Moving librarianship from light to heavy
I just finished an article y Joellen Killion called Are You Coaching Heavy or Light? I'm having a hard time finding it online, but if you search for it, you can download it.
Again, I'm drawing parallels from a coaching article to school librarianship, but they really aren't outside the realms of possibilities.
I'm at the beach right now, so while the author uses the terms light and heavy, I'm thinking shallow and deep. We start out in the shallow end. We learn the terrain, grasp the temperature, better understand the way the water is moving. If we want to get more than our feet wet, however, we have to venture out into deeper waters. I laughed when I saw Ms. Killion used these terms near the end of the article!
Possible shallow behaviors:
- book recommendations
- lists of websites
- materials that support read-alouds
- attending PLCs
- teaching that supports subject standards
Possible deep behaviors:
- analyzing library and class data
- examining student work
- conducting action research
- asking questions that will increase teacher use of the library
- engaging students in conversations about what they want/need
- collaboration with teachers
- co-teaching
Honestly, I'm not sure what I think about this list, and I'll be the first to admit that at the elementary level (where I teach 30-40 classes a week), even the shallow behaviors seem daunting. Do I even want to get my feet wet? These things are worth thinking about, though, as we set goals for the upcoming school year. I want to be a librarian with deep (or at least deeper) behaviors, but do I have the time and energy for those to be a reality?
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