 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the SJSU School of Information Career Colloquia Session. My name is Jill Klees, and I am your iSchool Career Center Liaison. So thank you for joining me this evening. We have the great pleasure to have three teacher librarians representing different segments of teacher librarianship with us for a candid talk about what exactly teacher librarians do. This session is one hour. It is being recorded, so feel free to ask presenters questions throughout the presentation. And you can do that by typing your questions into the chat box. This particular session is going to be done a little bit differently where we're going to have a moderator, and she will be asking the other presenters some questions. So I think it's fine to go ahead and type your questions into the chat box as we're going through the presentation. You're also welcome to share your comments on Twitter using the hashtag SJSU colloquia. And I will type that in here just as well in just a minute when we get started. So I think we're ready to go. I'm going to hand this off to one of our SJSU iSchool two-time alumna and lecturer, Dr. Mary Ann Harlan. So go ahead and take it away, Mary Ann. Hi, I'm Dr. Harlan. I am a two-time alumna. I got my MLIS and teacher librarianship credential at San Jose State in 1999. I was working as a school librarian when I did that, and I worked for as a school librarian until 2008. I came on board at San Jose State University as a professor lecturer in 2010. And about a year or so thereafter that I took over administration of the teacher librarianship program at San Jose State, which essentially means that I sign a lot of contracts and answer a lot of questions and make sure that we're following standards. So that is my role at San Jose State. I'm an assistant professor there now, and I teach a couple of school librarian classes. With us joining us tonight is Dr. Bellercher, who is another professor at San Jose State who also teaches school librarian classes and who fabulously introduced me to one of our presenters tonight. But I was curious to know what kind of your background is if you're working in a school library or if you're not working in a school, if you're hoping to work in a school, what's your situation? And I'm realizing this didn't get updated. So if you could just type in the background, you know, in the back chat rather than even willing a poll where, you know, if you're in the program or if you're just curious about school librarianship. And I see somebody's typing. So, and welcome, Mary. And we just got started. You haven't missed anything, so. Joining us tonight, let me introduce who we have with us tonight. We have Shannon Hyman, who is a, I'm sorry, I don't know how to pronounce that, but she's a teacher librarian at a school in Virginia. And she works in a library learning commons, which I'm sure she will talk to about, looks lovely, that I'm sure she'll talk to us a little bit about what that means and what that means for her day. All of these pictures here, that's a lovely picture of Shannon. And all of these pictures here that we have are of her school librarian, things that are going on in her school library learning commons. We also have with us Lisa Cheddie, who is a teacher librarian at Fredugo Hills High School. And I forgot to ask you guys to put your URLs in the back chat because I'm not live right now, but I will do it once we get started so that people have access to your websites. Anyways, Lisa Cheddie is with us. She is at Fredugo Hills High School, which is in Los Angeles. Lisa is a recent, I think. Certainly she's a recent finisher of the teacher librarian program at San Jose State, and I think she's finished her MLIS now. Thanks. And so she is with us to talk a little bit about what her day is like at Fredugo High School. So welcome, and I thank you both very much for joining us. So I'm curious, before we get started, we're going to take another poll just to give our presenters an idea of where you're at in terms of this, when they're answering questions, which is are you in your first year of library school? Are you somewhere in the middle or graduating? Or are you an alumni like Lisa is? So we have somebody who's somewhere in the middle, and somebody who is in their first year, and that's fabulous, and it's great to have you here. And you now have both of the sites, so that's great. So there's two people in their first year. So welcome, and we're happy to have you here tonight. So we're going to start with the first question, and I think I will let Lisa start this off and then have Shannon answer the question second. We'll start there. And the very first question is, what is it that drew you in to school librarianship? Why are you here? What made you want to be a school librarian or a teacher librarian? So first of all, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me, and it's interesting because I kind of fell into being a school librarian when I took a leave of absence and came back and ended up in a position that was part-time librarian and a part-time English teacher. But what made me want to stay and pursue the librarian position as a full-time position is the different focus that you get to have as a librarian. I liked that I could focus particularly on literacy issues and information literacy and technological literacy and working with students. And I could just go in a way that felt a little bit freer because since I don't grade the students, then I could just really hone in on these skills that I saw as so lacking in some of my students and something that I wish I had more time to focus on. And then also, I get to do that in a way that's very collaborative, working with other teachers and helping them implement that in their class. I also really liked sort of the variety of tests that you get to do as librarians. So I've been teaching for almost 10 years at that point. And it was nice to just kind of have a little bit of a change of pace and be able to be involved in sort of more management, more professional development activities, and also just sort of curating programming for students to try to engage with them in different ways. Thank you. Shannon? Hi, everyone. I'm excited to be here as well. And thank you so much for welcoming in, welcoming me in to get