Roberta Harris Teacher Librarian

As we learned about indexes in our course content, I had a memory of the card indexes that could be found in the university library.  At first you feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start.  This is what you see!  A whole bunch of little drawers with little cards in them.  Wait what?   When faced with trying to find information on a specific topic this is how you might feel.  When starting university this is exactly how I felt.  The university library was foreign to me.  I had no idea where to start when looking at those big scary cabinets!  When you walked into a library and needed help whether it be at a public library or a university library the feeling was very overwhelming!  Where do we start?  We start by asking a librarian of course!  And as always the librarian is the hero!  The librarian makes you feel comfortable, is knowledgeable with the content and knows how to assist you in finding what you need....

 I had the best day teaching a grade 3/4/5 class dictionary skills!   You know the dictionaries don't get used very often when a child can slam it closed and dust comes flying out!  We were playing "dictionary drag racing" and students had to close the dictionaries until told to start.   A good reminder that we need to keep some things sacred, like using a real live, tactile resource to teach students dictionary skills.  They had fun and learned how to look up words very quickly!  

Alert Bay School, Annual Cultural Celebration:  Photo-op for the Students and Staff The teacher I would like to discuss is a colleague named Amelia.  Amelia’s situation is her hesitancy to include Indigenous resources into her practice.  As is the same for many teachers, the reasons may be that they are “afraid” to say or do something wrong, or that they are not knowledgeable about the subject.  "Everyone has concerns...and acknowledging these concerns and addressing them are critical to progress in a reform effort" ( https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/731/2015/07/CBAM-explanation.pdf , p. 1). There are many reasons teachers are reluctant to teach First Nations or Indigenous content.  Many of the reasons may be of personal concern.    Amelia is a great teacher who teaches the primary grades at our school.  She has an open mind and is keen to learn new things and to find ways to complement her practice.   She has taught in a First Nation...

 90 minutes a week!  Does that exhibit the importance of inspiring and creating lifelong 21st Century Learners?  My personal opinion is a big fat, loud and proud, NO!!!! (Can you hear me yelling from the rooftop?!).  Although I am happy to have the opportunity to be trained and hired as a teacher librarian I am not very happy when it comes to learning about the role of the teacher librarian and how much is expected with so little time allotted and minimal resources provided. Again, I will refer to teacher librarians as Superheroes!  I am not being facetious or flippant when I say this, I am totally serious!  With the responsibility and the task of providing a "variety of reference services... as part of their daily activities includes helping students define their information needs, creating learning environments for collaboration, teaching students to use the online catalog and databases, and helping students distinguish good information from bad" (Reidlin...