I checked in to see where you have been, no post since the beginning of May? That’s almost a month dude–I need you out here, helping ME to learn. . . and now to the point,

if I’m not the CLO as the CSO, what the heck am I? Seriously, that’s a major part of who I am as a leader or what am I modeling exactly? I love learning and figuring out how best for my teachers/adults in the organization to learn so that they can in turn, turn on our students to learning. Can’t do that without reading and listening and learning. Hopefully every day.

Post please. Remember what you told me, just keep writing. I don’t care if you’ve said it before. Nothing changes unless we keep saying it. Say it Will. We have too many people just showing up now not to hear your voice.

I suppose in many ways teaching has become cast aside by politics as we constantly give way to trying to build kids up as far as possible without truly taking the time to make sure the foundation is sure.

Thanks for the post because I have recently heard too many stories about laying of excellent seasoned teachers and librarians because they were too expensive! THAT is ridiculous. We need a learning reality check…

I sincerely hope my post is a generalization, but I fear in a growing number of districts it is not. I am advocating to stop a practice that is widespread across my state, and unfortunately across the US at this time. The trend of eliminating media specialists from schools needs to be addressed head on and without worrying about politically correct niceties that pay lip service to what is best for students. The main purpose of fighting for the educational rights of young people is to advance relevent change, not to ensure that someone feels good about the endorsement on their license and the title on their business card.

This riffing trend is most disturbing when it happens in districts were administrators recognize that eliminating library media specialists stifles or hurts student achievement and teacher development, but for some reason (perhaps self preservation) they do not argue against this practice to their higher ups and school boards.

I agree that not all media specialists are in the classroom as needed, and that some old school librarians have not gotten on board. Saying this, I personally see many media specialists denied the autonomy to teach process and build curriculum because administrators fail to stretch their concepts of scheduling. Instead most still insist on a traditional and highly flawed model of compulsory “special” visits to the library media center. The only purpose this ridge schedule serves is to easily ensure that “real teachers” get their prep time. It does not promote real, relevant learning in any way, shape, or form. I also see secondary, non-specials, LMS’s bogged down by a 1 LMS : 1000+ student : 100+ teacher ratio. And no, please don’t blame teacher associations for this, because that is a cop out.

In my district we are fortunate enough to have hard working collaborative LMS’s, many supportive principals, and a strong and forward-thinking advocate and mentor in the form of our assistant superintendent of curriculum.

However, I sit on the board of my teacher-librarian professional association, and am highly concerned for the state of education when I see all these “chief learning officers” getting pink slips every spring. There is also a growing trend of districts not rehiring for retirees and forcing one media specialist to cover multiple schools.

In my state, when we identify a potential riff or eliminated fte position, we are quick to send letters, share documentation and research, make phone calls, and do the whole dog and pony show to persuade the purse string holders to reverse their decision. But we are still fighting a losing batter. It is rare that I witness a district decision to reduce the number of non teaching admins to make up for a shortfall of cash.

I find in education it is much easier for those who hold relatively secure non-teaching office positions to be the ones touting the “can’t we all just get along” speech in times of budgetary crisis. I get along very well with my administrators. I also am very vocal about right and wrong, and am not afraid to speak truth to power. Thankfully, they respect me, and my motives, enough to consider my input.

If educators of all types are truly passionate about doing what is best for kids, then we honor our students by keeping library media specialists in schools and by giving teachers more autonomy and financial support to develop and deliver cutting edge curriculum. I guess I just don’t know how to say this “nicely” and get power holders to sit up, take notice, and act.

Thanks, Will.

You certainly demonstrated today that in order for us to ensure that we all become more effective CLO’s, we need to embrace these technologies that our students are already using.

We like how you view our role as ever evolving and point out that our students need us more than ever in order to to fully understand their digital worlds.

Unquestionably, we have more learning to do but we loved how you “walked the talk” by immersing us in these new applications (myspace, twitter, diigo, igoogle and so many more).

We’re so pleased to have Niagara Falls, ON as a “dot on your map.”

DSBN Teachers

The fact is, as much as I loathe the PSSA’s, we still have to give them (14 STRAIGHT DAYS OF TESTING NEXT YEAR!!!) Maybe it’s a chicken or egg scenario, but if more teachers owned research and presented creative learning opportunities, more principal’s would give autonomy to do so…and if test results follow…who knows? Maybe we wouldn’t even utter the words “test prep” until the day of the test…

I wonder how we enable the freedom necessary to teach learning and facilitate that trust of instruction that when a teacher is allowed to teach, the almighty test results will follow?