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The press, the news, where to go from here
Shonda Brisco shared an idea with LM_NET to visually represent the crisis.
She wrote:
I REALLY hate to even propose this type of project, but I think it’s important to do this in order to get a visual clue (because SOME individuals need pictures in order to see the impact of poor choices) of WHERE school
librarians are being eliminated / cut / fired from school districts.
You are invited to participate in "A Nation Without School Librarians: A Collaborative Map Experience" using Google Maps. The link to add YOUR location to the map is listed below. As you or others know about school districts, cities, towns, or communities eliminating school librarians from their faculty, please ADD a "Google Pin / Locator" on the map and add any content that might be of interest to others.
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As these school districts move forward without school librarians in place, let us return to the MAP to see the results of future test scores without librarians there to make a positive and successful impact to student
achievement.
I’ve shared a map with you called
A Nation Without School Librarians:
The effort now includes color coding:
If you want to add a school distrrict that has one school librarian covering two or more school libraries, select the EDIT button to add your "push-pin"— but before you insert the pin, right click the "push pin" icon
and you can select another COLOR to indicate those districts that have only one school librarian.
For the push pins, please select BLUE— to indicate "code blue" for those schools or districts (librarians have been eliminated) and RED — to indicate "warning" for those school or districts that are facinga real emergency.
Please feel free to share this map with others who might be interested in adding content information or may want to share the urgency of the situation with others.
In the wake of news of library closings and pink slips, it’s time to do some serious regrouping. The Geek Squad and I are planning a TL Cafe: Crisis Edition, tentatively scheduled for Monday, April 19th. Details to follow.
In case you’ve been away:
Pink slips have been distributed to librarians all over the country. In LA Unified School District, in
In American Libraries, Beverly Goldberg writes:
The state of fiscal emergency in many libraries, school districts, and academic campuses has lent credence to recent media reports that officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District have approved the dismissal of every certificated teacher-librarian systemwide. According to California School Librarians Association President Rosemarie Bernier, however, the truth is far less dire. But ALA President Camila Alire and AASL President Cassandra Barnett sent a letter March 17 to LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines making the case for strong school libraries staffed by credentialed professionals.”
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Marc Bernstein asked “Is the School Library a Sacred Cow" in a Sounding Board column for the American School Board Journal: (68-69). Bernstein, Superintendent for the Valley Stream (NY) Central High School District acknowledges the need to
instruct students regarding research skills, strategies, and organization, has not changed. In fact, it has become more urgent as the complexity of this information grows. We must now concern ourselves with issues of website safety and quality as well as increased potential for plagiarism. . . This will require proper professional development provided by their supervisors, or budget permitting, the school librarian.
But his conclusion is that with the functions of the school library decentralized through classroom technology, and because students learn information best with it’s taught by teachers who are responsible for the students’ total learning experience.
This is one of the lines that I couldn’t let go of. I am not sure I believe that Bernstein’s assertion that it is the classroom teacher who has the biggest influence. When it
. . in these tight economic times, can we continue to afford the school librarian?
I want to focus on the positive
Forbes’ Intelligent Investing column yesterday presented: Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google Mark Moran, CEO of Dulcinea Media, discusses the value of a strong library program, the fact that our libraries are not all up to speed
While not every school librarian is yet adapting to the new reality of what is demanded of the role, thousands of other dedicated librarians I have met are turning their school media centers into "learning commons" where students seamlessly use state-of-the-art Web tools to consume and produce content. Students at many elite schools are learning critical 21st century skills while librarians are eliminated from budget-stressed school districts. The result? What a University College of London study called a "new divide," with students who have access to librarians "taking the prize of better grades" while those who don’t have access to school librarians showing up at college beyond hope, having "already developed an ingrained coping behaviour: they have learned to ‘get by’ with Google ( GOOG – news – people )." This new divide is only going to widen and leave many students hopelessly lost in the past, while others fully embrace the future. Already Tufts University has begun to accept student-produced Web videos as a supplement to admissions applications.
He concludes his column with:
Before parents accept the wisdom of a school board to cut school librarians, they should ask: Will my child graduate with a 21st century resume, or a 19th century transcript? Can he use collaborative technology, such as wikis? When a search engine returns 105 million results, can the student find the five that will set her paper apart? With the Web evolving by the minute, can classroom teachers alone, stressed by assessment testing and ever-growing paperwork burdens, help students figure this all out? As the information landscape becomes ever more complex, why does a school district want to abandon its professional guides to it?
