Whilst at work today some of the Year 2 boys offered to help me with my university assignment about roles of the teacher librarian. They listed the following points as what a Teacher Librarian does:
- they read a lot
- help you find a book
- look after the books
- reads to children
- looks after children
In a discussion with a friend (who is a parent),regarding what a Teacher Librarian is. He had the traditional view of what a Teacher Librarian does and that it only involved books. After explaining to him how the role of the TL has changed relating different forms of literacies such as digital and how we need to teach children to critically look at the websites to see how reliable their information is, as well as TL's having to be confident and familiar with new technologies and the resources that are useful to students and teachers he seemed to have a much better understanding of why Teacher Librarians are necessary in every school. He was surprise to find out that we collaborate and plan (ideally) with all of the staff and teachers especially.
These perspectives highlighted to me that the main roles of the Teacher Librarian are often hidden from students as parents and are happening behind the scenes. They are the people behind the teachers on the front line providing them with the informations, resources and guidance that they need. This insight from the students highlights more to me that we need to educate the parents and students (when possible) about what the Teacher Librarian does to help the students and the teachers. I have read this often in the reading but I find that these 2 discussions brought it to the forefront of how to improve the perceptions of Teacher Librarians and why it needs to be done.
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