to meet some of you and talk with you tonight. I really want to affirm what Lisa was just saying as well regarding wanting to join into librarianship in order to be able to collaborate. The collaborative nature was very attractive to me with other teachers, with other staff members. But I would say also, I'll back up a little bit all the way to my childhood because I'm definitely one of those people that kind of knew what I wanted to do from the very beginning. And I can remember when I was a young girl, I actually used to go up to our treehouse and I would bring all of my books and line them up and just absolutely destroy them by writing little spine labels on them and little places to check out with the little checkout cards the whole nine years. And I knew at that point that having my own little treehouse library was just a precursor to what I would probably end up doing the rest of my life. Although I didn't do it immediately, I talked for about 20 years before I became a librarian and what really drew me to wanting to do that is that exciting opportunity to be able to impact an entire school and really quite honestly an entire district rather than just the handful of students that I would be able to work with, you know, a year at a time. So that was certainly something that was attractive to me. I think additionally to that, I also found it really an exciting opportunity to be able to get a seat at the instructional table in terms of working with administrators, staff and teachers developing curriculum, thinking about our school's goals and our visions for the future of our students and looking at the students as a whole rather than simply at one grade level. So I thought that was really intriguing and I really liked the opportunity to be able to do that and have been given that opportunity in my current position. So I truly do value that. I really also affirm that Lisa was mentioning as well in terms of having that freedom. We certainly have standards and things that we follow and we are certainly people who are quite conscious of data and making sure that we are making good decisions based on what's happening with our students instructionally. But it's also really nice to be able to step away from that a little bit and find out what that whole student is in need of. And sometimes the flexibility of our program allows us to meet those needs in very different ways and can be very formative for them. And I think that's really exciting as well. Thank you. So a couple of sort of common themes that I want to highlight that came out of that is the notion of being able to be collaborative and impact the whole student has sort of been a holistic approach. And certainly that was one of the things that wasn't what drew me to librarianship. It was what made it my vocation and it was the thing that I was passionate about. So I can respect the fact that that is what you're talking about. That item of being having a little bit more freedom and being able to look at a whole school and do the sort of collaborative approach to education that really you're allowed in the school library in ways that sometimes you're not in the classroom. So it's great to hear that sort of those themes emerge and I can definitely echo and support them. So. Mary Ann? Yes. Oh, I just wanted to add something that Shannon said that, you know, it's nice to be able to have that seat at the instructional table but still be a teacher also. You know, it is distinct from an administrative position. So that's something else that I also really liked about it was that opportunity to have that. But still be among the teachers. Yeah, that's really important. And Jill asked a question in the back chat about one needing to be a teacher before moving into the role. And that is really dependent on your state. And then like everything in education, that means there's 50 different answers. It really depends on what state you're in. So in California, you have to have what I have taken to calling a base credential which is a classroom teaching credential. In other states, you don't necessarily have to have that. I'm not sure Shannon, what's the status in Virginia? To answer your question, I can't tell you specifically but I can tell you that I know that you can get your, you are required to get your master's degree as a teacher. And then beyond that, you can go ahead and get your master's degree with specializing in school library science, which is what I've done. So really, if you do that, most people have been a teacher before they are librarians, although I have certainly seen people who have gone through the program, specifically career changers, that kind of thing, and then they have stuck right into a library program without necessarily having that kind of experience in the classroom. But my experience has been, I think it is incredibly helpful to be able to have that. Yes, I would echo that. I, you know, from my perspective as some of the administrator of the teacher librarianship program, I have had a remarkably difficult sort of relationship with California requirements of having that teacher credential first. But our program is built on the idea that you have it. And my experience with people is that generally better school librarians mean or people who have already had classroom teaching experience. And there's an authority thing, too, where teachers are like, oh, you know what it means to be in my shoes. And that's, I find, particularly helpful. And you might notice that Sinead put something in the back chat. I use this site all the time, which is the 50 state certification requirements. And also, it has links to the state's departments of education, which I need to look at. So it's really helpful if you're from out of state of California that you look at that particular site in order to have that question answered. But thank you for bringing it up, Jill. So one of the things about being a school librarian is that it looks different than being a classroom teacher. It's interesting that we're just talking about that. And your daily activities look a lot different. And I think one of the things that Lisa mentioned is that there's such a variety of different tasks. So I wanted you guys to spend a little bit of time talking about what your daily activities look like. And my guess is this isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, because they probably don't look the same from day to day. But if you had just kind of a little bit of a snapshot. And Shannon, if we could start with you, because you're actually working in a library learning commons just slightly, as I've heard, pretty remarkable and a little different, and Lisa, I know you're working towards that at your site. So I'm going to start, Shannon, and then we're going to follow up, Lisa. Thank you. Yes, to start, I should also say I probably didn't mention this before. If you're wondering my location right now, it's actually, I'm on the East Coast. So it's a little bit later here. And so I'm at home, as opposed to some of you actually being in your workplaces. But I do also want to just mention that we were given a really unique opportunity in that we were able to open our school three years ago. And so I was pulled to do a, oh, thank you. I just saw your information about the video. No problem. That sounds great. We had the opportunity to be able to open the school and basically design the school and develop the school and the culture from the ground up. And so in doing so, I was hired specifically because I knew where I wanted our program to go and kind of community we wanted to build. And it aligned perfectly with what our principal was thinking in terms of a culture of readers in the library learning commons kind of scenario that we wanted to do in our school. So with that in mind, our daily activities are busy to say the least. I would say, I guess I want to ask first, if you think would you like for me to kind of go through what would typically happen in a day? Is that pretty much what you're asking me with this so that I can be a little more specific? Yeah, that's the direction I was going. Okay, great. All right, so in a typical day, the first thing that would happen in our library learning commons is open access checkouts. And that's pretty typical for most traditional libraries. Students are able to come in immediately and take care of any library business they have. Simultaneously, while that is happening, I am also working with a morning crew of students who fully produce a live morning show each day using some pretty interesting and exciting technology in order to do that, including video switching, audio mixing, as well as laptop and DVD interaction, and live anchors as well as special guests. And that happens on a daily basis, and it is kind of frenetic, but it's really exciting to see. And we designed that program in order to be able to build skills in our students that they could continue to apply and use throughout their school careers and then beyond. So that happens first thing in the morning, literally at 7.20 in the morning, and we go live about 10 minutes later. And then directly after that, we move into, oh, and by the way, that is run completely by students. I'm simply just supervising that. So we do some training, and then they run it. And then directly after that, we move into, generally speaking, a few fixed classes that I have for kindergarten, first and second grade. Those are done within our regular schedule so that we can allow our students some planning time. Excuse me, our teachers some planning time, excuse me. And our students then come to me for about a 30-minute lesson in if they're in grades, kindergarten, first and second grade on a rotating basis. That, again, is pretty typical and for traditional type libraries. But in addition to that, what's happening simultaneously at that time are continued open access checkouts throughout the school as well as an open-maker space for our students. And I'll be happy to talk about that later if you would like, but that's been something that has been incredibly successful in our library learning commons. Simultaneously to that happening as well, we have students that are coming in to research as well as to work in small groups. We have something we have called a cognitive coalition, which is pretty much staffed by parents who are volunteering to come in and work with small groups of students and that's happening simultaneously. So that pretty much happens in the very early parts of our day and then directly after that we are moving into what we would consider to be our flexibly planned schedule, which for the most part includes our third, fourth and fifth grade classes, but can also include our kindergarten, first and second grade classes as well, depending on what their needs are. So all of those classes are planned collaboratively and then co-taught with the teacher and they are all determined at point of need. So whatever those teachers are needing, we plan that collaboratively and then co-teach it together. Most of our planning, to be quite honest with you, because we're super busy, is done in our pajamas and that means we do it via our Google Drive that we all use and so we're usually opening a doc and planning from that direction. So that's happening pretty much for the rest of the afternoon in terms of instruction in the library learning commons, but again, simultaneously to that going on we also have makerspace happening and students rotating in and out using our makerspace area as well as students enjoying open access checkouts, as well as students researching and working in smaller groups depending on other support personnel that are working in the building. The space is used really to the fullest extent and it is often changing and quite flexible. So meaning many of our shelving units are on wheels and so there, it's not unusual to see that we would move actual furniture around in order to accommodate a specific event or a specific lesson that's being taught. So that's the kind of thing that would happen on a general instructional day. While that's going on in between time, I might also have consultations with specific teachers or grade levels and I might also be working to help troubleshoot technology. We do have an instructional resource teacher, excuse me, instructional technology resource teacher who comes to our school only once per week and he actually shares five other schools. So that leaves pretty much the balance of a lot of kinds of technology troubleshooting and also training to a certain extent and integration to me. I see a question from David or a point of David to