Expertise

It is well known and recognized that a certain type of professional makes all the difference in whether the LLC of a school is at the heart of its teaching and learning. The same would be true of outstanding professionals not only in the school, but in many different kinds of organizations. Our society often relies on educational degrees, credentials, and portfolios/resumes to shape the “successful” professional, and it helps, of course, but there is no guarantee. Thus the realization that:

YOU and what you bring to the table makes up most of the difference in whether the LLC is at the center of teaching and learning in the school.

If it were possible to have Harry Potter and Hermione invent a success potion for various successful careers, we might find that item moving quickly off the liquid refreshment section of any convenience store. Ah, such a great thought...not going to happen.

While success may seem to come naturally to some, for the rest of us, we have to employ some design strategies:

• Think about a problem
• Brainstorm some possible solutions
• Settle on a process to try
• Try it out
• If it does not work, try again, and again…
• Success!
• Reflect: How did I accomplish this? Could I use this strategy on another problem? Make it a natural part of my work?

While we think about the expertise that the adults are bringing to the table, we also need to recognize that many of our students are developing expertise on their own that can be used in many learning experiences. We often meet the child who may be an expert in dinosaurs, but there are many in the younger set who are experts at drones, photography, a musical instrument, creating their own business, inventing, painting, writing, storytelling, to being a peacemaker among so many other budding talents. How can we encourage such expertise and incorporate it across the school culture?

Finding the Right Candidate for the Job: Advice for the Interviewer

Across the U.S. and Canada, there is not a single method of choosing a professional to be the leader of the LLC. An obvious choice is a person with a recognized credential as a school librarian/media specialist/teacher librarian. But credentials vary from state to state with some states offering recognition if you either take a written test, or if you meet requirements set by school districts or individual school administrators.

The content of various educational programs that credential professionals could use to lead a LLC vary widely. Some will concentrate on traditional library practices; others will have redesigned recently to include much more technology and instructional design capabilities. Your best bet as an administrator/interviewer is to write a job description that includes both the traditional and cutting edge ideas of the LIIIITES model that would fit into the vision of education in your school. Candidates with traditional learnings will be easy to locate. The more cutting edge your expectations, the harder it will be to locate the idea leader.

If the candidate for the position has had previous experience, we recommend that a two-phase interview process happen. The first might be a written response by the candidate that they can describe and provide evidence for a mix of several “problems” that would require a summary of past experiences for several traditional and cutting edge practices. In preparation for the the interview, the applicant could be furnished with a copy of the LIIIITES model with its traditional and cutting edge practices prior to the interview as a guideline for the written portion of the application.

A sample problem might be given to the candidate by a teacher on the interviewing team. “Last year, I had my students select a planet in the solar system to research. They looked up things and wrote a short report and then presented their findings to the class. The resulting learning was pretty thin and frankly quite disturbing. Suppose I brought this unit into the LLC. Let’s do a ten minute starter planning session right here to investigate what changes we could do together that would transform this unit into something great.” Even during a ten minute planning event, the interviewing team could discover both red and green flags about the candidate. Did the candidate have a repertoire of good ideas? Did the candidate exhibit good collaborative planning skills? How likely would the ideas being proposed actually make a difference in the quality of the learning experience? And, how could the result be documented?

Another sample problem to give the candidate might center on the noise level in the library learning commons vs. the noise level in a traditional library. How does one busy noise vs. chaos? One interesting response to such a problem was published recently. (1)

For candidates without experience, they should be able to do well on both parts of the interview, but their experiences would need to have come from their professional education and a portfolio of projects they had participated in and created, both as an individual and with a collaborative group.

Other Professional Staff of the LLC

Are there any specialists on the school staff that have responsibilities across the whole school? If so, could they become either full or part time members of the LLC professional staff? They might have joint membership with another department in the school, but consider the impact the impact and expertise that they might bring to the cutting edge aspects of the LIIIITES Model implementation in the school community.

An obvious choice is a technology specialist but reading teachers, counselors, art, music, P.E., special ed, and language professionals might be considered just to name a few. Perhaps a very interesting design thinking professional development session with all the specialists could unleash ideas where a collaborative stance might just be superior to an isolated traditional approach. Framing such a session might work best if administrators ask the group what they could do together to push something like social and emotional learning. They might be asked what they could do to help on the one to one computer initiative. Perhaps design thinking is being rolled out; how could everyone help? Using design thinking among the adults to design learning experiences for students might produce powerful effects rather than administrative pressure to just move in one direction or another.

Support Staff

It would seem obvious that if you are going to have a successful Basketball team, you need to see that the coach spends almost all the time coaching, not keeping score, getting water bottles, fixing sprained ankles, etc. etc. etc... Likewise, if you expect the LLC professional staff to really make a difference in teaching and learning, then they have to spend the bulk of their time doing that rather than circulating books, rebooting the network, troubleshooting charging stations and computer, etc., etc. etc...

If the expectation of the library learning commons is a traditional one, then the operation, circulation of physical items, management of computers and other warehousing tasks can be done by support staff rather than professionals. In fact, over that last decade, many professional teacher librarians and technology instructional leaders have been eliminated. Some schools and almost all charter schools just eliminate the library altogether. Somehow, the school limps along because they don't know what they don't know. If, however, the roll of the library is transformed into a library learning commons with the ideas of this guide as center pieces of an exciting and productive physical and virtual space, then, the expertise of great professionals is critical to a quality education that every student deserves. Justifying mediocrity-with the phrase, "Oh, we can't afford that," is a disastrous and unacceptable idea in this century.

Hiring both professionals and support staff for a vibrant library learning commons is very defensible when the track record of professional investment in literacies, information, inquiry, instruction, innovation, technology, and service are not only documented but visible to the entire school community including parents.

Like so many other things, we get what we pay for.

Finally, in 1988, Loertscher published his first book (2) calling for the reinvention of the school library. In that book, an illustration of his taxonomy illustrated the role separation of the professional librarian from support staff. In the illustration below, the taxonomy begins with simple tasks at the bottom that progress in complexity to the top. Notice that the gray area of the lower task sets represent the role of the support person from a large to a smaller role at the top. Because so many professionals live with the stereotype of "keeper of the books," it would be wise for the reader to visualize for any audience something like the visual below as the transformation from library to LLC takes place.