Collaborating With Your School Librarian
Ten ways to work with your highly trained colleagues in the library to enhance literacy instruction.
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Literacy instruction, especially on the secondary level, is currently undergoing a major overhaul. Teachers and authors Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Donalyn Miller, and others are leading the way in this resurgence—advocating for book clubs and student choice of reading material, promoting diversity in reading selections, and even providing grants for teachers to build classroom libraries.
While it’s easy to get excited about educators promoting these research-based literacy strategies, there is one group of educators who know that none of this is new: school librarians.
The South Carolina Association of School Librarians is a strong network of school librarians working across the state to advocate for school librarianship and our vital role in student achievement. In 2016, for example, the network presented research showing that standardized test scores increase in schools with a full-time, certified school librarian.
Importantly, the research showed that students were more likely to score Exemplary (the highest rating) on South Carolina state testing “where librarians spent 20 or more hours per week teaching.” Teaching? The librarian? Yep, the librarian.
It’s no accident that librarians hold positions in schools. We are highly trained literacy professionals, in print, visual, digital, and technological formats. The school librarian position requires teaching certification, and gaining that certification requires completion of a master’s in library and information science. School librarians can also achieve National Board certification in library media. All of this makes the current trend of eliminating positions or replacing them with assistants, community members, or computer technicians even more troubling.
10 Suggestions for Collaborating With Your School Librarian
School librarians are passionate about new literacy trends that classroom teachers are eager to implement, and there are several ways they can collaborate:
English language arts teachers and school librarians share similar passions, and we can maximize all of our talents by combining forces to achieve our goal: guiding students to become literacy leaders themselves.