tell you about how we manage some of that movement in the library learning commons and that is a key. Everything is done very intentionally and very carefully planned in terms of a movement in and out of our library learning commons to control the chaos as best we can. One of the things that we use and have been very successful with are wristbands and they're the wristbands that you probably have seen for things like Live Strong or you know other kind of inspirational saying type things but we purchase them with our library learning commons name on them and we have green ones that our students use if they have any kind of library related business so basically the way that works is at the beginning of each year I give each teacher a certain number of wristbands depending on the number of students they have in their classroom as an example if they have you know somewhere around 20 to 25 students in their classroom they'll probably get about four wristbands per class I do the same thing with our purple wristbands which are intended for those students who will be using our makerspace area. Basically what this does is it helps manage the number of students who are coming at any particular time it also gives us a quick look when students come in the door of why they are there first of all and also it confirms that they have permission to be there. If they don't have a wristband on it's probably because they are a wanderer and they might be actually heading down to the clinic but thought the library learning commons looked more fun and so they you know hung out with us so it kind of gives us a quick little management thing without me having to stop instruction or my assistant having to get up and check on what's happening and it helps us to be able to manage the space a little bit better. I found that the wristbands have been a little bit better than some other things that I've used in the past such as you know the necklaces and things like that mostly because I saw them about the high school they're cooler for our older kids and so they do actually really like that and coming from which I haven't mentioned coming from a middle school that's where I came from before I opened the school wristbands are really something that seemed to work pretty well because they stayed on and didn't get lost but if you're concerned about that you know the other thing that we do is we have we use a Google sign-in that we have that's just basically a Google form and that also has some accountability attached to it to let us know who's in the space at any given time and it allows us to be able to keep data really easily and be able to check on where people are in the building to make sure that everyone is being safe so in addition to all those things during the day like I was mentioning we would have consultations as well with different staff and teachers and I'm also part of our administrative team. I know Lisa had mentioned too about that seat at the table being unique for us and that we can be teachers while we are also working in a bigger leadership role and that is the case for me I'm very fortunate that I'm actually considered part of the administrative team and that I am the instructional connection for them so I'm sort of the liaison for instructional the instructional piece whereas our associate principal is sort of the liaison for discipline kinds of things that are going on and then our school counselor would be sort of the student advocate kind of avenue anyway together it really does seem to work well but that also is a portion of my day is meeting with them and we meet once a week to talk about the school as a whole and bring all those pieces together and make sure that we're aligning with our continuous school plan. I'm also part of our school leadership team which means I meet with grade levels and department chairs and so again just keeping all of that aligned is part of my job as well. In addition to all those things on a daily basis we would also be very busy planning on event type things like author visits, reading incentives and that sort of thing and then on top of all that of course would be just keeping the space running logistically and by that I'm talking about collection development, making sure that we have things processed, processing interlibrary loans, taking care of any email requests that are coming through that sort of thing. My job, I see the question is my job 12 months. My job is not, well okay I'm not paid for 12 months but I, so I do work pretty much the same contract as the teachers I do work a little bit later and come in a little bit before really I would say a total of about two weeks difference in that but I would not be truthful if I did not say that I work quite a bit more than that throughout the summer in planning and meeting with the principal and I find that to be quite valuable because again I know that I'm aligning with what our whole school plan is by being able to do that. Thank you. You are remarkably busy. I knew when I asked this question that this was going to open up a lot of something, a lot of like oh my gosh look at everything that has to be done during course of the day because you've got a lot going on and it's really super impressive. A couple of things I want to mention is that the idea of starting a new school and this is a good way to lead into Lisa because she's coming into an environment which is a little bit different sometimes but the fact that you have this opportunity to sort of kind of start in a new school and build a program which is always super exciting. I've done that before but it really does kind of open up these amazing opportunities and you have taken such advantage of it and have such an amazing, rich program. It's great to hear it articulated and sort of described because that is what we all want to have happen in school libraries so that was great. Thank you. Lisa, one of the things that we did is we wanted to have an elementary and a high school or primary and a secondary school librarian so Lisa actually works at a high school library, might look a little bit different. It's definitely a program that she's coming into which means there's probably tradition and those types of things that impact the way she works but if you could kind of take a little bit of time to describe your day that would be great. