Article Reflections - 6/15

The first article, The Teacher-Librarian as a Literacy Leader, focused on the many roles of the librarian and what librarians can do to keep up with the many changes today. I agree with Braxton that the highest priority should be to get students and teachers into the library because what good is a library with no patrons? I think that the library must be an inviting place for students, as well as teachers. For example, we are holding our middle school summer school in he high school building this summer. I had my class in the library this week and as I sat there, I was looking around at the tall shelves of books and the bare walls and I was thinking about all of these articles that I have been reading recently and about what I could do to that library to make it more inviting! I don't think that I am alone in these thoughts from what I have heard from high school students and teachers and their perception of the library in that building. Don't get me wrong, the library offers a great deal of technology, and even a space to work with groups, but it is FAR from the inviting learning commons that we have been reading about.

The rules outlined next article, Effectively Influencing Decision-Makers, are, in my opinion, rules that professionals in all professions should live by. When referring to the library media center, I think that rule 3 says it all, "Focus on the contribution to the larger good-- not just the achievement of your objectives." (Goldsmith). As the library media specialist, it is your duty to "sell" your library to the administration and nothing will sell it better than evidence of the library contributing to the larger good -- the school, especially student achievement.

The next article, Transparency=Leadership, is one that I do not fully agree with. Will Richardson believes that educators need to lead transparent lives in order to tell "whether or not they are learners" and "whether or not they are leaders of learners." My feelings on this issue are divided. I do agree that teachers are role models and that students need to understand the importance of being "Googled well", but I also think that just because a teacher, or any other professional does not show up in Google, it does not mean that they are not a learner or not a leader of learners. One of the comments on this article said it well, "Yes, it is convenient to find someone’s digital footprint online and be able to make some informed judgement as to whether they are, as you put it, a 'learner' or 'leader of learners', but many (most?) are still demonstrating those attributes in ways that are not yet being digitized." As an educator, I don't think I lead a very transparent life. To check it out, I went to Google and typed in my name. I was thinking that my webpage that I created for my classroom would come up, but it didn't. The only thing that popped up on the first page was a link the my spellingcity.com profile. Several pages later, I ran across a blog that I attempted to start a couple of years ago (that I actually thought I deleted)! So, from Googling my name and the lack of results, is it an accurate assumption that I am not a learner or a leader of learners? No, that is not an accurate assumption. Now, I do think that we need to encourage our students to leave digital footprints... and good ones, especially in the social networking world.

The articles for today's assignment really did get me thinking, from everything from "How inviting are the libraries I'm familiar with" to "Maybe I DO need to work on becoming well-Googled?"