Component A: Leadership
A highly effective teacher librarian serves in school or district leadership roles and leads professional learning for school staff and/or the school community that aligns with school goals.
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Leadership Roles
In my 11 years at Highlands Ranch High School (HRHS), I have led several PD sessions for staff, as well as taught and co-taught two classes through the district for which teachers received relicensure credit. I always try to get myself on the schedule on PD days, although our agenda is usually pretty full, and it is not always possible. Sometimes I will teach a mini-lesson or share information about a resource with teachers during their deparment time on PD days, or during their lunch period (all teachers within a department share a common lunch). For example, I attended a PD session at the district library on copyright rules given by a University of Colorado - Colorado Springs professor who was also the Campus Copyright Specialist. I thought the information was important enough that it needed to be shared with all staff - but not via an email that may or may not be read. Instead, I condensed the information presented at the library PD into a one-page document, and scheduled time with each department to go over the information during their lunch periods. In this way, I was able to give a "mini-PD session" to all departments without taking up valuable time on a full PD day (although I did take up valuable lunch time).
Our school goal for 2025-2026 is:
We will foster a culture of connection to support all students’ academic, social, and personal growth. We will do this by leveraging our small school environment and diversity through our work in Homeroom/Access, data-driven PLCs, and differentiation.
Athough our school goal changes every year, one consistent theme over the years has been that staff supports students' academic growth. As Teacher Librarian, I support students throughout the building both by participating in and leading professional development. For example, all departments in my building are part of a Professional Learning Community (PLC), and I have been a part of several different Professional Learning Teams (PLTs) that analyze student data, create common assessments, and refine teaching practices to improve student achievement. Last year I was on an English team that focused on identifying evidence in reading. Our goal for the year was:
By the end of the year, we will support our students' academic achievement by having 80% of the students show growth on the skill standard of Evidence as measured by our common assessments on CommonLit. We will achieve this by collaborating in PLTs to do two complete data cycles during PLT time, to create a clear intervention program/system for students who struggle, and to have at least two specific strategies to extend the learning for students who have already achieved proficiency.
I worked with my PLT to create a common assessment and, when needed, to administer the assessment to students. Based on the results, I helped identify areas where students were struggling or needed more instruction. We then identified or created intervention strategies. Because I am not a full-time teacher and do not have my own classes, I was able to pull students who scored low on the assessments and work with them in small groups in the library. This enabled me to help students better understand the skill and improve their assessment scores.
Here are the final results of the common assessment. We set target scores for each student, and 15/18 students met the target. This is an example of supporting students' academic growth, which aligns with our school goal.
Another area in which I have taken leadership at the school level is by increasing database usage in classrooms. Historically, HRHS staff and students have not taken advantage of the district-funded research databases, as compared to other high schools in the district. This is despite my efforts over the years to teach both students and staff about their advantages, as well as how to access and use them. At the beginning of the school year, the district librarian led a PD for teacher librarians to encourage us to increase our schools' use of JSTOR, as the district was paying for an underutilized resource. I met with one of the district librarians to better educate myself on JSTOR tools, then emailed all the AP teachers in the building to invite myself into their classrooms to teach their students how to use the database for their research. After many years of teaching and re-teaching, I have finally moved the needle on JStor usage stats. The chart below shows my JStor stats for part of the 2024-25 school year. As you can see, by December, only 20 students had logged on to JStor.
By contrast, by December of this year, 225 students had already logged on - more than a 1,000 percent increase! I know that sounds crazy, but I made a concerted effort to push into AP classrooms this fall, and the numbers went up dramatically. My numbers are still low compared to other high schools in my district, and one of the reasons is that some schools require a senior research project where students are required to use the databases; my school does not. However, I continue to educate students and staff about the databases, and I hope that our usage stats will continue to improve. Knowing how to use databases for research is an important skill for students to learn, especially if they are college bound.