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's actually a good amount of overlap I think with what Shannon has already talked about but I think I'm going to talk a little bit more generally because my days, I feel like my days may vary a little bit more based on scheduling and teachers coming in and how we do our, sort of how I manage my calendar. Also it is very different coming into a school that has a, that is a very old school with a very established faculty that has a very set way of doing things and where sort of the politics of the school are already established and it's been a challenging school as far as budgets and some administrative issues we've had but you know, in the library I kind of, I'm very fortunate to be at a school that allows me to basically kind of do what I want and experiment in Chinese things so I'm very thankful for that. So the day usually starts out with students coming in using the library before class and a lot of my time is sort of broken up by students coming in individually and I think maybe there's more of that in high school. So I don't have an assistant at my school so I do everything from you know, the physical checking in and out of books to troubleshooting on the computers to the whole curriculum design and collection management items. So how I design that up varies for me from day to day and from each week depending on classes that are coming in and so initially when I started there I had a lot more time because there weren't a lot of classes coming into the library because they didn't have a librarian for about almost a half a semester before I started there. So mostly I'd be helping individual students using the library, using computers, a lot of them just typing, printing papers, I've started by inventorying my collection and working on collection management would be a lot of my day as well as developing lessons and developing online resources for students and for teachers and then sort of targeting and marketing the library to the school and to the teachers to get people to come in to the library. So that's sort of a different aspect that I think Shannon, that seemed kind of built into the school design which was really great whereas I have to sort of build or reinvigorate the program that was there. So you know the link to the website is somewhere in there and that can kind of show what I've done as far as building that online presence for the school. A lot of my work is really focused on getting the students ready for college level research and so in recruiting teachers to come to the school or to come to the library, I, you know, I was able to use those tools to go to the department meetings individually and it took about a year, year and a half for me to kind of get a core group of teachers to come in on a regular basis to do research lessons and collaborate with me. So that's been exciting seeing that develop. So my day-to-day like today I went in, I taught three research lessons with classes. I'm doing a series of research lessons with one of the science teachers and in between that during lunch students are coming into print papers, check out books. During lunchtime I hosted the book club meeting and got to chat with those students and in between filming all those sort of other emails and teacher requests for scheduling time and videos and resources and that sort of thing. So sometimes my days are very depending on the time of the semester, it's very much teaching and helping students with research and then other times when it's much slower I focus more on reading the collection and I've just been trying to make the collection more accessible. We have, you know, books, the school's been there since 1924. So we have books from 1924 in the collection, so it's interesting going through and doing that and then of course there's fundraising and programming and that is part of your job that you may not realize is part of the job when you go an hour, depends on the school. So I do spend a lot of time trying to find ways to raise money so that I can buy books and that kind of goes hand in hand with the collection development and I know Dr. Lawshere is here and in his class I created some wonderful sort of propaganda, sorry I think my computer kind of cut out there for a minute. And so my, actually the past two years have been advocating for expanding our computer lab, expanding the collection and raising money for those things. So I've been in sort of grant development mode also in addition to collection development. So those things sort of feed off each other and you kind of fit those things in between all the questions of the students coming in and eating out of their papers or finding books or checking out books. And so I feel like my days are a little bit less structured than what it sounds like at Shannon School but it all sort of happens, you know, as you can kind of fit things in. And then I try to do a lot of programming. I bring in authors and our local poet laureate comes in to do creative writing workshops and things like that. So that's, I think I've kind of touched on everything that I do throughout the day and just continually developing those resources and trying to, you know, right now still trying to build a program, a school-wide program of research and information literacy instruction. So I guess I'll open up to questions at that point. So I'm going to direct Jill's question a little bit. So Lisa's come into a library that has a culture of very traditional librarianship and she's been slowly working to sort of change and shift that sort of function there. And a lot of what she's talked about is having to kind of reach out and do some advocacy and then the grant building because you got your MLIS which not everybody does in the teacher librarianship program at San Jose State in which I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend. Can you talk a little bit Lisa about the electives that you took that you think helped make you marketable beyond, you know, the things that you were absolutely required to take? Oh, sure. I mean, first of all, I know the next question and this is something about what I wish I knew when I went into this. And my only answer is I wish I knew everything I learned in the high school program. You know, I really started off not having