Second Guessing?

After reading through my new course material (EDES 549 Leadership in Teacher-Librarianship) I am wondering if my capping paper idea is too vague. I might have trouble doing the literature review because there is so much to think about.

My idea for a title was: Why Teacher-Librarians are Essential: The Evolving Roles of School Libraries and Teacher-Librarians in the 21st Century.

Let’s think about this. A paper with this title should include the history of teacher-librarian roles in schools and how these roles have changed in the 21st century as well as the history of school library it’s changing role. Then there is the whole idea of having to define what “essential” means and describing what it looks like. Also, I would need to address the question: what is it that teacher-librarians do that makes them essential, which would entail discussing and finding information about the ideal personal and professional characteristics of a “master” or essential teacher-librarian. Plus I would need to look at the idea of “new literacies” and also would want to include Literacy with ICT and inquiry. Then I would need to link effective teaching practices of these new literacies, ICT and inquiry to an “essential” teacher-librarian.

That’s a lot. Plus I’m not really interested in focussing on the history of the roles of teacher-librarians and school libraries, but the rest does really interest me.

What is it that teacher-librarians do that makes them essential? I actually like this question. Maybe it’s something I can focus on. I’m definitely interested in what makes a “good” or essential teacher-librarian, specifically the characteristics, actual activities and other hard to pinpoint things that make some teacher-librarians more successful than others.

But I am also really interested in the Literacy with ICT aspect of our job and how that aspect makes teacher-librarians so very important in this day and age. I suppose that makes me also interested in the new literacies, technology integration and inquiry learning too!

I wonder how I can marry these two things without making writing my capping paper such an immense undertaking that I will go mad!! Plus it shouldn’t be really really long either, so . . . I guess I will have to think about it some more.

In the meantime I think I will continue to explore what makes a teacher-librarian essential. I think the next blog will be about how teacher-librarians are teachers first. Stay tuned for more!