Happy 2017 to all ACRLog Readers! Like many other librarians, I have hit the road running. For those of you who do not know, I live in Washington DC and with inauguration last week, I was barely at the office. I also attended the Women’s March and it was a mix of emotions, all at once. However, it really made me think how just one person can make a difference. Not just someone who is protesting or marching, but the people in our everyday lives.
I imagine that everyone has a story of a teacher that has truly made a difference in their lives. I have one. When I was in the first grade, my family had moved across the country. We went from East Los Angeles to Burlington, Vermont. I did not know any English and so I had to take an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. My first grade teacher would put in extra effort to help with read, write, and speak English.
Since then, I have remembered her as a teacher who truly made a difference in my life. Someone with compassion, patience, kindness and someone who truly cared about her students. Years later, I still of my first grade teacher. It’s been said before, but actions and words matter. Now, more than ever, how we carry and behave ourselves matters.
This made me think of how I carry myself as not only a librarian, but a librarian in the classroom. Every semester, I teach information literacy classes for the College Writing Program at American University. For those information literacy classes, I have the classroom and the students to myself for 75 minutes.
For those 75 minutes, I have the attention of the students (most of them, I’d like to think) and have the opportunity to interact with them. The current political climate has really made me think of what I say, how I teach, and how I can improve as a teacher. As an early-career librarian and resident librarian, I observed other librarians teach last semester. This project consisted of observing librarians how they prepare for their information literacy sessions, how they interact with students, and their teaching style. After each observation, I would reflect on a teacher’s personality, interactions, conversations, and how they set to convey information literacy.
This process took about two or so months and it really helped me understand how each librarian goes about their instruction. Along with observing the librarians, I also had the opportunity to observe the students and how they reacted to the librarians advice, instructions, and conversations. I think that actually focusing and reflecting on these experiences and observations are important, not only for becoming a better teacher, but to see how others get across to students and their skills.
Going back to the beginning, it has truly sunk in that we as librarians and information literacy educators yield more influence than we think we do. Now more than ever, it is the time to stress critical thinking skills, identifying reliable sources, and also promoting the library as a place of reliability, access, and inclusivity.
For those of you who are curious, I still keep in contact with my first grade teacher. She is still the kind and caring person she was then.