any clue about librarianship. And so all the teacher librarians, the teacher librarians classes, of course, you know, were things I could incorporate, the only in what I was doing. And I love that the program is also structured in that way. I will say also, you know, the other classes I've taken, I'm trying to think which were the elective classes I took. I remember I did take Dr. Tucker's online searching which I believe is not part of, you know, it's not a required class for the teacher librarianship. Yes. So that class is amazing and has completely changed how I teach research. It's completely, you know, and I was an English teacher. So, you know, theoretically I taught research but this sort of revolutionized my way of thinking about research and how to engage students in research, particularly because so much is online and the students think they know how to do research because they know how to access a web browser. And so it's deepened my understanding of all of that. I also took a metadata class which I found to really help me better understand sort of, again, the behind the scenes of what we're seeing. So much of our interaction with resources is through the computer. And so it helped me understand, again, how we find things, how we classify things. And what we're kind of seeing on the screen, that sort of under the hood behind the scenes look at information. So all of that I think are, I think those are two courses that really helped me try to think as far as what other electives I took. But basically all the classes just really seem to sit together in ways that just always continue to push and inspire me to understand our job on a deeper level. And I think like Shannon was saying before, you know, we go out there and we advocate, our advocates for this sort of higher level of rigor and the larger picture in education for our students as well as what our faculty are trying to do. And that is a role that I didn't expect to have but that I find I really love. And I find that I, you know, I think I'm kind of good at it. So it just seems to be a good fit for me and I really enjoy that a lot and being able to work with everybody in that way and have that larger impact on a whole school. And as Shannon said, possibly, you know, a district, push the district to, again, be meeting those more rigorous standards and deeper understanding of what it is our students really need to be learning as far as technology and information literacy. And somebody has to be sort of the Lorax out there saying, this is what we need. And so now I'm getting into computer lab. It's very exciting. Mary Ann, could I also add something to that as well? Yeah. And then I'm going to talk a little bit. I'm going to answer David's question. But go ahead. Oh, sure. Yes. I just wanted to, again, I totally agree with everything that Lisa is saying about marketing yourself in all of those ways. One little layer of that that I definitely want to make sure that your students and these other colleagues have considered and think about is especially when you're walking into a new situation, whether it be like mine where I, we were building from the ground up or like mine when I was working in a middle school environment in a school that had been established for 50 years. You know, both of those are very different kinds of environments. But one thing that I would definitely say is key to both of them is making that connection to your administrator and taking the time to research your school's goals and their continuous school plan, taking a look at your district's goals, looking to see what the mission statements are, and making sure that every single thing you're doing is aligning with that. That makes you indispensable and quite marketable within not only for your administration but also for your staff. And then, again, likewise with your staff, taking a look at that curriculum, making sure that you're understanding where their needs are, taking a look at their data, see where the weaknesses are on the students, and know that at the same time they're knowing that so that you can actually be a support to what they are doing and a team member, a co-teacher, rather than somebody on the side. It's very hard to break through some of those traditional thinking, traditional norms that are out there. And I know that's one of our questions, too. But, you know, it's very hard to do that without you taking the time to do the research ahead, making sure that you're aligning with those things. If you show that value of your alignment with everything that they need, what their stakes are, then they are much more likely to pull you alongside them and see your value in their needs as well. Thank you. It's funny, we just did this in one of my classes, this alignment between mission and vision and making and standards and what you're trying to do and aligning it with both the library and the school. It's just super important. Dr. Lercher asked about your record space. And I do want to address that, but I'm very conscious of the time at this point. So what I would like to do is to hold that particular question until question four, which is the thing about stereotypes. And then that way, if we run over, we can continue to record, but it's kind of at there. So I want to hold, I want to put a pin in that question. And I definitely want to come back to it, Shannon, but I am super conscious of time at the moment. I think one of the things that's important for all school librarians to consider when you come into the school library is what is it that brought you into the school library? So I wanted to ask this question about why are you interested in school libraries? Are you interested in helping kids explore their world? Frequently, we hear it's B that you're building a level of reading, although you may have heard from both of our presenters tonight that that may shift as you get involved in what you're doing. Is it teaching academic research or building rigor like Lisa just talked about, or is there some other reason that you're interested in school librarianship? So I set a little poll up. You can either do it in the back chat the way we've been doing, because there's so few of us, to kind of keep an eye on it, or there's a little A, B, C, or D up at the top underneath your name, and you can drop that