National Library Legislative Day 2011
Mar 27th, 2011 by Cathy Jo Nelson
Recently I was asked if I would consider making the trip to Washington, DC for National Library Legislative Day 2011. What a GREAT opportunity to network with library leaders nationwide, and have a (hopefully) captive audience in our congress for talking about issues that are greatly impacting school libraries. Getting the nod from my own state’s leaders as a potential who might make an impact–what a stroke to my ego! Add to the booty an all expense paid trip to DC for 2 days–what more could I ask for?
So what’s the problem?
The problem is the days away from school this would require! May is for whatever reason a lot of teachers’ research paper time. The library at school will be filled with needy students and teachers alike. Perfect opportunity to show my school environment how I fit into the big picture.
Include in that the fact that administrators are looking for any way to trim the budget. If I am not there, my administrator may see me as unnecessary to the big picture of school altogether.
It’s sad that unique opportunities are coming my way, and the open doors are grudgingly being closed due to circumstances beyond my control. I have not totally ruled it out yet. But my confidence in 1) asking for the time off and 2) retaining my job are not as optimistically viewed despite my confidence in my abilities to do well at both.
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Hello! I am a future teacher. I loved the “library days” I had in my classes in high school. It was usually for research papers in English, Government, or Sociology/psychology. Do you think that research days should be required? Perhaps to familiarize the students with the library and the resources they have, and to get to know the librarians who are extremely helpful and important?
Thank you so much!
I am in total agreement that research days are necessary. Libraries have standards just as areas of the curriculum, including fine arts and academics. In the lower grades (primary grades, elementary, and even some middle schools) many schools put kids in a library setting once a week or more for the purpose of exposing them to how a library works, including how to locate information and develop a love of reading. More often than not this happens away from the classroom teacher and not in context with any classroom learning or projects, while the said teacher has a planning period. Because many of the lessons taught are isolated from anything concurrently happening in their class, understanding the power of a library is lost, and when these kids return for real research needs, they cannot make the connection to anything taught in that isolated lesson. In high school, research projects allow for students to make that necessary connection. Their needs are defined by the research project, and so we as teachers can provide instruction that will in all likelihood stick with the student this time. Unless a student has a real need for a resource, be it a physical book on the shelf or information from a database, students will not “learn” how to find it or use it. For that reason, it is critically important to have research days in the media center. I alluded to our standards at the beginning. Libraries have instructional standards. But our standards related to research are meaningless until they are intertwined with an authentic research need