Eisenberg Edit.” In his view, the vision of school libraries needs to be entirely focused on ensuring that students are effective users of ideas and information without any care about other members of the school community. Laughing it off with a joke about a chilly reception for a librarian trying to go into a staff meeting to help teachers become effective users of information, Eisenberg seems to be downplaying possibilities.
While education is certainly about students, and everything we do is centered on ensuring student success, we aren’t lone rangers in this mission. I am going to politely disagree with the removal of “and staff” from the library vision. If the school library is going to be the foundation for information use in the school, then the teacher-librarian is going to have to work with her or his colleagues to help them become effective users of ideas and information. Eisenberg gets it right to say with all appropriate fervor that teacher-librarians are the leaders for information use in the schools. We are the ones who teach the information skills curriculum and we are experts at it. That said, however, why would we want to be stingy with our knowledge? Education has enough silos already and enough teachers that close their doors and pretend that they are alone in a process.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:19 am
I was less bothered by that omission than by the ‘librarian as textbook disperser’ suggestion. My feeling about removing “staff” from the equation was that it was his way of reminding us we are no different than our colleagues – we are teachers of children, first. You wouldn’t tell a first grade teacher her mission is to educate her students as well as the rest of her department members. Perhaps he just wanted to simplify, in order to have the notion stick.
I think being a textbook manager, however, would be downgrading the job to clerical rather than raising it to chief information officer. The idea doesn’t fly witth me. Maybe they saved some jobs in Seattle, but I bet the librarians are not as excited about their work.
I felt more positive after your presentation, Chris, about blogs, wikis and podcasts. Certainly we have more opportunities for success with those kinds of co-teacher activities.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:42 am
Vicki, I think what you are maybe feeling uncomfortable about is that he isn’t saying “we are no different than our colleagues.” Being Teacher-Librarians is important, and I have been talking about that on here for a while, but Mike Eisenberg is taking this further. What he is calling for is a teacher-librarian as a quasi-administrative teacher-leader position as chief information officer and other roles that involve supervising a much larger staff. And, as I noted in my initial question to him, if you are going to take on leadership positions that does make you responsible for the entire learning community.
I had a chance to speak with Eisenberg at the end of the day and I asked him again about the omission of “and staff” given the teacher-leader role he seemed to be promoting. In the end, we both agreed that we probably aren’t that far off from our views – but that he made some slightly more bold statements as a keynote speaker to get the point across that we are teacher-librarians whose final goal is to ensure student success. I can appreciate that. The final goal of everyone in education needs to be ensuring student success. Why do we serve breakfast? To ensure student success. But I think librarians are entering a new role. Mike touches on it by talking about being chief information officers who provide assistance to information users. I tend to be a bit more blunt…