Describe your current understanding of the role and mission of school libraries. What are/have been your experiences with school libraries and how has this colored your understandings of what a school library is and should be?
I remember my elementary school library. It was at a major hallway intersection of the school; we would all walk past it on the way from our classrooms to the multi-purpose room for lunch or gym. Mobiles hung from the ceiling. My fellow classmates and I would sit on the floor, Indian-style, if you please (it was the 70s—we still called it Indian-style), and listen to the books the librarian read. Probably we checked books out as well, but I can’t remember.
In middle school, the library was a secret getaway, a place to practice skulking in corners and to read the current issues of YM and Seventeen, which my friends and I couldn’t believe were allowed in the library, since they weren’t “educational.” Looking up racy words in the dictionary was another fine sport (I was kind of a nerd in middle school).
My high school library was primarily a place to study. Occasionally a teacher would bring us for the librarian’s presentation on research methods. This involved a lot of 3x5 index cards, but nothing else too memorable. It was pre-internet, so there was no irresistible cosmic pull to the computers. By this point, my allegiance was with the public library, where I could take out books about psychology and travel and underwater life and craft projects by the armful.
I realized, during my little trip down school library memory lane, that I have always related to libraries as someone who likes to read. As I have moved into the role of teacher and now school librarian, I encounter kids who love reading, but many reluctant readers as well. When I compare my memories of school libraries as a student with my observations as an adult and teacher, I realize that school libraries present the opportunity for students to relate to the library in their own individual ways. For some students, the library is haven. Others may feel neutral or actively disinterested in the goings-on of the library. I think it’s our job as school librarians to create and promote multiple access points for students (and teachers, and parents) to connect with books and information in ways that are authentic, personalized, and meaningful.
School libraries are unique and vital because, while they can (and should) be an integral component of school life, they exist in a slightly removed realm from the classroom. I feel like students can enter the library on their own turf—with their own interests, seeking information that is personally significant—in a more self-directed way than is sometimes afforded by the classroom. Students who find themselves passively receiving information in class can have the opportunity to actively seek out information in the library. With curriculum becoming ever more standardized, and with teaching becoming increasingly about testing in the interest of leaving no child behind, school libraries can become a territory for exploration, creativity, and the pursuit of individual interests.
To me, libraries are about literacy. Information literacy, media literacy, and good old fashioned book reading literacy. With all of the talk about the internet and Web 2.0 tools and Facebook and schools banishing books from their library, it’s still critical to remember that kids still need to learn to read. They need to be inspired and excited by all forms of the printed (spoken, drawn, sung) word. They need to learn to think critically to evaluate information and make connections. Occasionally they need to skulk in corners and read Seventeen, and make their own memories about what a school library is.
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