Interview with a Librarian- Part 1: Curate

 

    This is the first post in a series of blog posts on the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) standards and shared foundations. In each post I will be reflecting on an interview with a school librarian about one of the shared foundations. Although all six AASL standards and shared foundations are essential to the success of a library, I have chosen four to focus on in my blog series.

Curate- Make meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance.

Explore- Discover and innovate in a growth mindset developed through experience and reflection.

Inquire- Build new knowledge by inquiring, thinking critically, identifying problems, and developing strategies for solving problems

Include- Demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to inclusiveness and respect for diversity in the learning community.

For my first post I interviewed Tara Jenness about the shared foundation of Curate. Tara is the librarian at Riverside Middle School in Pendleton, SC where I did my primary internship. Tara has been a librarian for over 10 years and has experience at the elementary and middle school level. We first talked about examples of how she uses the competencies under Curate in her library and the resources in her library that she uses. Tara works hard in her school to teach students how to search for information using library catalogs, online databases, print materials, and search engines. The primary resource that she uses in the library with her students is SC Discus. Mrs. Jenness also provides instruction on evaluating the credibility and reliability of sources through lessons with different ELA classrooms. I believe these will be important activities especially with the older students I teach such as fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Student often take anything they see on the internet as the truth. They do not consider bias and reliability when they are conducting research. In my opinion, this is an excellent way of showing students a variety of choices to use when gathering information and curating assignments.

When I asked about using collaboration to promote the foundation of Curate, Mrs. Jenness discussed how she works with classroom teachers when she is implementing these lessons. Teachers will work with her prior to beginning an assignment or project that will require research. Mrs. Jenness is then able to schedule times for those classes to come to the library for a lesson on searching effectively, using available resources, and credibility and reliability of resources. She also schedules in times for these classes to come in to work on their research when she can be available to assist and help students with finding reliable sources as well as organizing the information they are gathering. This will be more challenging in and elementary school with a fixed schedule rather than a flexible schedule. My library may not be available at the times that teachers need to bring their classes to the library for instruction so I may have to be more creative. I could possibly create some videos on the topics of credibility and reliability, selecting resources, and citing information that teachers could show students at times that are convenient. Another option would be to take a few class periods at the beginning of the year before they do any research and teach lessons on these topics before they need them in their classrooms.

We ended our discussion by talking about the challenges that she faces when trying to implement these competencies. She says the biggest challenge she encounters is that student constantly just want to Google something rather than look through the reliable sources that she recommends to them. They don’t want to use the resources in SC Discus or in the print resources that she has in the library. I see this also at the elementary level and saw it in the middle school setting when I was completing my internship there. My conversation with Mrs. Jenness was insightful and provided me with some valuable information for the future. 

References

American Association for School Librarians. (2018). AASL standards framework for learners. AASL. https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AASL- standards-Framework-for-Learners-pamphlet.pd