PLO 5

Reflection

As a middle school library media specialist, advocating for intellectual freedom and promoting resources that help create an informed citizenry are essential pieces. In my teaching career, I spent many years teaching civics and so the ideas of policy, advocacy, and educating citizens are central to my identity. During the course of my graduate experience, I was challenged to move beyond passive familiarity with foundational documents and student instruction in these rights and responsibilities. I was moved to actively apply policies and laws in ways that protect student access to information and promote equity. Central to this work is the recognition that, as Hinton (2021) notes, "communicating how a librarian's role contributes to the school and the wider community is a large part of creating credibility." This credibility is not incidental; it is the foundation upon which effective advocacy is built.

The essay interpreting the ALA Library Bill of Rights reflects this most directly, and it grounds my understanding of PLO 5.1: Information Policy. By examining how the Library Bill of Rights and its interpretations on access in school libraries guide my daily practice, I was pushed to assess how intellectual freedom shapes concrete decisions about collection development, representation for multilingual and Latino students, and resistance to censorship in my own building. This kind of policy analysis, weighing the real-world impact of foundational documents on a library's ability to fulfill its mission, is precisely what 5.1 requires. Connecting those principles to structures like the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction guidelines and a Media and Technology Advisory Committee further reinforced that intellectual freedom is not a solo pursuit but a collaborative, policy-grounded responsibility. The role of such committees also speaks to PLO 5.4, as professional and institutional bodies like the ALA, AASL, and state-level advisory structures serve as vehicles for collective advocacy that no individual librarian could sustain alone. Trapp (2023) captures this shared purpose well "by making these people more aware of specific reasons the library is important, we are positioning them to be able to help us meet shared goals for our school library."  This is precisely the kind of stakeholder engagement that transforms the school library from an isolated service into a school-centered hub aligned around equitable access.

The Technology Policy Review extended this thinking into the digital realm and brings PLO 5.2: Current Trends into sharp focus. Analyzing the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Chromebook Guidelines required me to move well beyond awareness of digital equity as a concern and into a genuine evaluation of how policy gaps impact students in practice. When students cannot reliably access devices, navigate unclear repair procedures, or understand the expectations governing their technology use, their ability to participate in digital learning and engage as informed members of a democratic society is compromised. Identifying those gaps and articulating a response, a concrete plan for improvement, reflects the full arc of 5.2 from awareness, to impact analysis, to advocacy for change. That analysis also pushed me to see the school library media coordinator as an advocate not just for books and collections, but for all points of access that students depend on, which connects directly to PLO 5.5. Ensuring that students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities, can reliably access technology is not a peripheral concern but a core equity imperative, one that places the library at the intersection of education, technology access, and the dismantling of existing power structures that limit participation.

The digital citizenship unit brings PLO 5 to life in the most instructional and collaborative sense, and it is where PLO 5.3: Advocacy is most visibly enacted through practice. Demonstrating that advocacy for an informed democratic society must also include teaching students to navigate that society with skill, ethics, and critical awareness, the unit was developed in partnership with fellow MLIS students and implemented within my building with an external observer. The five-lesson unit addressed intellectual property, data privacy and security, digital identity, and safe and ethical practices, topics that sit at the intersection of intellectual freedom and civic responsibility. Facilitating this unit reinforced my belief that school librarians are uniquely positioned to create and lead this kind of instruction because we truly focus on information access, ethical use of data, and building community. In this sense, teaching digital citizenship is itself an act of advocacy for the profession, for the library's role in the school, and for the students whose futures depend on navigating information ethically and critically. The collaborative design and external observation also modeled the kind of professional accountability that advocacy and educational practice rely on for reflective growth. The peace and collaboration webquest further speaks to learners becoming thoughtful, analytic, and reflective citizens as they examine historical conflicts in the context of what can bring about peace and collaboration. As a result of their research and work on this webquest, students are asked to create a recipe for peaceful collaborative success among nations, which truly inspires them to be involved in civic processes and to support their ideas with sound research and advocacy which creates a student-centered enactment of 5.3 values.

Taken together, these artifacts demonstrate that PLO 5 is not a single act of advocacy but a sustained and multifaceted approach that leads toward equity, access, and participation. AASL Standard 4 anchors this work in the commitment to equitable access and data-informed decision making, while AASL Standard 5 frames it within the broader obligations of leadership, professional ethics, and advocacy on behalf of all learners. ISTE 4.1 challenges media specialists to be change agents who build shared vision around technology access and learning, and ISTE 4.7 calls specifically for digital citizenship advocacy. These ISTE standards are clearly reflected within the artifacts presented and map naturally onto the sub-points of PLO 5, from policy analysis and trend evaluation, to organizational and professional advocacy, to the equity-centered work of ensuring that every learner — regardless of background — has meaningful access to the information and tools they need to participate fully in a democratic society.

As I step into my next stage in this career field, this PLO has affirmed my focus on advocacy and policy as well as helped me understand that true intellectual freedom means being willing to examine policies critically and teach students to think and act ethically with information. As a librarian I must do this as well as continually work to improve systems that impact access to and use of resources as an advocate for my students and staff.

References:

• Hinton, M. (2021, November 1). School libraries 2021: Advocacy is a necessary part of the job for School Librarians. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/school-libraries-2021-advocacy-is-necessary-part-of-the-job-for-school-librarians  

• Trapp, L. (2023, January 22). Why you should advocate for your school library • the trapped librarian. The Trapped Librarian. https://trappedlibrarian.org/2020/06/12/why-you-should-advocate-for-your-school-library/