I've Got Love for Librarians

This week we had librarians come to class to work with us and I can honestly say I never realized how awesome librarians are! When I heard we were going to split into groups with one librarian in each group I thought it would be a waste of time. I imagined a stereotypical librarian--a soft-spoken lady with big glasses and an attachment to printed text (note: I just want to be clear that I do not have a problem with librarians, this is just the common stereotype of a librarian). I was so wrong, though.

The librarian that worked with my group was amazing. She gave my group really great ideas and steered our conversation in a helpful direction. She had so many resources to share with us, like wallwisher and my fake wall (which is no longer functional, but we found something else called fakebook that looks very similar). Wallwisher is basically a website where you can brainstorm as a group by putting stick notes on a virtual wall. My fake wall/fakebook is a place where teachers and students can create fake facebook profiles for historical figures and events. Sites like these are pretty much a history teacher's dream! The librarian also came up with really innovative ways that we could use technology for our lesson, like using twitter to show students what different perspectives were on issues (for example, the NYC sugary drink ban) by searching the issue and looking at what came up. Her ideas were not limited to making the lesson more engaging, though. She also suggested ways to use technology for formative assessments. We planned on having students use google docs while working in groups so that we (as the teacher) could see what the groups were doing and how their thinking progressed. I liked the way she thought outside of the box and encouraged us to do so as well. I'd say it was a pretty genius idea.

Aside from telling us about really useful websites, the librarian talked to us about things librarians can do for teachers. She said that librarians at our schools can create pathfinders for our students. Basically, if we were going to have students do a project the librarian could set up a website for the class to reference that would have links to databases and various other places students could look for sources. She said that librarians love to do this for kids. I guess I always thought of librarians as the people who checked out and checked in my books in grade school, so I didn't realize they did all of these other things too. Additionally, the librarian we worked with said that many librarians would be happy to co-teach a class related to finding resources, whether students were looking for hard copies or were searching online. I don't know very much about databases and searching for sources--or at least I don't know enough that I'd feel comfortable teaching students about it--so it would be great to take some of the pressure off of myself and get someone who is more informed to help.

I think it's safe to say that I have completely altered my view of librarians. They have wonderful ideas about teaching and lesson planning. They have a plethora of resources to share with us if we ask them for help. They are more than willing to share their expertise. Yes, librarians are fantastic. Aren't they?

I've got love for librarians. I hope you do too.