Who Among Us is Explicitly Tasked with Helping Children Learn to Teach Themselves?

I would suggest that “YOU NEED OUR LIBRARIES!”

From the Texas Library Association web site

One of the upcoming events I especially look forward to is the Texas Library Association Conference in Austin. I’ll be part of a series of presentations for administrators about libraries and their evolving and increasing importance in a mouse-click world.

One component of my message came to me about a week ago during a conversation with someone who works with librarians across the country. I did not know her before this conversation, and so, do not remember her name now. It takes two meetings for me to remember someone’s name. No stickiness left in my brain.

During that conversation she said something to me that did stick. She suggested that for high school students, who are going on to college, the school librarian is perhaps the most important teacher they will have. I think that this was a gross understatement.

We talk hard about life-long learning, but I do not believe that it is figuring in to the procedures, policies, and pedagogies of formal education nearly as much as it should. Today, with everything changing so fast, the ability and proclivity to learn is as critical as the basic literacies were in my time.  Perhaps they should be the same thing — learning and literacy.

I often ask people, especially non-educators, “How much of what you do in your job or profession, did you learn in high school?” “..in college?”  “In the last five years?”  “In the last month?” How much of living and working today is significantly dependent on our ability to learn? Imagine education focusing less on what’s been taught, and much much more on skilled, curious, resourceful, and habitual learning. Imagine a generation of super-charged learners embracing a day and time when almost anything is possible.

Coming back around, what educator in today’s schools, holds, as an explicit part of their mission, helping children learn to teach themselves. Why it’s librarians, those educators who are too often among the first to be laid off in order to balance budgets.

Such a sad and tragic lack of vision.

13 thoughts on “Who Among Us is Explicitly Tasked with Helping Children Learn to Teach Themselves?”

  1. Hi, David — If my own less-than-sticky memory is right, Wisconsin’s Peg Sullivan of Smith Systems mentioned to me that she had chatted recently with you. Might she be the name you are looking for? She branded Learning4Life for the American Association of School Librarians.

  2. Thank you for your post about school librarians! In these troubled economic times our profession is indeed in jeopardy. Unfortunately, many voters think our sole purpose is to check out books to children. They have no idea our roles — and our importance in teaching students how to evaluate information — have evolved as rapidly as this digital age. Thanks again!

  3. As a classroom teacher, in a school where there is no longer a school librarian on site, I find that your thoughts on the importance of school librarians are pivotal to the success to our students’ future. If it hadn’t been for my own librarian during my formative years, I would not have had the skills needed for me to do to be resourceful in my education to become an educator. In an education system that is cutting corners left and right, it is important to realize the role of a school librarian give students more information than they will ever find from wikipedia.com.

  4. Great food for thought! As an elementary teacher, I spend lots of time trying to teach my students to be problem solvers and to learn how to work together. It makes sense to ensure that students have the skills they will need to continue to seek out and create their own knowledge. It will need to be the concern of all teachers, and not just the burden that falls on librarians.

  5. Well said, David. Now you know why I ask you to be the librarians’ spokesperson for our TLA Conference for administrators. Thank you for articulating so well the librarians’ role in our students education.

  6. I am in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class at the University of South Alabama. One of the main themes I have found in all the blog posts read this semester is “self guided learning.” Teaching students how to research information, validate the information, and collaboration are what students today need to know. Librarians are in the best position to teach this to students. I never appreciated a librarian until I began taking college classes. Feel free to visit my blog. Thanks

  7. Hit the nail on the head with this one! The point of how much people use from their learnings in higschool and college compared to other ways of learning is dead on. I myself have learned far more by reading and watching the history channel than I did anywhere else. Reading is the meat and potatoes of the intellect!

  8. David- AMEN!
    Thank you for your insightful commentary. I plan to share it with our administrators, as our library program is in jeopardy. We are a small rural school in Wisconsin. Need I say more?

  9. Dear David,
    First off, I love your work. As an assignment in English class we have to write a paragraph on an interesting story you found on the internet and I have used a story of yours every time. Now, I totally agree with how librarians are definitely an essential “teacher” in my high school career. In some of my classes I sit there and think “why am I learning such a pointless task I know I will never use in my profession I want to achieve in”. I know personally I go to the library on all of my off hours and talk to my librarian about difficult tasks I do not understand. She has also given me great advice just like your blog states, focus more on self-guided learning rather than teachers telling you what to do all the time. Even though we have to take classes in high school we hate, learning early of what we want in life is important and I think librarians are a perfect example of people who are there to help you rather than check you out books.

  10. I am in Dr. Strange’s EDM 310 class. I believe that all positions are needed to help students to become productive in today’s society. I believe that librarians are needed because they help give us the skills of how to look up different resources. Yes, there is technology but someone has to show the students how to use it properly.

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