I have also worked hard to increase Sora usage - our district ebook and audiobook app. As with JStor, not many students and staff in our building were accessing Sora, despite the DLMC pushing its usage. This fall I created a Staff Team Reading Challenge, where seven teams of three to four staff members read books for points and prizes. One of the ways I tried to increase my Sora stats was to give participants extra points if they read or listened to a book on Sora. It worked! As you can see from the charts below, my Sora stats for the same time period in 2025 versus 2024 increased from 33 total books opened to 182 books opened - a 452 percent increase, or more than 5.5 times as many books as the previous year. Again, that's a ridiculous number, but when the starting number is so low, any increase will yield greater results.
Leading Professional Learning
Here are some of the PD sessions that I have either led or co-led:
At the beginning of every school year, I invite new teachers to eat lunch with me (I provide dessert), so that I can show them how I and the library staff can support them. Here is the presentation I give them. Because being a new teacher at a new school can feel like drinking water from a fire hydrant, I try to give them just an overview at this orientation, then I follow up with them periodically over the course of the semester to see how they are doing and ask how I can support them.
I created and taught a book study on the book, Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving, for which staff received relicensure credit through the district. I created this class because HRHS is the most diverse high school in the Douglas County School District, with 35.65 percent of students coming from diverse backgrounds. Although HRHS is in an affluent area, 13 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Before this class, I had started an affinity group for students of color, so that they had a safe place to talk about the challenges of living and going to school in a predominately white setting. I felt it was important for teachers to learn more about how their own backgrounds and beliefs manifest in the classroom. If teachers are more aware of their own beliefs about race and how those beliefs affect student learning, students of color will feel more seen and heard, thus improving their academic success.
I co-created and co-taught a book study on the book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta L. Hammond, for which staff received relicensure credit AND which met the CDE's requirement for 45 clock/contact hours or 3 semester hours of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Education professional development. My goals for this class were twofold: 1) to help teachers meet their CLD requirement; and 2) to help ELL students succeed.
A science teacher and I took a Colorado State University class for librarians and science teachers to collaborate on utilizing primary sources through the Library of Congress (LOC). We then presented our final projects and what we learned to the staff on a PD day. Teachers were then able to show students how to use the LOC to find primary sources for their research.
I work closely with our Reading Specialist on how to help students read and understand nonfiction texts. Because teaching reading strategies is a focus primarily in English classes, we try to help teachers outside of the English department learn strategies to help their students read nonfiction. I created and presented this slideshow on "Strategies for Reading Nonfiction" to the science department on a PD day. One year our school goal was to improve literacy across content areas. I lead this PD to help science teachers increase their use of nonfiction texts in the classroom, and to help students learn how to read nonfiction in classes other than English which, in turn, would increase their reading skills.
A social studies teacher and I were asked to show staff how to use AI in the classroom on a PD day. My slideshow focused on "Using AI for Learning." (As an aside, we won a gift card at the next staff meeting for "Best PD Session!") Using AI in creative and efficient ways helps teachers be more effective, which benefits students' academic success.
I presented on "Increasing Circulation through Dynamic Shelving" to district teacher librarians during a PD day. We reroganized all of our shelves in the library to make most books "front facing," thus making our collection more appealing. After implementing dynamic shelving strategies, our circulation went from 344 checkouts in 2023-24 to 548 in 2024-25 (over a four-month period) - a 59 percent increase! This means more books are getting in the hands of students.
School Leadership Roles
Department Chair (11 years) - We meet every other week to discuss schoolwide concerns, such as budget, safety, staffing, testing, and scheduling.
School Technology Committee (9 years) - We met twice a month to assess student and staff technology needs and how to best allocate technology resources.
Building Leadership Team (5 years) - The BLT works on issues such as attendance and tardy polices, as well as how to best utilize our Homeroom and Access periods so that students can get extra help, make up tests or quizzes, and build community with their peers.
Link Crew Co-Sponsor (5 years) - Link Crew is made up of junior and senior students who welcome freshmen to the school and visit their assigned Homerooms throughout the year to connect and build relationships with them.
