Our School Librarians on the Instructional Frontier

My View

Superintendents across the country are asking the same questions: How do we create future-ready schools when resources are diminishing? How do we build support and momentum for classrooms that enable students to collaborate, act creatively, think critically, communicate effectively and be creators rather than consumers of technology? Or as my colleague Pam Moran, superintendent in Albemarle County, Va., puts it: How do we prepare our students for their century, not ours? And in this quest, how do we drive the necessary instructional changes in a more teacher-responsive and organic way?

We were asking all of these questions in our suburban district of 28,500 students outside of Chicago several years ago. One answer we generated: Reimagine the role of school librarians. Empower them to lead the work. The results have been amazing.

Indian Prairie School District’s 32 school librarians have taken up the challenge and then some. It started collaboratively by reimagining their job description and performance evaluation. This work seemed to be the catalyst for understanding why every school needed their full-time librarian to take a strong leadership role.

Administratively, we’ve given them encouragement, mentoring, support and a voice. In return, we’ve seen them make both mindset and physical changes that are readily apparent when you walk into their spaces. We have seen our librarians model, cheerlead and/or spearhead all kinds of instructional practices to support future-ready skills for our students. They have taken their role as an instructional partner with teachers to heart and, in return, we are seeing teachers use more engaging instructional practices.

A Lever for Change

This role as an instructional partner has been one of our best levers for change in instructional practices. Our librarians are using their talents and their spaces to help us introduce coding, computational thinking, presentation literacies and more to teachers in a nonthreatening way, allowing them to become more comfortable with these new practices. Teachers, accordingly, have greater agency and voice as we try to seamlessly integrate these practices into our day-to-day curriculum for all students. Our school librarians are keeping us focused on pedagogy and instruction and not the technology.

The instructional partnerships are happening every day. An English teacher wants to explore new ways to teach “setting and characterization.” After some discussion, the librarian introduces Bloxels, software for storytelling, to the teacher and demonstrates how this tool could be used to address her needs. Students then use this tool to demonstrate their understanding of the two literary elements in a totally new and engaging way.

Another great example occurs when our librarians show a teacher how to use Bee Bots, an easy-to-use robot for young children, to help primary students with letter recognition and intermediate students with the concepts of rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Again, our teachers are learning new, job-embedded strategies while students explore and demonstrate their learning in new ways. An added benefit: Students also learn some basic elements of coding.

An Evolving Role

Our school librarians are evolving. When the Alliance for Excellent Education released its Future Ready Librarians Framework in 2016, our librarians used it to set both systemic and individual goals. As a result, their professional development was structured around where they needed to grow individually and as a collective.

Our librarians are sharing their work and encouraging teachers to share their promising practices through Facebook, blogs and Twitter. (You can follow their work at #futureready204.)

Reimagining the role of the school librarian has been a game changer for moving our district forward. Have you asked your school librarians what they can do to help you advance?