Interview with a School Librarian: Part 1 of 4

Today will begin a 4-part series of interviews with school librarians. I spoke with four different school librarians about the AASL standards. Each librarian was asked the same questions, but each one focused on a different shared foundation.

Today I will be sharing my thoughts and reflections on my interview with Mrs. Debbie Oswald at Lexington High School. I asked her to consider the shared foundation of "Collaborate." Mrs. Oswald says that she incorporates this through creating a faculty newsletter each semester, serving on the Wildcat Leadership team, her weekly meetings with all district high school librarians, her monthly meetings with all district school librarians from all levels, and social media.

Resources she uses to collaborate are Google Classroom, Destiny, the school website, Twitter, and Facebook. She creates displays that highlights different authors and genres. She also collaborates with students when they come in for personal inquiry projects.

More collaboration with teachers is on-going at LHS. She conducts speed dating with books, lessons for the International Baccalaureate program, and lessons on citing sources. Mrs. Oswald works closely with the special education teachers because they come in weekly. She designs special lessons for holidays and other special occasions with them. Outside of LHS teachers, Mrs. Oswald collaborates with the feeder elementary schools with the Wildcat Reading Express and public librarians. This reminds me the importance of outreach programs with the community.

Mrs. Oswald states that challenges she has come across with this shared foundation has to do with the timing of when she took the position. She began in the 2020-2021 school year and feels like she hasn't been able to develop relationships with classroom teachers like she normally would because of COVID restrictions. She especially has a difficult time getting non-ELA teachers to come into the library. We know the importance of building relationships, but sometimes circumstances prevent doing that in a traditional way. This reminds me that we must learn alternative ways to connect with teachers and staff because it's hard to collaborate with staff that don't know or trust you. Have a robust toolbox of relationship building strategies to reach all teachers, just like you strive to reach all students.

Finally, Mrs. Oswald discusses the importance of staying involved in local and national organizations, as well as attending webinars. After our conversation, I reflected on her perspective as a high school librarian and how this conversation may have been different if I spoke with an elementary librarian.  All my teaching experience is in elementary, and I collaborate with our librarian several times throughout the year. Most of our staff do, as well. It makes me wonder what changes between the two levels and teachers willingness or comfort level to use the school librarian along with the physical and digital collection to its potential.