Professional Learning Community/Team (PLC/PLT) (7 years) - PLTs analyze student data, create common assessments, and refine teaching practices to improve student achievement
Response to Intervention (RTI) Team (1 year) - Teachers and/or parents identify students who are struggling and need added support with academics or socialization. We meet once a week with the student and his/her parents to set goals, suggest resources and intervention strategies, and monitor student progress.
Component B: Administrative Support
Administrators of highly effective school libraries allocate adequate funding for the library program and resources to meet school goals and students' diverse needs and provide library support staff to increase the teacher librarian's capacity to teach, lead, and collaborate.
Collaborations with Administration
When I started at HRHS in 2015, the principal who hired me, Dr. Chris Page, was also starting his first year at the school. We worked together for 10 years, then he left to become a deputy superintendent in another district. This year we have an interim principal, Julia Caley, who has been one of our assistant principals for as long as I've been here. We recently hired a new principal, who will start July 1. Dr. Page was also my evaluator for 10 years, so I worked closely with him on the library budget, staffing, and resources. We met "formally" four times a year - for a goal setting meeting at the beginning of the year; to review my beginning-of-year evaluation; again for my mid-year evaluation; and finally for my end-of-year evaluation. In addition to these formal meetings, we met often to discuss my budget and how funds were being used to meet the needs of students and staff. The school is now in a transition period, so my future budget and staffing needs are uncertain.
Here are some of the ways in which Dr. Page and I collaborated on library programming, staffing, and budget:
Every year I am told what my budget is, and every year it has been the same: $7,000. This is for books, furniture, supplies, subscriptions - anything I need in the library. This number does not include technology or staffing. Although I have not been able to increase the amount in my budget, Dr. Page has supplemented it when possible. For example, my first year at HRHS, I inherited grant funds for new furniture. Dr. Page gave me additional funds to make up the cost difference. In the 2023-24 school year, I was awarded a $5,000 grant by the District Library Media Center (DLMC) to purchase books to update the age of my collection. The grant stipulated that school administration had to match the grant, which Dr. Page did. So, I received $10K to update our collection. Other examples of budget support include: purchasing a poster maker for the library; providing a $1,500 award to two students to paint murals in the library; and purchasing a large projector screen for the library for staff meetings. Here is the budget I use every year.
At the beginning of each school year, I present a State of the Library snapshot to my prinicpal that shows the status of our collection. This snapshot is prepared by the DLMC, who then recommends budget needs. For 2025-26, the DLMC said, "To maintain a proficient collection and gradually increase the number of books per student to the emerging level, we need a consistent annual budget. A budget of $30,000 for at least two years would allow us to meet this goal. It would also help raise the average age of the collection to the high end of proficient, and potentially to exemplary."
Although Dr. Page was not able to increase my yearly budget from $7,000 to $30,000, we worked together on my long-term goals to update the age and number of books required (one of the ways he supported me was with the $5,000 matching grant). District policy states that we have to use up our budget funds by the end of the year; otherwise, we lose them (they don't roll over to the next year). I can't order all the books I need to in one year, so in order to budget for replenishing and updating our collection, I had to get permission from Dr. Page to roll over my funds, which he granted.
Library staffing has remained consistent over the years, except that two years ago, our library assistant decided to go down to part time. Her job was split in half between library assistant and volunteer coordinator. However, she worked out of the library for both jobs, so when she wasn't busy with her volunteer coordinator duties, she was doing library work. She dropped her volunteer coordinator position, so she is now only part time in the library. We also have a part-time textbook manager, so between the two of them, we have a second full-time person in the library. I have advocated to keep both assistants in the library, so that I can teach and collaborate with teachers. The three of us work together to cover the circulation desk and be sure there is always someone in the library to help both students and staff. My administration recognizes and supports the need for me to teach and collaborate with teachers - without impacting access to the library. Here is a breakdown of our responsibilities and tasks:
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