In response to the crisis in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Sara Scribner’s opinion piece in the The Los Angeles Times, Saving the Google Students asserts:
For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read.
Sara is a recently pink-slipped librarian at the Blair International Baccalaureate School, in Pasadena.
Instead of laying off librarians, we should be studying how children think about information and technology. We need professionals to advocate for teaching information literacy from an early age. We need librarians to love books — to inspire kids to turn off the screen sometimes and get caught up in a story — but we also need them to train students to manipulate search engines and databases, to think about themin a fresh way.
AASL has a Parent Outreach Toolkit at
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslissues/toolkits/parentoutreach.cfm
This resource will tell you everything you need to know to organize
parents on the library’s behalf.
Jamie McKenzie offers a lot of great information on this very topic— and
definitely timely.
Here is the link to his latest observations:
http://fno.org/mar2010/still.html
A variety of states have conducted school library/librarian impact studies. Several of these studies correlate professional library staff in the school media center with increased reading test scores, even with poverty taken into consideration, and especially at the elementary level. While reading test scores would never be my sole barometer of my success as a professional, you can bet that this speaks to many administrators and board members in these data-driven times. You can find them here:
Additionally, a cursory glance at your NJ core curriculum content standards (http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/2009/) shows that it includes "technology" for K-12. As you know, media specialists play critical roles when it comes to helping students to learn to use and evaluate a variety of "technology" resources and programs–everything from the online catalog to the wonderful web 2.0 tools!
I am responding to the list because I want to share some great news with
you. The Australian Federal Government is holding an official inquiry into
school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools. This is the
first since the 1970s and we are hoping that it will mean that teacher
librarian positions are mandated and thus preserved.
Currently, state governments are responsible for the staffing of public
schools but staff deployment is at the discretion of the principal and many
are choosing to move down the clerical assistant path. Teacher librarians
are finding themselves back in the classroom, in some cases to address
teacher shortages.
We have managed to get this national inquiry by persistent and consistent
lobbying. We have written letters to state and federal members of
parliament, including the Ministers responsible with information about the
research; prepared and posted sample letters for our colleagues to write;
presented a formal petition; sought support from all sorts of stakeholders
like authors, and publishers, parent groups, principals’ associations-anyone
we could think of who could put a voice and a perspective forward to both
their members and the government; had the role of teacher librarians in the
media through every means and event possible; used the unions and our
professional associations to lobby for us; used school newsletters and the
like to get our message to parents (who are the voters in elections);
conducted surveys to support our claims – whatever we could do to raise
awareness.
We also had a dedicated group who spearheaded the campaign and you can see
what was done at http://hubinfo.wordpress.com
It has not been easy and at times we were disheartened, but persistence has
paid off. We were helped by the Global Financial Crisis in that the federal
government poured a lot of stimulus money into school buildings,
particularly libraries in primary schools, so we have been able to ask "Who
is going to staff them so there is the best return for the investment?
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Now the inquiry and its terms of reference have been announced, the hard
work begins. We have to encourage as many people from as diverse a base as
possible to submit a submission before April 16, and I am proud to say we
have such leaders in the field as Doug Johnson supporting us.
If you want to know the terms of reference and follow the progress, go to
http://www.aph.gov.au/House/committee/documnts/howsub.htm#inquiry If you
would like to make a submission about the importance of teacher librarians
from a global perspective, contact me off list and I will guide you through.
It is very simple.
These inquiries take time so we won’t know the outcome for a while but I
just wanted to offer you encouragement that you can get the attention of
people in high places, but it takes a concerted, co-ordinated effort.
Good luck with yours.
Barbara
ne is Douglas Achterman’s dissertation: http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9800:1. The California School Library journal published a short version that includes some of the major results.
Another is our recent analysis of data from an international test given to students in 40 countries. Part of this will also appear in the California School Library Journal, and is also described in my paper, Anything but reading, in Knowledge Quest.
BOTH studies suggest that a good school library mitigates some of the effects of poverty!! Achterman’s study provides specific evidence for staffing, especially school librarians.
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About Joyce Valenza
Joyce is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, a technology writer, speaker, blogger and learner. Follow her on Twitter: @joycevalenza
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