down, and that'll give us poll numbers as well, and then we can see where people are at. But that was, I just wanted you guys to think through that, because I think it's helpful in establishing, you know, what it is that's bringing you into the school library. In the interest of time, however, it's Shannon that's interesting, that building a level of reading, because you are, you do so much, so much more than that. I'm going to move on. Yeah, thanks, Sinead. So this was a question. What did you wish you knew before you started? And let's go ahead and start with Lisa. Yeah, I think, you know, as I said, I sort of wish I already had the degree. I wasn't kind of, you know, and knew everything that I learned in high school before I started. I guess the only other thing is that I wish I knew, I wish I thought of this option earlier, like maybe 20 years ago. I just love my job so much. I don't know if I would have, you know, followed into it if I hadn't gone all the other paths that I had gone along before I ended up in a high school library. But, you know, I kind of wish I was more aware of it, that as a career option. And for some reason it just wasn't really on my radar. Thanks. I fell into it, too, and I feel exactly the same way. Yeah, Jill mentioned in the back, if you've picked D, can you tell, can you kind of clarify what other means? So, and then, so, Shannon, what do you wish, if you can think back, what do you wish you knew before you became a librarian? Well, I think I kind of agree with a lot of the things that Lisa has said as well. I have some funny things that I guess I wish I had kind of known before I had stepped into it, although I don't think there's any going back. I'm kind of like Lisa, I love what I do. I'm very passionate about what I do, but one thing that I didn't know before I started is that in this particular job there's absolutely no closure. It's like shoveling while it's still snowing. I mean, it's just a constant amount of activity as well as a constant amount of change. And that's inherent of this position. I think you have to be open to it, but it's not something that I realized until I was already well into it. So, I think that's one thing that might have been nice to know ahead is that this kind of job is just an ongoing kind of thing. You just really don't get closure on really anything at all. The other thing that I would say too is just I think it might have been more helpful for me to have an idea of the scope of what I would be doing. I think my library program that I was in was an amazing program, and it certainly opened my eyes to what it is to be a librarian or whatever. I'm not even sure what you guys use as the title. We're school librarians and information specialists as our official title. But basically I had no idea the scope of it until I stepped into that pool. And again, that is part of what I love about it, but I think I might have liked that a little bit more. The other thing I think when I looked with looking towards doing this, I think it would have been, I think it would have been a faster transition for me had I already started thinking about looking at education sort of outside of the box. Because that is, as Lisa mentioned before, one of the cool things about being a librarian is being able to look at things from a different perspective. And so I mentioned that because I think that that's been one of the valuable things I've learned along the way is simply being able to see what is working well out in society and figuring out how you can hack that to see what that looks like in a school and how that can benefit your community inside the school. So I think that's one thing I would say. The other thing I would say having been again in a school that was 50 years old and then moving to one that was brand new, if I'm glad that having had that experience, I knew that I would want to, when given the opportunity to buy new furniture and books and that sort of thing, I would want to do that with flexibility in mind. Making sure that I could use as much as I could, you know, in a lot of different ways. So Shannon, you're alluding to a couple of things that's going to lead us right into this question, which is what myth would you like to bust? And it also comes back to the question that David asked about the year makerspace, right? Because it's a little, and the fact that you call yourself a library learning commons, it's a little different. So could you talk a little bit about this in particular the second point that you've just made about thinking about education outside the box? Sure. I think, first of all, I'll just tell you my myths buster things that are definitely sort of my pet peeves. But very quickly, one that I would really like to bust is when people say that it is my library, it makes me just cringe. Because that is the exact opposite of what I see and envision as a library learning commons. It belongs to all of us and it is space for all of us. So that's one thing I would definitely bust out there. Now my students and my community, they know this, but people on the outside looking in, it is something that I think is a stereotype that needs to be busted. Also, the one of our librarians read all day, we wish we got to read all day. That's all I can say about that. But that's definitely a myth. We do not have that luxury. The other thing I would say is that I would definitely want to bust that idea of libraries or quiet places to consume information. And that's where I'm going to jump right into this discussion about maker spaces. Because we do have certain areas in our library learning commons that are quiet and are better for students to be able to concentrate and relax and sort of decompress a bit, but we also have a pretty good hum going most of the day in our areas such as our maker space areas. We basically teach our students that the library learning commons is a place where we have consumers and producers of information. And really, depending on the age of the student, we say it in different ways. The language we use with our younger ones are, we have makers and we have takers. And so your traditional thinking about libraries in terms of checking out books, in terms of researching and that sort of thing is the side where we have the opportunity to take information. So that's the taker part