PLO 6

Reflection

Embracing change to lead organizational innovation is perhaps one of the most overlooked roles of a school library media specialist, but one I feel very connected to as I look at this through the lens of AASL and ISTE expectations of our roles in the school. Dickinson (2015) captures the standard against which this work should be measured: "great school library programs are evaluated on what the librarian does, not what the library owns, and most importantly, the attributes of a strong school librarian are more likely to be described using terms related to leadership traits rather than skills." That framing reorients PLO 6 away from inventory and toward action, away from what the library has and toward what its leader is willing to build, propose, and set in motion. I aspire to be someone who consistently looks at what exists and asks how it could be better, more relevant, or more connected to what students will actually need beyond our walls. Hakala-Ausperk (2016) reinforces this outward orientation, observing that "today's libraries are no longer stand-alone, quiet, isolationist facilities — rather, successful libraries are doing as much, or more, outside their walls as inside, to serve their communities in ways that meet their needs." Taken together, these two ideas (leadership as the measure of a program, and community reach as the measure of a library) form the standard against which the artifacts in this PLO should be read.

PLO 6.1: Systems Thinking is most directly engaged through the computer science initiative case study, which placed me in a leadership role where I had to move systematically through a complex organizational problem rather than react to its surface features. Launching a new initiative within a school requires understanding the system first — who the stakeholders are, where the resistance will come from, what conditions need to be in place before momentum is possible, and how each proposed solution ripples through the existing structure. That experience mirrors the real work of organizational innovation: it demands that the leader be both someone with a vision and a realist at the same time. The Instructional Communication and Technology Interviews with Field Practitioners Presentation reinforced this systems-level thinking by requiring me to examine how technology platforms and instructional tools are functioning across both corporate and educational settings simultaneously — not as isolated case studies but as interconnected signals about where practice is heading and where the library program needs to position itself in response. That kind of forward-looking analysis is at the heart of PLO 6: it is not enough to manage what already exists, but rather a school library media specialist must continuously scan the landscape, identify emerging tools and practices, and ask how the library can position itself as the place where students and staff alike develop the skills they will need beyond our walls.

PLO 6.2: Strategic Planning and PLO 6.5: Locating, Allocating, and Managing Fiscal Resources are where the grant proposal and the Increased Reading Time budget plan do their most important work, and together they demonstrate that long-term organizational vision without fiscal grounding is aspiration rather than strategy. The grant proposal to increase dual language learner and multilingual learner texts addresses a gap that is simultaneously a collection equity problem, a community representation problem, and a budget problem. The proposal makes the case for external funding by documenting the school's commitment to educational equity, naming the specific constraints imposed by Title I funding cuts and a district budget shortfall, and framing the grant not as a wish list but as a proactive response to a foreseeable resource gap. That is strategic planning in practice: identifying where the organization needs to go, honestly assessing what stands between the current reality and that destination, and taking deliberate steps to close the distance. The Increased Reading Time budget plan extends this thinking into project-level fiscal management — establishing goals to increase literacy access, reduce barriers to library engagement, and create family literacy opportunities, then building a budget structure around the specific resources those goals require: books for students to keep at home, programming for family engagement, supplemental staffing, and incentives to sustain participation. Fiscal management at this level is not simply accounting; it is evidence that the leader understands the relationship between resources and outcomes and can articulate that relationship to stakeholders in a way that makes the investment legible and defensible.

PLO 6.3: Team Building is reflected across both the grant proposal and the computer science initiative, though it shows up differently in each. The grant proposal is explicitly a collective document.  It opens with the voice of "a united staff" committed to a shared vision of equity and inclusive representation, and it positions the grant application itself as a team act rather than an administrative one. Building that kind of unified voice around a funding proposal requires the librarian to have already done the relational work: establishing trust with colleagues, surfacing shared values, and creating enough mutual accountability that the staff is willing to put their collective name behind an ask for change. The computer science initiative demanded a different expression of team building — one where I had to assess the strengths and gaps within a group, identify where skepticism or resistance might live, and construct a case for change that brought people along rather than leaving them behind. Both artifacts reflect Dickinson's (2015) insistence that leadership traits, not technical skills, define a strong school librarian.

PLO 6.4: Project Management is most fully demonstrated in the Increased Reading Time budget plan, which moves through the full project management arc that PLO 6.4 describes: planning deliberate steps, identifying the resources and personnel required, establishing a structure for monitoring progress, and building in the reporting mechanisms that keep stakeholders informed and the project on track. The four-pronged approach (increasing home book access, building family literacy programming, supplementing staffing, and creating engagement incentives) is not a list of ideas but a managed plan with each component tied to a specific goal, a specific resource requirement, and a specific outcome to be assessed. This is the kind of on-time, on-budget, stakeholder-accountable execution that distinguishes a project from a program.

PLO 6.6: Emotional Intelligence runs as a quieter thread through all of these artifacts, but it is perhaps most visible in the collection analysis video. Producing a video that uses an infographic to make a case for collection equity required me to step back from the comfort of traditional written advocacy and ask whether a different format might reach a different audience more effectively. That willingness to reconsider one's own default communication style, and to model an alternative for colleagues, is a form of self-reflective growth that 6.6 names directly. The video also demonstrates the kind of responsive leadership that emotional intelligence enables: rather than presenting data in a format that serves the presenter, it builds a visual argument designed to meet multiple types of learners where they are and to make the stakes of collection inequity visceral rather than abstract. AASL Standard 5 frames this kind of ongoing professional self-examination as a core obligation, reinforcing that a school librarian who is not actively growing and adapting is falling behind the needs of their community.

The professional standards connected to PLO 6 affirm that the roles of leader and innovator are professional obligations, not optional enhancements. AASL Standard 4 calls for school librarians to make effective use of data and evidence to evaluate and inform decisions about library services and resources which is precisely what all five artifacts required me to do, examining current realities and proposing forward-thinking responses grounded in evidence rather than habit. ISTE 4.1, the Change Agent standard, speaks most directly to the spirit of PLO 6 by calling on educational coaches to create a shared vision for using technology to support learning and to inspire others to act on that vision. The practitioner interviews, the computer science initiative, and the collection analysis video each embody that change-agent posture in a distinct way through scanning the environment, building the case, and modeling the alternative.

Reflecting on these artifacts together, I recognize that PLO 6 is less about any single project and more about mindset. Hakala-Ausperk's (2016) image of the library doing as much outside its walls as inside is the destination this PLO points toward and my ultimate goal as a school librarian.  It is my hope to create a school library that is a living, evolving institution, not a static collection, and a school library media specialist who leads that evolution with the combination of systemic thinking, fiscal responsibility, relational skill, and emotional honesty that genuine organizational innovation requires. The library must serve not just as a heart for the school, but as a beacon of leadership in the broader community it exists to serve.

References 

•  Dickinson, G. (2015). Change and the School Librarian an Experience in Evolution. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1063986.pdf 

• Hakala-Ausperk, Catherine. (2016, August 3). Demco. Library advice: Successfully embracing change. https://ideas.demco.com/blog/library-advice-successfully-embracing-change/