Standard 4: Advocacy and Leadership
4.3.1. Leadership: Candidates are able to articulate the role and relationship of the school library program’s impact on student achievement within the context of current educational initiatives.
Artifact Materials:
Link to Common Core State Standards for English
Link to School Library Media State Standards (Revised Fall 2010)
This July, I served as an English liaison at the MSDE Educator Effectiveness Academy. The Academy was initiated by MSDE in an effort to educate representatives from every school in Maryland about the Common Core State Standards. To say that, at times, the meetings were brutal is an understatement. I was shell-shocked by the end. And yet, the school library intern in me left the meetings a bit smug. You see, as the English “expert” stood in front of us and showed us the curriculum changes, something kept popping up. Next to many of the new core standards, there were links that said “See also SLM #.” Because of these current common core frameworks, the school library media curriculum is now recognized as essential to student achievement!
While this positive addition to the curriculum by MSDE certainly makes clear to teachers that student achievement is linked to the school library, the inclusion of the SLM standards does not directly indicate that the school library programs currently impact student achievement. However, based on the inclusion of these standards in curricula, the school library is obviously expected to have this impact in the future. I began my internship semester with the knowledge of this current educational initiative. However, during the time I spent in my internship, I grew to identify ways in which the school librarian and the classroom teacher can collaborate to meet each other’s standards, while also focusing on student achievement.
The English Common Core (which will soon extend into other humanities subjects) is split into four frameworks: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language. Within each framework, many anchor standards are linked to school library media standards. In the reading framework, the first standard asserts that students must “analyze and evaluate available evidence for thoroughness, completeness, and relevance.” This is then linked to MD SLM 4: “Students will be able to follow an inquiry process to interpret recorded data/information to create new understandings and knowledge.” Research is a prominent component of the new common core standards. This semester, both of my mentors and I have worked with students to sift through research; talk about the most difficult step of the research process! Yet, students must know how to identify the useful information in their research before they enter college. For example, a group of students in a social studies course this semester needed research to develop a community-outreach program. I helped during the beginning of the research process and guided students to move beyond finding and regurgitating information. They had to take nationwide statistics and reconfigure that data in order to determine how best to meet the needs of a group-in-need here in Frederick. This project, which emphasized real-world application, is the type of project where a school librarian can truly help in the beginning processes of research by modeling for students how best to “interpret recorded data and information.”
The reading framework was not the only area that emphasized the school librarian’s role. Under the first writing standard, the curriculum framework notes that students should, “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” This standard is then linked to the school library media state standard 1.B.3. which states students will “independently and collaboratively formulate and refine effective questions [and] use background information to refine researchable questions.” Again, these two standards are closely linked. Both the writing standard and the school library standard assert that students should be able to independently refine their research topics. This important skill needs both classroom teachers and school librarians to emphasize its importance! So many high school students enter college thinking their professors will give them their research topics. When they discover this is not true, they flounder. At my high school this semester, I helped a class of English students who read historical novels and then developed research questions based on the time period of their novels. They refined their questions as they researched. All refining occurred in the school library where students had access to print and online sources, my mentor librarian, and me. We provided guidance on how best to develop a research question and answer that question using well-developed research skills thus contributing to the students’ achievement in this area of their research study.
An improvement to the current state curriculum for English is the addition of speaking and listening standards. One standard states that students “determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task.” This skill is then linked to the school library media standard 3.C.3. which indicates students must “reflect on and revise or refine research questions, theses, hypotheses, or positions based on new information discovered in the inquiry process.” Again, this skill is essential for students to achieve competency in post-high school education. The school library, as the school’s hub of information, should always encourage further inquiry on a subject. The final step in any research process is evaluative, where students indicate what more they want to know based on what they have learned. In my internship, and with my own class’s previous research projects, I have not seen the school library play an active role in the evaluative piece of the research. As it is, when I completed my collaborative lesson for my internship, I was not (as school librarian) a participant in the final presentations of the projects. I have learned that while I am still a classroom teacher, I need to include my school librarian in all steps of the research process, especially the evaluative process in order for her to take part in assessing student achievement. I also now plan on entering my own library armed with evaluative tools to introduce to teachers during collaboration.
Having now spent four months in the internship, I have also noticed that school librarians need teachers to consistently bring classes in for instruction so that the school librarian is exposed to more students more often. A school librarian can definitely impact a student’s achievement if she has the opportunity to provide instruction and learning more than once to the student because she can chart and analyze the student’s progress in regards to library media skills. The Common Core Standards seem poised to provide this opportunity.
