Add a bullet to your job description list
Feb 12th, 2011 by Cathy Jo Nelson
I’ve seen this making its rounds in numerous places–namely my reader (which gets feeds from all my favorite blogs), as well as Twitter, Facebook, and more. It is picking up traction as it is shared throughout my PLN and there is a good reason why. You see, most school librarians know we wear so many hats at school. Many of our colleagues we work with realize how multi-faceted the job truly is, while others still think we sit and read all the day long.
As state leaders grapple with budget shortfalls, it is not surprising to hear about any extreme cuts, from mere professional development opportunities coming to a halt (who has been allowed school money to attend conferences lately–I certainly don’t know many) to the absolutely professional human factor, those who just like me hold a teaching license as well as an advanced degree that allows us to be certified as a school librarian, and more often than not, recently on the losing end of a pink slip, deemed unnecessary or replaceable with paraprofessionals or worse, volunteers.
My friend Karen Kliegman has shared with those in her networks about proposed cuts that include losing her entire library budget and worse, her library assistant. I know many who have suffered the same losses. But she is not just laying in apathy or having any kind of pity party that is absolutely unproductive. She is using some advocacy tools to market a campaign to save some of the proposed cuts, and the one shared is very telling as to why the library assistant is vital to her program.
For this reason I say we must add another bullet (or hat) to our job description, and that is ADVOCATE. We must all adopt the philosophy, “If it is to be, it’s up to me!”
Way to go Karen! I am honored to share it here.
From 1998:
http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/why-do-libraries-need-support-people.html
I love Karen’s far more creative approach!
Doug