Meeting

Today we had our first elementary librarians' meeting. Twelve of fifteen librarians signed up, and I think 10 showed up. Not bad. We shared lessons that we'd done and gave copies to the others. Then there was a rather spirited discussion about flexible and fixed scheduling. There is great disparity in our district in regard to the number of classes librarians teach every week. A few schools have a modified flexible schedule of some sort, but most have fixed schedules, with librarians teaching from 23 to 39 classes a week. Principals are not interested in hearing the research about how flexible schedules can improve student achievement. They are more worried about the classroom teachers getting planning time every day. . . sometimes, at the expense of the librarian's plan time. Doug Johnson wrote an interesting article about fixed scheduling. I agree with many of his points, especially about some kids not getting access to the library in a flexible schedule situation. This happened to me with fifth grade--they were "too busy preparing for SOLs" to schedule extra library time. So I only saw those kids once every two weeks. A second grade teacher's class was able to come to the library every day for a week while we completed a wonderful Ancient China unit. Anyway, one librarian suggested that adding itinerant librarians would help us with flexible scheduling. Some of us disagreed, saying that then we'd be exactly the same as art, PE, and music. We'd teach our 30 classes a week and be stuck with fixed scheduling forever. So what's the goal--ensuring ourselves a plan period every day or creating a flexible library program? I think we aren't unified on this yet. And we can't do much unless we are.