of the library learning commons. And it's a very valuable part of what we do. But in addition to that, we have makers. And that's what we talk to our kids about how it's exciting to not only be able to consume the information or be the takers of the information, but to have the opportunity to create that information. And we have maker space for that purpose. It gives our students the opportunity to explore their passions, to identify skills that they would like to learn and to begin to tinker with those skills and try them out. It's a safe place for them to be able to take risks and fail and then learn through the failing. And because of that and through that, we also are able to give them that opportunity to learn that really all of that that is in their imagination and in their hearts that they are passionate about, it really just doesn't come alive until they have the opportunity to share it. And so that's a big part of what we do with our library learning commons as well, is make sure that we're building opportunities for our students to share what they do. It can be something as simple as at the end of every maker space experience, our students are required to grab an iPad and document their process. So it could be a simple image that they take or it could be a quick video where the student is kind of explaining what they've done and the process that they've gone through materials they might have used, their ethics failed as well as any successes that they might have. And then we take all of those and load those to our library learning commons page for parents to be able to see as well as, you know, the world for that matter. And it gives them that audience that's very authentic and it really helps them to see a purpose in what they're doing. That's sort of the small end of it but obviously we have lots of other opportunities as well for students to share what they've, their experiences have been and that's been a big part of it as well. The last stereotype I would love to bust though is this picture that we all look like that even though she's kind of cute. That's what I'm going to say. I don't think that's true. Lisa, we have a couple more minutes. Do you have anything to add really quickly to that, anything that Shannon didn't touch on? I think she covered a lot of, you know, I think the typical myths. I think for me in the high school there is this idea that like, you know, my only job is to sit there and check books in and out and people just, and I didn't either, you know, have no idea sort of the scope of what it takes to manage and develop a collection and really have a thriving library program and that building of curriculum across disciplines and, you know, the work as the, of being an advocate for the students and for the faculty and, you know, in that sense. So I would say that the main myth that I would like to bust is that we just check books in and out and sit around and read. I saw a great thing about that particular myth, the checking books in and out and why professional librarians have found themselves in that position recently written by Sharon McNameel, somebody David is actually familiar with too. So that's a really, that's a good point because I hear that a lot. We are very close on time and Jill had a question that I think is really important which is the job outlook for teacher librarians and hopefully everybody can stay on for just a little bit for any more questions. I would say the job outlook for teacher librarians as always tends to vary from state to state, it depends. I will, right now California is hiring, we are having a hard time filling positions in California, it's become an actual issue where we've seen a couple of school districts cut the position because they can't fill it, although to be honest, they're not being very creative about how they want to fill that position. They just want somebody who's already got a credential. One of the things that you may have picked up on is that Lisa started her program in the MLISTL program already working in a school library and that is very, very familiar at the San Jose program. I would say 70% of our students are already working in a school library and they're trying to like fill in and get their credential. We're noting that there's a need in Virginia, New York is hiring right now, Illinois I know is struggling to fill positions. So right now there's a little bit of an opening for it. A lot of this has to do with the ways we market our role. Shannon spent a lot of time talking about her learning commons makerspace and sort of recognizing that basically what we're talking about here is that you don't sit in the back corner of your library and read books or, you know, fill out invitations to your daughter's birthday party because you just don't have time to do that. You have to be on your toes and you're working all the time and you've got kids coming in and you've got teachers coming in and you're teaching and you've got kids making, you know, creating and making and posting school-wide video announcements in the morning or you've got, you know, kids that are frantically trying to finish up their IB project or all of these things and so you're always very quite busy and I think as more people understand that that's our role then the more jobs there will be available to us. The more people who think that our role is to sit in the back corner and read books then the less jobs will be available to us. But right now the outlook is good so it's something, you know, to kind of keep in mind but it does, it switches a little bit. Allison has been saying in the back chat that she's gotten MLIS and has come back to get the teacher library in credential. I'm seeing that happen quite a bit as well. So it's 6.31 so we're at an hour and I would like to make sure that everybody got their questions answered. So I'm going to stop talking now and see if there are any questions. I want to thank both of you. I know it's late for you Shannon, it's 9.30 and Lisa I know you're probably like, oh I'd like to have dinner sometime soon but thank you very much both of you for coming in and talking about what it is you do every day. It shows such a wide variety and how spectacular this job can be because it really looks different in every place and every way and every day. So thank you so much.