“Better Together” Area Workshop for Educators, Media Specialists, and Librarians
Monday, June 11, 2018
8:30 a.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Lakes Country Service Cooperative
2:15 - 3:00 Technology in the Classroom
Laurie Conzemius - lconzemius@gmail.com - www.laurieconzemius.com - @l_conzemius
First: no one can do it all!!
When I was a new media specialist, about 20 years ago, I was in charge of a library with 20,000 titles, about 30 classrooms of students who visited regularly, a budget to purchase books and reference materials, a computer lab with Apple IIgs computers, and few Windows computers that chugged along keeping our brand new, electronic!, card catalog running smoothly (for the most part), and the only telephone outside of the main office. I tried to collaborate with teacher on literacy skills and using books in all subject areas. I decorated engaging bulletin boards, planned active lessons for my K-4 students, and loved being the one who focused on reading!
Wow! Have times changed! Today's school librarians do all of the above and more. However, added to that list of activities, librarians today are encouraged to:
Need I go on? The list is endless! The typical school librarian is often asked to do all of this, and often much more! Sure, you can be the yearbook editor, ELL teacher, gifted education teacher, playground supervisor, and all of those other things....if you never leave the school building. Basically, you can't have a life, or a family, or one spare minute in any day (What? You want a lunch break? Sorry. There's way too much to do!)
Trying to do all of these things and more is a recipe for burnout. My biggest message to school librarians today is to evaluate their own situation and determine what is possible and what is impossible. It's time to take something off the plate, and quit feeling guilty about it! Just because you see another librarian's awesome makerspace, read a fantastic article about a media specialist leading daily school newscasts, or attend a conference session where the school librarian shares her fantastic approach to providing professional development to every teacher in the district, you do not have to replicate it! Do what you can do, what you have time to do, and do the things that make you indispensable to your classroom teachers and their students.
And please don't look at this list of tools for communication, creativity and collaboration as a checklist of everything new you now have to add to your program. Please, take what you can use, and don't worry about the rest!
Now: on to the tools.