Enhancing Teaching and Learning

A Leadership Guide for School Librarians

Jean Donham, Chelsea Sims

• Publisher: ALA Neal-Schuman
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780838947173
• eBook ISBN:
  9780838947227
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Scienze dell'informazione e biblioteconomia

Rapid change calls for informed leadership. The goal of Donham's text has always been to help school library professionals make a difference in the educational experience and academic attainment of students in their schools. With the addition of new co-author Sims, a junior high school librarian, this newly revised fourth edition rises to the challenge with updates and enhancements that confirm its value as an important resource for both LIS students and current school librarians. Covering all aspects of the school system, including students, curriculum and instruction, principals, district administration, and the community, it demonstrates how to interact and collaborate in order to integrate the school library program throughout these environments. Inside, readers will find

• myriad real-world examples of issues in school librarianship and evidence-based practice;
• discussion of such urgent topics as the educational needs of the iGen (those born between 1995 and 2012), changing reading habits, the influence of the media, and news literacy and other issues related to the proliferation of fake news;
• updates which touch upon the new AASL Standards, inquiry-based learning, assessment, and library program evaluation;
• specific tactics for establishing the library program as an active player in teaching and learning;
• an overview of education-related technology such as course management systems, the virtual library, makerspaces, information presentation and data representation tools like ScreenCast and Google Maps, online home-school communication, and online student safety and privacy; and
• end-of-chapter discussion scenarios that explore opportunities for the practical application of concepts.

Reflecting changes—professional, theoretical, legal, and political—in both the library field and education, this new edition of a groundbreaking school library text will equip readers to be leaders at their schools and in their communities.

PART I

The Context

1

Students

THIS CHAPTER

• ▶ describes conditions of youth attending American schools and how school library programs can improve equity of opportunity;
• ▶ discusses the ever-growing demands for meeting the needs of exceptional students;
• ▶ describes the nature of motivation and its effect on learning;
• ▶ examines the importance of today’s students becoming lifelong learners and the role of the library program to support them; and
• ▶ identifies leadership strategies for working with students.

Students mirror the diversity of our culture and are unique individuals. Denise is ambitious and hard-working, hopes to become an engineer, and is eager to please her teachers. Jana is popular and chatty and wants to be liked. Kate is angry, outspoken, and sometimes hostile. Michael is on the quiet side, shy, tense, and anxious. John is bright, inquisitive, and success-oriented. And so it goes, with each student as individual as his or her name.

A chapter about students is an appropriate beginning for a book about the school library program. Although the library has many constituencies—teachers, parents, and the community at large—its primary goal is to help students become effective users of information. To accomplish that goal, the library program must be sensitive to young people’s cognitive and affective needs.

The relationship between adults and youth can be fragile. Power and authority, levels of self-confidence, and implied and explicit expectations complicate the relationship. An adult’s unintended cue can direct a less-than-confident student away from the library. Young people’s assumptions about authority figures or their desire for independence can prevent them from seeking help. Many students see the school librarian as different from the teacher—perhaps less threatening. However, some may find the librarian more intimidating because they shared relatively few interactions. Each interaction between the librarian and a student determines whether that student will want to return to the library. An adage in customer service says that dissatisfied customers often will not express their complaints—they will just never return. Effective customer relationships require understanding and appreciating the nature as well as the needs and wants of the customer. This chapter focuses on the most important library program customers—students.

Students entering school libraries seek help and resources for a variety of reasons, and each student brings a different level of confidence. They hope to find what they need and have access to friendly, knowledgeable, and sincere help. The library staff is in a unique position for building special relationships with students. Teachers set expectations for student performance, and school librarians help students meet those expectations. Those students who feel disenfranchised from the school culture may benefit particularly from the special nature of that relationship. The librarian has a unique opportunity to facilitate learning.

CONDITIONS OF AMERICAN YOUTH

The conditions of young people in the United States vary dramatically. In each school, considering students’ economic and family conditions is a first step toward being responsive to their needs. Often such data on economic and family conditions of students are available at the state department of education’s website. It is also helpful to understand the conditions of the nation’s young people; this knowledge helps educators appreciate the condition of local youth.

Poverty and Race

In 2016, 19 percent of American children were living in families with incomes below the federal poverty level of $24,339 per year for a family of four, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty (Koball and Jiang 2018). In school year 2016–2017, the four-year graduation rate for public high school students was 85 percent, the highest it has been since it was first measured, but rates varied significantly by race. Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest rate (91 percent), followed by White (89 percent), Hispanic (80 percent), Black (78 percent), and American Indian/Alaska Native (72 percent) students (NCES 2019b). The relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement is well documented. Researchers have found that low SES negatively affects student achievement. For example, children’s initial reading competence is correlated with their home literacy environment, including the number of books owned (Bergen et al. 2017). Children from low-SES families are less likely to experience activities that encourage the development of foundational reading skills, such as phonological awareness and language development (Buckingham, Wheldall, and Beaman-Wheldall 2013). As a measure of post-high school success, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) tracks students’ completion of four-year college degrees within six years of graduation. The findings show a clear difference in six-year college completion rate between students from low-income/high-minority schools (25 percent) and a rate of 50 percent completion for those from affluent/low minority schools (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center 2018). These data reveal that significant poverty and racial factors align with differences in degrees of success among students.

Research also indicates a relationship between student academic success and quality of library staffing, access, and resources (Lance and Kachel 2018). Yet, Pribesh, Gavigan, and Dickinson (2011), in a study of access in school libraries in two states comparing staffing, annual book purchases, and hours of operation in low-poverty and high-poverty schools, found by these measures significantly less access in high-poverty schools—the very schools where students are likely to have higher needs for access and assistance. When children come from homes less likely to have learning resources or high-speed internet access, the school library should be an opportunity for them to compensate. However, school librarians must advocate for these children. Certainly, librarians cannot solve these problems alone. Social policy decisions related to housing, school districting, and busing create inequities. Nevertheless, school librarians who are aware of the needs of students in their own schools can seek opportunities to provide access to learning resources and can advocate for them at the local level. Step One is to know their students and their needs.

Language

NCES data for 2016 revealed that 9.6 percent of students were classified as English Language Learners (NCES 2019c). Census data for 2017 show that 27 percent of children under age eighteen in the United States are immigrant children (including first- and second-generation), and that more than half of them are Hispanic (Child Trends 2018a). Children newly arriving in the United States do not all face the same issues. Some face language barriers, some face poverty, and others are affected emotionally or psychologically by their life experiences. For a large proportion of them, English language acquisition is an immediate challenge. Their potential to acquire English language skills depends on a variety of factors, such as age, length of time in this country, socioeconomic status, parental education, and residence location (Rong and Preissle 1998). Some of these students arrive having been firsthand witnesses to the horrors of war and other inhumanities. The learning challenges for these children are intensified by the emotional complications their experiences may have created. Some have left family behind and may no longer have an adequate social network to support them. These added emotional and social circumstances hinder their attempts to learn. The school librarian may be in a particularly strong position to offer consolation and support to these students. Adams (2010) suggests that school libraries can assist newly arrived children in a variety of ways, including providing resources in native languages, learning to welcome students in their native languages, and reaching out to students through ELL classes and teachers.

Exceptional Learners

NCES data for 2017–2018 indicated that 14 percent of public school students received services from federally funded special education programs (NCES 2019a). Under the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendments of 1997, differently abled students are entitled to participation and progress within the general education curriculum (Yell and Sh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I. The Context
• PART II. The School Library Program
• About the Authors
• Index