My journey towards this degree has not been particularly direct, but it has been deeply practical, and my coursework has been responsive to my needs along the way. I began my work towards a Masters degree at Simmons College West, in their MLIS program. I completed 15 credits of coursework there during the 2013-2014 school year, while working as an Assistant Reference Librarian at the Greenfield Public Library in Massachusetts.

In July 2014, I received a phone call from Judi Pulsifer, principal of Neshobe School (where I was a student in the 1990s), asking me if I would consider applying to take over for their school librarian, who had retired. In short order, I applied, received the job, finished my summer class at Simmons, left my job, moved to Vermont, and received provisional licensure from the Agency of Education. I spent the next year and a half completing necessary coursework to receive my teaching license from the Agency of Education, and when that was taken care of, I applied to the UVM Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction program to complete my degree. I was admitted in Fall 2015 and transferred in 9 credits from Simmons and two courses that I took as a Continuing Education student for my licensure. After an additional 15 credits of coursework, I am now at the end of this phase of my journey, but I’m definitely not done learning.

This website serves as a reflective document and showcase of my graduate coursework since the Fall of 2013. I hope to communicate my growth as a student, librarian, and teacher as I worked towards my Master's degree. Over the past five years, my goals in my coursework changed---I went from imagining myself working in a public or university library to elementary school librarianship, from considering how best to serve the public to how to teach and empower my students as both library users and as citizens in our world. My reflections for each course I took are mostly written with hindsight, with the full scope of my degree program and four years of practical experience as a school librarian. In each reflection I emphasize the learning that I have carried with me and built into my practice of librarianship. My final reflection and my oral presentation focus primarily on my coursework at UVM, as I approached that learning from the perspective and with the goals of a school librarian hoping to build and improve my teaching practice, which is distinct from my work at Simmons.