School Librarians Rock!

Dodie Gaudet posts over at the Our Future blog about the terrific-ness of school librarians and is filled with Respect and Admiration for them.

I totally agree! I teach reference to future school librarians (among others) and since I don't know much about the field, I am doing some reference observations of my own. I have already visited two school librarians and have at least one more visit lined up. They are awesome. So much energy in the schools, so many different kinds of questions, students, teachers, resources, etc. Incredible.

The librarian I visited on Friday let me see some of the assignments her students had to complete -- with her assistance. Here are some of the questions that I will work into future reference assignments:

1. A student from the local vocational technical high school comes to see you one afternoon at the public library. For a health class, she has to find information on a career she would like to investigate. She's thinking about being an EMT or an emergency room nurse. She doesn't have a computer at home, she says, and she doesn't use them much at school. How can you help her?

2. You are the high school librarian and a social studies teacher has asked her students write a 1-2 page paper on a country of their choice. The assignment handout says they have to cover the following areas: population, religions, weather, customs, currency, education, life expectancy, imports & exports, industries, brief history and a map. That's a lot! The students will be in the library for 3 days to study this; what resources would you make available?

3. You are helping student who has to complete four of 10 questions for a Bill of Rights project. He's working on this one and is sitting at the computer looking very perplexed. He needs to “Create a large timeline that illustrates at least 5 of the major Supreme Court cases and their relation to the 4th Amendment.” You can definitely help him - but how?

Phew -- there is a lot to learn. Go school librarians, go!