ISCI 794 Blog Assignment: Engage (Post 3)

 AASL National School Library Standards for School Librarians

Shared Foundation: Engage

For the Engage Foundation, I spoke to a middle school librarian at a public school. This was her second year at this school and as a school librarian, so many of the practices and programs she has been implementing this year were new. It was interesting to hear how a new librarian was slowly incorporating the standards as she got to know her students and the school. She mentioned how the expectations of the administration is not exactly for her to practice library standards but to act as a mainly technology expect for the school. Despite lack of administrator expectations, the librarian mentioned several ways she is incorporating the standards into her practice as often as she can. 

In the Engage Foundation, the Think Domain states that school librarians should "promote ethical and legal guidelines for gathering and using information" (American Association for School Librarians, 2018, p. 112). A major initiative in this library is digital citizenship and media literacy. Most of the library lessons the librarian teaches are related to students' online presence. She mentioned teaching lessons on ethical and legal guidelines on the Internet when it comes to sharing personal information online or interacting with others in an online space. The major tool that the librarian uses to teach media lessons is Common Sense Media. She often uses the videos and presentations for teaching and creates exit tickets or short writing assignments to test students' understanding. 

Part of the Grow Domain of the Engage Foundation states that school librarians are "championing and modeling safe, responsible, ethical, and legal information behaviors" (American Association for School Librarians, 2018, p. 112). Online bullying became a problem that started influencing students' behavior in school. To help combat that, the librarian gave lessons on cyberbullying with scenarios for students to choose how they would respond or what they think the correct action to take in certain scenarios. She found that many students struggled with this. Here, we talked about the many difficulties of teaching these socio-emotional skills to students while also incorporating digital literacy skills. Part of teaching students to use the Internet ethically and responsibly, as the Engage Foundation calls for, is teaching them the socio-emotional skills of digital citizenship. The librarian mentioned that it was hard to get students to take anti-cyberbullying lessons seriously. These students are "digital natives" and have a different relationship to the social Internet than older generations. But part of being able to engage with information ethically is being able to engage with others responsibly. It was helpful to see how digital literacy lessons tied into these socio-emotional lessons in some ways, and how the librarian was meeting students' interpersonal needs as well as academic needs with these lessons.   

Another aspect of media/digital literacy lessons taught in the library is the topics of photo filters and editing. These lessons are designed to get students thinking critically about how photos are edited and the purpose behind it. Similar with the cyberbullying lessons, she found students' preconceived notions of online images made it difficult for them to engage with this lesson fully. The librarian mentioned how these students see photo edits and modifications as a "normal" part of online content, but her lessons aim to show how this can be harmful when it is the editing of images in the news or media. It was interesting to hear about the disconnect between students' relationship with the Internet and the relationship that adult educators creating these lessons have with the Internet. Sometimes it seems that the importance or justification of these lessons can get lost in translation. It is important for middle school librarians to try to meet students where they are with these topics. The librarian clearly keeps this in mind and is continuously adjusting lessons to get through to her students. It is helpful to hear about how some lessons may "fail" and how librarians adjust. 

Two of the biggest challenges the librarian shared were lack of time and lack of materials. The librarian mentioned the lack of library materials and lessons available at the middle school level. These students are not yet doing intensive research projects but they have also grown out of a lot of the elementary level library programs. While there have been a couple of collaborative efforts with teachers, especially around citation help, they are not a regular part of the library program. Since this is a middle school, the library is on a flexible schedule so she doesn't see students consistently. It was very enlightening to see how standards are adopted to meet the needs of students, and to hear about some of the practical challenges of teaching "digital native" students about digital literacies. 

Reference: 

American Association of School Librarians. (2018). National school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. American Library Association.