Building Bridges

I had a great opportunity to attend a library media meeting in the district that I am student teaching in. I was full of excitement being in a room of people who were already in the profession I am proud to be part of soon. It was very interesting to see so many kinds of views on various topics. I do want to state that I respected all of their opinions. They have been in this profession longer than me.

With that being said, I was a bit discouraged by some of the Library Media Specialists’ views on how to handle students who have lost or damaged books. There were some who were of the opinion that you should just block their account preventing the student to ever check out a book again. This block can follow them through out their whole academic career. If I am understanding this correctly, a second grader can lose a book and have their account blocked all the way to his senior year of high school. Does anyone else think this is really unfortunate?

I know children books are very expensive and there is never enough money in the budget to pay for them. But are we not missing the whole point of why we are in this profession? Our number one priority is not putting the books first, but the children first. We are not a glorified keeper of the books, but we are here to make sure the kids are reading, learning, thinking and growing as individuals. How are we doing that by saying to them, “Sorry, you have failed to keep up with the book or you have failed to convince your parents to pay for this book, so you may never ever touch another book until you resolve this issue. Why would a kid ever come back to the library or ever think of picking up another book again. The last time they did, they had a really negative experience. I could not blame them. When this happens we might as well lock the library doors and go home.

This might seem a bit harsh, but I feel when librarians adopt this philosophy of librarianship, they are missing their whole purpose of the profession. Are we security guards of the books or are we teachers? Yes, there are going to be kids who are not going to get it right. That is why they are called kids. But this is a valuable teaching opportunity to show them how to be responsible and be good citizens. I know what you’re thinking, “Well Amanda, how many books are we going to lose to teach them this very important lesson? Three, six, twenty-four?” I don’t know. But do we really have the right to stop them from learning or to give up on them? Maybe we need to educate the parents on what we are trying to accomplish or spend more time with that child, so they understand to take better care of the book. Isn’t that our goal? Isn’t that our responsibility? When my life is through on this earth, I don’t want people to say, “Well, as a librarian she had 0% of lost books, but no child ever learned the love of reading.”

In the elementary library that I am currently student teaching at, there is a constant controversial book. But it is not the parents that are challenging it, it is ironically the teachers. Now, I can understand the “uncomfortabliness” of the book. It is a very graphic book about where babies come from in cartoon form. There is even a drawing of mommy and daddy doing the “deed”. But I have a hard time saying it should be out of the library. If I was a parent, I am really not sure how I would react if my child came home with this book, but as a librarian….Well, I can’t really argue it should be banned. With the ever rising rate of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, this is a great opportunity to open the dialogue with kids before they fall in that trap that our society is constantly luring them in. But what I find interesting about the whole situation is how the teachers are handling their views. Instead of taking the proper and professional steps of challenging a book, they will either hide it in the library or just take it from the library and hide in their classroom to prevent any student from checking it out! The librarian that I am working under is very good at doing some investigation work at figuring out who has it and sneaks the book back. I have even witnessed first hand a teacher take the library book out of a student’s hands after they have checked it out. But this all seems very silly to me. I would expect more from other educators. I am just curious what other may think.

I am constantly amazed over the many kinds of classroom management. Some are positive and then, there are some that are very negative. This is a weak area for me. I was a substitute teacher for about two years and I quickly learned to be very firm with my classroom management. You almost had to. Everyone knows that students quickly figures out how much they can get away with and push it as far as they can. The regular teacher is not around and they may never see the substitute again.

However, when establishing a long term classroom relationship you have to find a healthy balance. From what I have read from very various articles on library classroom management, you want to do everything possible make the library a very appealing place to visit. I could not tell you how many times in my middle and high school days as a student the school librarian made my visits very unappealing whether it was my interaction with them or other students. They would just always have a very unhappy look on their face and whether they realized it or not they gave the impression that they had not interest in helping you at all.

So, as an upcoming school librarian, I am on a search to find a classroom management styles that firm, very loves. I do not want them to run over me as some students have been. But I do not want them to dread the library but having to deal with me yelling at everyone.

I have been observing other teacher’s classrooms in hopes to adopt my own style. I have seen one teacher’s style that I am very eager to learn. She is a very sweet and loving kindergarten teacher. The kind you wish you had every year of your academic career. Being in her classroom made me feel cheated not having this experience as a childe and made me yearn to be a kindergarten again.

Like her students, you find yourself wanting to please her by answering each request correctly. Her students did sometimes make bad behavior choices, but this happened very little. But you would hardly notice because she handled them very quickly and never stopping her lesson. She would use slight hand gestures and a disappointing look to the wrong doer. When a student passed her three warning she quickly told them to stand and kept right on with her lesson. The student was not upset that he was caught, but more the fact that he disappointed her. About five minutes later she told him to sit and try again. Then, she went right on with her lesson without missing a beat. He did. He wanted to please her.

You can walk into her class and her students are very, very quiet and working diligently. This did not happen out of fear, but out of love for their teacher. Not only does this classroom management produce wonderful behavior out of her students, but it is very evident that it produces great academic achievement. These students made me in awe of their amount of knowledge they already have achieved. I have visited higher grades in the elementary school that are not as quick as the kindergarten class.

I have seen other teachers whose classroom management is so harsh. It may control the behavior, but it leaves the student either mentally paralyzed or an outburst of tears. They would use screaming in their student’s faces and belittling them to get their students to do what they ought to be doing. Learning cannot take place here and it is obvious in their scores.

I am starting this blog site to reflect on my student teaching experience. My elementary supervising teacher, Diane Chen and I are both reflecting on this experience. So, if you like to see the librarian teacher side, check out deepthinking.blogsome.com.

I am really excited about this experience. This placement began on January 13th and will end on March 10th. After this placement, I will begin my student teaching at the middle school level. I am a little nervous on that one because I have always viewed my style of teaching more on the lower grades. But I will see. So, far my time at Hickman Elementary has only confirmed what I already know about becoming a librarian. This is exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life! Now, it has not been a piece of cake, by no means. But that is why I like it so much. It is always a new challenge at every turn.

I have learned that a librarian’s job is basically in construction. We try to build bridges with students, faculty, parents and the community. That is pretty much everyone in our society. That is a huge responsibility. I get a lot of raised eyebrows when people ask me what I am studying in school. People are surprised that you actually need a master’s degree to be a “librarian.” There is a big misconception of what a school librarian really does. It is not just the vision of shelving books. School librarians do so much more. I will be talking about that more in my upcoming blogs.

I feel so far my weakness might be classroom management and trying to get the lesson plans on the grade level that is needed. I either shoot too high or too low. Hopefully, that will come in time. My worry is my comp test in April. This is the last major hurdle that could stop me from graduate in May. But I am immersing myself in professional articles, going over my notes from all my courses and asking as many questions as I can. But most of all is pray. I really don’t know of anything else I can do. I will keep you posted. My biggest misconception is the real meaning of collaborative teaching. What I thought was collaborative is really cooperative. This is still great. My goal is to have my portfolio completed on time. That is a huge project. Another big deal coming up is on February 14th. I will be attending a job fair for teachers. Hopefully, I will come away with a job.

Well, I need to get back to my lesson plans. I hope all is well with you and may your day be very blessed.

Amanda Murray