Responsibilities

[Peg DeMott]

Hi,
For the past two years I've been assigned a full teaching load. Six periods a day I'm with students, I have an aide who is to work under my direction but there's not much time for direction. I'm wondering if others have lost their positions this way and how they're dealing with it. I loved being a media specialist and the truth be told it's kind of nice to have my own curriculum, I sneak plenty of literacy skills in my 7th and 8th grade computer classes and get my literature fix with 6th graders taking relaxed reading but the job is not the same.

[Arlen Kimmelman]

I work in a small 7-12 school (550 students total) with no aide. Because of the school's size, I have been recruited as an English teacher due to a lack of available (appropriate?) staff/funding. Even though I work an 8 period day, 7 of which are in the school library, this one class period (9th grade honors English) takes an inordinate amount of my time - with first time lesson plans for this course, grading papers, extra reading and preparation time, etc., it sometimes takes 50% of my day instead of 12.5% of my day. This doesn't include all of the English teacher-type work I take home that I wouldn't have to take home as a librarian.

In addition, our state (NJ) just implemented an end-of-year technology literacy test at the end of 8th grade, and now the school is in a panic about whom can teach the requirements and when (the school has one middle school and one high school technology/business teacher). I've been offering my technology and information literacy skills expertise to co-teach, team teach, etc., for the 3 1/2 years I've been at the school, and it has been a struggle to get the administration to value that I do more than just check out books (or that I am more than just someone for whom they don't have to provide coverage to proctor state exams -- they just close the library while I wear a different hat!)

Like you, I really enjoy the classroom teaching, but I can reach more students as a school librarian integrating technology and information literacy into other teachers' lessons than I can while teaching one elective or course at a time, while the other resources in the library lose their accessibility, or while the institution of a library gets a bum rap from forced neglect.

I've recently become quite interested in the idea behind why librarians have to do so much advocating when we have something others do want! Why are we a "push" industry instead of a "pull" industry? Why do we have to convince others of our [obvious] usefulness? Why do we have to convince others that our job is to make their jobs easier?

"...how they're dealing with it..." and "...but the job is not the same..." are what drew me into your query. I didn't mean to kvetch; I'm grateful for the job and, like you said, "...it's kind of nice to have my own curriculum, I sneak plenty of literacy skills...," but my B.A., M.A. in Education, and M.A. in School Librarianship deserve more respect than being used as an expendable extra. I'd prefer that they use my academic flexibility in more effective ways.

[guybrarian]

This is happening in my district because of incredible money woes, especially for next year. Seems like currently there are 3 or four middle school Teacher Librarians that are teaching at least one class and their part time clerks are running their libraries. Next year more TL's at Middle school loose their clerks entirely. I just saw a document/grant request that would take teacher librarians completely out of the library and make them tech coaches. Wow- think I'd have to jump ship!
~guybrarian