I find myself closing the month of September struck by many insights gleaned from the practice of school librarianship. Needless to say, I am busier as ever. Productive, yes. But, Work From Home (WFH) and Online Distance Learning (ODL) can be exhausting. Now this means taking a step back and continuously figuring out strategies that will work best for me and my family. A work in progress.
I am keeping count of the many interactions I have had with students and colleagues this month. The consultations on research with students, particularly on the Extended Essay, the Senior Project and the Personal Project are investments in time and relationships. The session on Bibliotherapy which I led during our De-Stress Fest inspired me to create a Bibliotherapy program going beyond the dispensing of Bibliotherapy services. I facilitated a research skills session on Bibliography and Citations with our junior high school students last week. Earlier today I sat in the Theory of Knowledge classes of our grade 11s. It was an amazing experience listening to them respond to the texts about Martial Law. The texts they read came from books and sources in the library which I curated two weeks previous to the class.
September is Literacy Month. Though we do not celebrate this in the Academy in any way, the activities, sessions and interactions I had with students and colleagues truly embody literacy skills development. I realize the value of our work in this age of WFH and ODL.
As the school's Teacher Librarian, I think, more than leading and journeying with students in finding answers to their questions, my role is to provide avenues of conversations, discussions and dialogues. The library remains to be a safe space for young people learning to find their way in the intricate system of the digital world and at the same time, keeping them tethered in their authentic selves. They belong to a family and a community made up of people. In the bigger society, they are citizens responsible for their own actions while relating with others with kindness and compassion.
Libraries today operating in the ODL environment may have all the tech tools to operationalize programs and to support instructional design and its delivery. But the interactions between librarian, student and teachers, the library staff and library users are rich experiences to derive insights and the impetus to improve services and programs.
How do we now document the processes of conversations, dialogues and discussions? What can we do with the data and information gathered and gleaned from these thought processes? What languages are we creating? How do we determine our growth and development?
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