PLO 4

Reflection

Promoting information and digital literacies is an ongoing practice that lives in both the formally planned lesson and the informal conversation in the hallway or even via email. My graduate experience pushed me to think about both registers deliberately, and PLO 4 gave that thinking its shape in asking not just whether instruction happened, but whether it was purposefully designed, skillfully delivered, assessed with fidelity, and extended into every interaction with a patron, not only the scheduled and formalized ones. The research affirms why this matters at a systemic level: Lance and Kachel (2018) document that reading and writing scores tend to be higher for all students who have a full-time certified librarian, and that students in at-risk subgroups (Black students, Latino students, and students with disabilities) benefit even more significantly when their schools have larger library collections, more library staff, and greater access to technology and databases. That evidence should frame every instructional decision a school librarian makes in terms of lesson design, collection advocacy, technology integration, and relationship-building with teachers.  These are not separate professional tasks but interconnected pieces the come together to help propel a school towards successful growth.

PLO 4.1: Identify Instructional Needs is where this work begins, and the teacher interview artifact documents that process most directly. Before any unit could be designed, I needed to gather real evidence about the instructional landscape, not assumptions about what students needed or what a teacher might welcome, but an actual structured conversation that surfaced the teacher's priorities, her students' strengths and gaps, and the places where library instruction could genuinely improve understanding and achievement.  PLO sub-point 4.1 requires us to gather evidence, prioritize among competing needs, and determine which problems are actually addressable through instruction rather than through other means. This interview shows what is capable with the teacher based on her already implemented strategies as well as the comfortability of a given process or skill.  This all said, it also shows how I attempted to move her skills along while also enriching the instruction for student needs.  Stripling (2014) captures the unique position this requires, noting that "because the librarian has a whole-school perspective, he or she can connect teachers to the principal's vision and to one another, strengthen learning in each classroom by integrating the teaching of information skills and the use of technology, and foster connections between the teaching and learning in the school and the outside world." That whole-school vantage point is precisely what makes the school librarian's needs assessment different from a classroom teacher's perespective; we see across classrooms, across subject areas, and across the full range of what students are being asked to do, which makes it possible to identify instructional needs that no single teacher could see from inside their own room.

PLO 4.2: Design Instruction is most fully realized in the collaborative inquiry unit on hidden issues in Latino history and culture, developed in partnership with an ELA teacher. Before co-designing anything meaningful, I needed to understand my collaborating teacher's instructional philosophy, communication style, and relationship with technology; similar to what was seen with the interview with the science teacher.  The time we spent conversing via email and in person affirmed that meaningful collaboration is not showing up with a plan and asking for buy-in, but listening first and building something from what you actually hear. AASL Standard 2 extended this by requiring that I not only design culturally responsive learning experiences but assess whether they actually moved the needle on student learning, a discipline that keeps instruction honest and student-centered rather than content-centered. The unit asked students to use inquiry to surface hidden stories in Latino history, providing a compelling entry point while still leaving space for students to ask their own questions and follow their own lines of curiosity. Every activity connected back to the instructional goals.  Students weren't just practicing research skills; they were doing research to discover, question, and know. ISTE 4.1 and 4.4 shaped how that listening translated into actual learning design, and ISTE 4.2 is embedded in the collaboration itself, as I was learning alongside the teacher and modeling that openness made the relationship more productive than any polished expertise could have. This also creates a basis for solid collaborative partnerships and future allies and advocates for the library within the school.

PLO 4.3: Deliver Instruction is where design meets reality, and the Nearpod lesson on Digital Drama captures this in a distinctive register. Because this lesson is self-paced and personal reflection-based, it creates instructional presence that allows engagement and forward momentum at a unique pace for each student. Designing for that environment required deliberate attention to how material was sequenced, how questions were framed to invite genuine reflection rather than  always just "finding the right answer" and how the pacing supported students who needed more time alongside those who moved quickly. AASL Standard 1 grounded my understanding here: effective instruction begins with knowing how students think, what motivates them, and how they construct meaning across different contexts; a self-paced digital lesson about digital citizenship finds success based on whether those questions were answered honestly in the design phase.

PLO 4.4: Assessment of Instruction runs as a thread through both the inquiry unit and the grant artifact, though it shows up differently in each. In the collaborative unit, the reflection component I built into the co-planning process was itself an assessment mechanism.  After implementation, the teacher and I evaluated not just what students produced but whether the instructional design, the materials, and the learning experience as a whole did what we intended. AASL Standard 2's insistence that culturally responsive instruction be measured by its actual impact on student learning pushed me to take that evaluation seriously rather than treating completion as success. The grant artifact approaches assessment from a different angle: writing a grant to build a more diverse and multilingual collection was an argument, grounded in evidence, that the current collection was limiting what students could discover, question, and ultimately know about themselves and their world. Lance and Kachel's (2018) finding that Black and Latino students whose schools had larger library collections more than doubled their percentages of Advanced writing scores (and cut their risk of Below Basic writing scores in half) gave that argument its research backbone and made the case that collection assessment is inseparable from instructional assessment.  While North Carolina does not assess writing skills in middle school, it is a part of the standard course of instruction and writing well correlates directly to reading well.  In addition, solid writing is necessary for all content areas as we seek to push learners into higher levels of DOK with analysis and explanation pieces incorporated.  AASL Standard 4 reinforces this: equitable access to resources is itself an instructional act, and when I curate, organize, and advocate for a collection, I am shaping what information literacy looks like as a possibility and a reality for my students.

PLO 4.5: Support Patron Learning through Effective Instructional Communication lives most fully in the moments between scheduled instruction  the hallway question that becomes a teaching conversation, the email exchange that surfaces a deeper information need, the student who lingers after a lesson and reveals what they actually wanted to know. These moments are evidenced in the lesson planning and collaborative interviews.  The Nearpod lesson gestures toward this as well in its student centered design.  Because it is self-paced and reflection-based, it creates space for students to encounter the material on their own terms, and the informal follow-up conversations it generated extended the learning well beyond the formal lesson. Stripling's (2014) vision of the librarian as a connector, linking teachers to each other, to the principal's vision, and to the world beyond the school, describes this informal instructional presence as a structural feature of the role, not an occasional bonus. Every interaction is a potential teachable moment, and recognizing that possibility requires the same intentionality that formal lesson design demands.  

Together, these artifacts demonstrate that promoting information and digital literacies is not something a school librarian does alone or in isolation. It is built through relationships, sustained by advocacy, made real in the classroom, and extended into every corner of the school day. The research Lance and Kachel (2018) present makes clear that the stakes of doing this well are highest for the students who have been most underserved.

References 

• Lance, Keith and Kachel, Debra. (2018, March 26). Kappan. Why school librarians matter: What years of research tells us. https://kappanonline.org/lance-kachel-school-librarians-matter-years-research/

• Stripling, Barbara K. "I’m an Expert”: School Libraries Build Enthusiastic Learners." American Libraries Digital Supplement, "School Libraries Transform", Sept.-Oct. 2014, pp. 4-5.