Professional+Practice+-+Leadership

= =  //**//    The work involved in running, maintaining and promoting a school library is all encompassing and to the most part is invisible to others members of the organisation. It would be very easy to stay within the confines of the school library and never venture into staff room, meeting rooms or classrooms and still not have enough hours in the day to complete required tasks. There is however a more important aspect to the TL role in a school and that is to be considered a leader, an active and essential member of any curriculum committee, a key player in the decisions that the school makers. For this to be happy the TL needs to be seen as an active member of the school community and involved in school activities that do not necessarily strictly adhere to ‘library’ duties. In my own school I have always tried to participate as any other staff member, I have coached netball teams from yr 4 – to yr 12, been the district netball coach and manager, been the school photographer and the school magazine editor and layout artist for 10 years, had a tutorial group that meets daily for the pastoral care of students between Yr 8-12, I attend all cultural ‘happenings at the school’ violin concerts, performing arts concerts, drama performances, sports dinners. None of these activities have anything at all to do with the library but my presence at these raises the profile of the library as a cornerstone of the College. Likewise, in key committees, I attend curriculum team meetings, senior and junior staff meetings, have been involved in very QCAR meeting from P-12 as we remap our curriculum and will be further involved when units of work are rewritten – that way I can be sure that information literacy and ICT’s are embedded in a structured and spiralling format. The College that I visited and regularly liaise with is similar in population to my College P-12, independent, and approximately the same student numbers. Bother libraries are of relatively the same age, with similar resources. Deanna, Head Librarian is currently engaged in an extraordinary battle with the personnel involved in structuring their learning management system and its failed or rather unsuccessful implantation. I am watching this keenly as our implementation is about to happen and while I certainly do not want to be given the responsibility for the structuring of the database and then the uploading of all of the digital documents, it does call for someone with expertise. In Deanna’s school, they failed to heed her advice and now that it is disarray it looks like she going to have to fix it for them. I am not sure how that new portfolio will impact on her library but it will be one that I keenly observe. **References:** My ‘guru’ over the years has always been Suzette Boyd. Over ten years ago I went to a workshop with her on building influence and have never forgotten her ideas and her enthusiasm. I catch up with her regularly at conferences and always work away with a new approach to doing something that has bugged me. Her book ‘**The Connected Library’** should be in every school library and every young TL should read it. Another book I have used is **‘Building influence for the School Library**’ by Gary N. Hartzell (1994) Linworth Publishing. While American based, it provides a very good overview of how to build influence. About five years ago in introduced ILPO (Information Literacy Process Overview) written by Capra and Ryan into the Junior and Middle Schools. This was one of the first structured Information Literacy overviews developed for implementation that allowed for the class teachers and the librarians to work together in ensuring that all the components of information literacy were covered from Prep through to Senior School. While, some of my personal views have changed as to how this should be achieved eg guided inquiry, I still consider that this program is excellent to provide a basis for ensuring that the key components of information literacy are achieved. There have been several other programs that I have used as well, all three developed by SLAV – School Library of Victoria ** Researching together: Engaging minds ** : This was developed by the library team at Bendigo Senior Secondary College in Victoria, and is a user-friendly, intranet-enabled resource provides collaborative learning teams with the scaffolding to implement inquiry learning and essential interdisciplinary skill development.
 * 3.3 Leadership **
 * // Excellent Teacher librarians
 * 3.3.1 Actively engage in school leadership and participate in key committees** //
 * // 3.3.2 Promote and nurture a whole school focus on information literacy policy and implementation  //**

**Teacher Librarian Program for primary school teacher-librarians P-6, **compiled and written by Diane Lester Davey, S., Boyko, D. & Macdonald, J. 2005.  **Making a difference **,  by Lesley Burgess and Shirley Melissas, is a user-friendly electronic research guide is a critical tool in implementing a whole-school approach to information literacy. I have run several workshops within my own college and for SLAQ Gold Coast over the years on the implementation of an overarching information literacy programme and several schools are now using ILPO as their basis for program.  It took me a long time to realise that was impossible to actually do what I wanted to do and that it was much more time effective and ultimately more successful to work with smaller groups to build a successful collaborative team. There are always some people who do not want to work together, some teachers who only are interested in library as a spare, and some who are just not team players. Rather than devote time and energy to ‘converting’ these members of staff, it is much more sensible to work with those who want to work with you. Finding a team member with similar teaching styles and who embraces and understands exactly what the TL and the library have to offer is far more beneficial all round. By creating successful units of work, completed with supportive teachers, is by far the best way to advertise what the library can offer. This ‘ripple’ effect is contagious and ultimately achieves the goals that you originally harboured. It is also important to foster the relationships formed with other colleagues through active involvement in professional organisations, eg SLAQ. The networking opportunities are immense and the ability to pick up the phone and bend the ear of another colleague is invaluable. A different way of looking at things, a different approach to try and more often than not articulating the problem provides a solution. Libraries can be isolating professionally: as a TL in school committee meeting we are always involved in looking at problems from the classroom point of view, the difficulties of the library are never factored in because, to staff, it only represents one person and most have no real understanding what we actually do all day. Therefore to provide collegial support it is essential that the TL has a strong network around them; this could be through network meetings, SLAQ meetings, or OZ TL Net, Regardless of the format, the TL should be able to feel supported professionally. It is imperative that all library staff are ‘on the same page’. My recent conversion and passion for Web 2.0 was being received with very strange and weird looks from my staff. Web 2.0 has to be ‘experienced’ so I suggested that we all complete the ‘23 things of Web 2.0’ course being offered by Syba Signs. I had followed the Delany Library (Cyberlearning) as they had completed the course written by Helene Blowers from PLMPC and was thrilled that someone had taken up the challenge to run it within Australia. Time was set aside during the week for each staff member to complete the activities and it was extremely successful. The completion of the course by my staff coincided, not too coincidentally with the release of our Library website, complete with blogs, delicious sites, library thing etc. Now of course I could give individual staff member responsibility for areas of the website! I also considered it essential that each member of the staff has an area of excellence that they have authority over. While we all attempt to seamlessly work together in the library, certain areas of work have key stake holders and we defer to those individuals when queries arise. I consider it essential to share the load, because it is impossible for one person to be responsible for every area. This was reinforced even more while I studying for my masters. There was no way I could study two papers per semester without letting go of some areas within my own library. The book club for adults that I had set up was taken over by the other TL, I let up some of my control over the displays and learnt to live with ‘what went on the wall’, I delegated the organisation of the stocktake to one of the Library technicians etc. What on earth possessed me not to have done this before was beyond me, but I suppose I had always done them so just continued. I consider it essential for my two Library technicians to attend their network meetings which occur on a monthly basis. It is invaluable for them to meet and discuss issues that relate to their profession. Regardless of how busy we are, they are always released for the morning to attend. One of the Library technicians will also be attending the Library Technicians conference in Adelaide next year. This is the first time it has been approved in my annual budget and I am thrilled that finally they have had some recognition. I do believe in leading from the front. There is no task that I will not do, that I expect my staff to do. I shelve, do returns, dust, mend, cover and stamp books and make coffee.
 * // 3.3.3 Build and foster collaborative teams within school and professional communities  //**
 * //  3.3.4 Provide effective and transformation leadership to school library and information services staff  //**