By: Kate W

Kate W — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:56:37 +0000

Okay, I agree that advocacy is vitally important – I’m on a committee for it, and I even helped present about it for our local county-wide institute day. But I’m disheartened to realize that our school boards don’t seem to care what we ACTUALLY do, just what they think we do. No matter how many times I get data, talk to them, show them that we are doing information literacy instruction, literature appreciation, affecting test scores, collaborating with and training teachers, managing equipment and materials, when it comes down to it, they find us (serving every child & staff member in the district, all year long) less important than afterschool sports and clubs (serving at most 1/8 of the students in the district, redundantly with the local park district). They don’t WANT my data, they want to believe that I read kids books and sit around all day, so that it is less painful for them to cut my job, my fellow librarians’ jobs, the library aides’ jobs, and the technologists’ jobs. I feel pretty disheartened to be considered “extra” when I work with every student in my school every week – and to be pitted against loss of art and music or class sizes of 40 as one-of-these-is-inevitable.

Comments on: How many students lose?

By: Kate W