The development and implementation of the Common Core State Standards bode well for the school librarian. So much of what is included in the coming state curricula emphasizes the need to include the school library and librarian in instruction. I worked with the MSDE school library standards before in School Library Administration. However, I had not really considered them in conjunction with other curricula before this summer. Knowing how the state is initiating the alignment of the standards in order to directly include school libraries in the drive for student achievement makes my move into the school library field that much more exciting. As this educational initiative evolves and more classroom teachers recognize the need to utilize the library’s resources in their instruction, the role of the librarian as teacher and instructional partner and the graduate coursework that contributes to these roles will evolve to increase K-12 student achievement and prepare students for post-high school education.
While this positive addition to the curriculum by MSDE certainly makes clear to teachers that student achievement is linked to the school library, the inclusion of the SLM standards does not directly indicate that the school library programs currently impact student achievement. However, based on the inclusion of these standards in curricula, the school library is obviously expected to have this impact in the future. I began my internship semester with the knowledge of this current educational initiative. However, during the time I spent in my internship, I grew to identify ways in which the school librarian and the classroom teacher can collaborate to meet each other’s standards, while also focusing on student achievement.
The English Common Core (which will soon extend into other humanities subjects) is split into four frameworks: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language. Within each framework, many anchor standards are linked to school library media standards. In the reading framework, the first standard asserts that students must “analyze and evaluate available evidence for thoroughness, completeness, and relevance.” This is then linked to MD SLM 4: “Students will be able to follow an inquiry process to interpret recorded data/information to create new understandings and knowledge.” Research is a prominent component of the new common core standards. This semester, both of my mentors and I have worked with students to sift through research; talk about the most difficult step of the research process! Yet, students must know how to identify the useful information in their research before they enter college. For example, a group of students in a social studies course this semester needed research to develop a community-outreach program. I helped during the beginning of the research process and guided students to move beyond finding and regurgitating information. They had to take nationwide statistics and reconfigure that data in order to determine how best to meet the needs of a group-in-need here in Frederick. This project, which emphasized real-world application, is the type of project where a school librarian can truly help in the beginning processes of research by modeling for students how best to “interpret recorded data and information.”
The reading framework was not the only area that emphasized the school librarian’s role. Under the first writing standard, the curriculum framework notes that students should, “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” This standard is then linked to the school library media state standard 1.B.3. which states students will “independently and collaboratively formulate and refine effective questions [and] use background information to refine researchable questions.” Again, these two standards are closely linked. Both the writing standard and the school library standard assert that students should be able to independently refine their research topics. This important skill needs both classroom teachers and school librarians to emphasize its importance! So many high school students enter college thinking their professors will give them their research topics. When they discover this is not true, they flounder. At my high school this semester, I helped a class of English students who read historical novels and then developed research questions based on the time period of their novels. They refined their questions as they researched. All refining occurred in the school library where students had access to print and online sources, my mentor librarian, and me. We provided guidance on how best to develop a research question and answer that question using well-developed research skills thus contributing to the students’ achievement in this area of their research study.
An improvement to the current state curriculum for English is the addition of speaking and listening standards. One standard states that students “determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task.” This skill is then linked to the school library media standard 3.C.3. which indicates students must “reflect on and revise or refine research questions, theses, hypotheses, or positions based on new information discovered in the inquiry process.” Again, this skill is essential for students to achieve competency in post-high school education. The school library, as the school’s hub of information, should always encourage further inquiry on a subject. The final step in any research process is evaluative, where students indicate what more they want to know based on what they have learned. In my internship, and with my own class’s previous research projects, I have not seen the school library play an active role in the evaluative piece of the research. As it is, when I completed my collaborative lesson for my internship, I was not (as school librarian) a participant in the final presentations of the projects. I have learned that while I am still a classroom teacher, I need to include my school librarian in all steps of the research process, especially the evaluative process in order for her to take part in assessing student achievement. I also now plan on entering my own library armed with evaluative tools to introduce to teachers during collaboration.
Having now spent four months in the internship, I have also noticed that school librarians need teachers to consistently bring classes in for instruction so that the school librarian is exposed to more students more often. A school librarian can definitely impact a student’s achievement if she has the opportunity to provide instruction and learning more than once to the student because she can chart and analyze the student’s progress in regards to library media skills. The Common Core Standards seem poised to provide this opportunity.
The development and implementation of the Common Core State Standards bode well for the school librarian. So much of what is included in the coming state curricula emphasizes the need to include the school library and librarian in instruction. I worked with the MSDE school library standards before in School Library Administration. However, I had not really considered them in conjunction with other curricula before this summer. Knowing how the state is initiating the alignment of the standards in order to directly include school libraries in the drive for student achievement makes my move into the school library field that much more exciting. As this educational initiative evolves and more classroom teachers recognize the need to utilize the library’s resources in their instruction, the role of the librarian as teacher and instructional partner and the graduate coursework that contributes to these roles will evolve to increase K-12 student achievement and prepare students for post-high school education.