Educational+Philosophy

My goals as a future school librarian will be to develop a library program that is central to my school’s learning community; to work collaboratively with teachers and students to ensure that the library program meets patrons’ needs; and to help students and teachers become effective consumers and producers of information products.

This is a very interesting time in librarianship where the role of library and librarian is going through a major shift. In order for my library program to stay relevant in the minds of my students and teachers, I will need to demonstrate the many ways in which the library supports learning (across all disciplines), creativity, and critical thinking. Librarians as information and resource experts have the unique opportunity to discover and introduce new technology tools to teachers and to demonstrate how to incorporate these tools into meaningful learning activities for students. I think that students become more engaged in their learning when they are faced with new challenges and non-traditional “classroom work.”

I also think that information literacy, digital literacy, and research skills are best learned in context. So, collaborating with teachers and incorporating new tools and resources into subject specific projects is a great way to embed instruction of these skills into real world situations. As students become more information and digitally literate and more skillful researchers they are able to gain a better critical understanding of the subject area content.