Towards a “pedagogy of the depressed”

“Okay guys, genuine question. How long until we’re justified in killing people over this?”¹

Alarmed, I tried to reroute our whole-class discussion. I asked students to refocus on the prompt I’d provided: Choose one of the AI-related issues we’ve discussed this semester and brainstorm a potential policy solution. Consider timelines, barriers, stakeholders, and other decision-making factors.

When one student reluctantly suggested that local, grassroots action would be the most effective way to make change, I excitedly shared a case study in which local resistance led to a city dropping their Flock contract. But the mood in the classroom continued to spiral.

“I don’t know about the assassination thing,” someone offered.

“Okay, but they’re already killing us,” a student said. “They’re literally killing us.”

“We need to do what they’re doing in France,” another declared. “They’re not going to school. They’re not going to work. They’re massing in the streets and burning buildings. That’s the only way they’ll listen to us.”

During class, a student made this observation: “It feels like all the older generations are panicking about AI, but our generation is just like ‘oh yeah, another apocalyptic catastrophe, okay.’” Their classmates nodded.

This is a generalization, of course, but I believe it’s grounded in a real phenomenon, at least here in the United States. In other countries that have been shaped by different catastrophes, generational divides may look different. Here, I’ve often noticed a difference in political and social affect between those who remember the world before 9/11 and those who don’t, and again, another between those who were adults before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the release of ChatGPT and those who weren’t. Many of my students were only middle-schoolers in March 2020. They were children in 2016. For my older colleagues, the world is spinning off its axis, but for my students, the world has no axis. There is no stable world to return to, one where we trust authorities and well-resourced institutions. Their world is rotten to the core, and it always has been.

I’m twenty-five, just a few years older than most of my students. I don’t remember a world before 9/11, though I’m told it was different. I don’t remember a world without the Internet, but I do remember one—barely—where iPhones and social media were wondrous and new. I haven’t allowed myself to feel big, world-changing hope in a long time, and I don’t remember a time when I hoped for something and it happened, or when I trusted an authority figure and they followed through. I can’t imagine what my students must feel like.

After my recent classroom experience, I felt more unsure than ever about my teaching. How can we teach students who feel so cynical and hopeless when we also feel cynical and hopeless? I want to feel something again; I worry about developing apathy, and, most importantly, about my students developing apathy. If a student finishes my course feeling less empowered than they did when they started, I believe I’ve failed as a teacher. I want students to leave my classroom equipped to follow their curiosity, engage in productive civic dialogue, and make change in their communities. But this semester, I’ve consistently heard from students that there’s no point in trying to do any of those things. That nobody will listen and nothing will change, no matter what they do–unless they do something very, very drastic.

To help me think through these issues, I returned to Pedagogy of the Depressed by Christopher Schaberg. Titled in a cheeky reference to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Schaberg’s book reflects on the rapidly-evolving, often depressing state of the college classroom in the early 21st century. “At a certain point, it seemed like all my students were depressed,” he writes. I nodded furiously as I turned the pages. “Or, rather, it wasn’t a certain point at all: it happened ‘gradually and then suddenly,’ to borrow a line from Hemingway. This was depressing. It changed the feel of the classroom, it altered the possibilities of how we could learn together.” (pg. 2)

Critically, Schaberg gestures towards this particular “depression” as a phenomenon caused by structural forces both inside and outside the academy, rather than an issue of individual students’ and teachers’ mental health. Even if we all had access to amazing therapists and infinite workplace wellness initiatives, the “depression” in question would persist. “The ‘depression’ I am interested in tracking in this book is not so much an individual experience, not located (at least not solely) in the depressed subject,” he writes. “It’s a state of things. It’s a depressed atmosphere, a dispersed feeling of dread that has as much to do with cultural forces and planetary circumstances as it has to do with the intense feeling of solitary helplessness.” (pg. 4)

And what a state of things! In the same vein, one of my colleagues recently shared this article with me: “Is It Burnout? Or Demoralization?” by Doris A. Santoro. While this article is targeted towards K-12 teachers and administrators, I believe it applies just as well to higher education. Santoro says, “Teachers who experience demoralization believe that the school practices or policy mandates that they are expected to follow are harmful to students or degrading to the profession and that their attempts to alter them have been fruitless. Demoralization is a moral type of dissatisfaction that needs to be understood as a problem of professional ethics.” While this is certainly a problem in higher ed, which Schaberg explores in Pedagogy of the Depressed, I think our students also experience “demoralization” in everyday life. So do we. “Demoralization” captures the dissatisfaction from feeling like it’s impossible to live in accordance with one’s values, that one is forced to live unethically, and there’s nothing one can do about it.

Defined either way, in a broad or narrow sense, “demoralization” is a cause of the malaise Schaberg describes. “Maybe what’s so depressing about all this is that it feels very much like living at the end of something,” he writes. “[. . .] I’m tired of keeping up the charade that we’re working toward real transformation, when it feels more and more like we’re mostly just maintaining a cobbled together machine that’s on the brink of falling to pieces.” (pp. 115-116)

The bulk of Pedagogy of the Depressed reflects on Schaberg’s personal experiences teaching college English. Schaberg contextualizes the need for a “pedagogy of the depressed,” and he raises useful questions around what it might look like. But he stops short of theorizing a clear, distinct “pedagogy of the depressed.”

I’ve been strongly resonating with this term of late, and I’ve also been trying to remind myself that all teaching (and all doing, of anything worth doing) must involve some failure, especially when I’m doing something as tricky as facilitating discussions on current events. Plus, failure invites curiosity and facilitates learning. I want to close by offering some thoughts on what a “pedagogy of the depressed” means to me and inviting you to share what it might mean to you as well. What does it require—from us, of us—to teach these students in this climate, when we often feel the same weight of cynicism as they do? How can we empower our graduates to be lifelong learners who change their world for the better?

A “pedagogy of the depressed” embraces the whole people who enter our classroom, with all their complexities, life experiences, interests, and frustrations.
A “pedagogy of the depressed” means not just accepting, but embracing, the fact that the classroom is an inherently political space. As Freire explains, there can be no democracy without an educated population; education is one of the fundamental pillars of a functioning polis. A classroom that claims to be apolitical is not, in fact, apolitical; it is interested in maintaining the status quo, which is a political choice.
- What follows from this? A political classroom is a classroom that empowers students to act. This requires them to understand what’s happening around them, why it’s happening, and how they might change it. I don’t think that third element was present enough in my instruction this semester. I could have provided more case studies of successful change-making, like communities resisting data center construction or Flock contracts, and then used those case studies as springboards for conversations about the issues at hand (economic investment in AI, surveillance technology, etc). I still want students to develop their own opinions and solutions; they might want to change the world in ways that I disagree with, and that’s okay. But at the heart of the discussion is a case study that shows them how change is possible, and hope isn’t pointless. As Freire himself writes in Pedagogy of Freedom, “One of the most important tasks of critical educational practice is to make possible the conditions in which the learners, in their interaction with one another and with their teachers, engage in the experience of assuming themselves as social, historical, thinking, communicative, transformative, creative persons; dreamers of possible utopias, capable of being angry because of a capacity to love.” (pg. 45)
A “pedagogy of the depressed” is based in the politics of refusal. Some might view “refusal” as a give-in or dead-end, but as Carole McGranahan (2016) has suggested, refusal may be a far more generative practice than acquiescence. Practicing refusal allows us to imagine an array of wild, beautiful futures that we may not otherwise consider. “Refusal is insistence on the possible over the probable,” writes McGranahan. “[. . .] Hope combines with will to refuse authorized anticipations, thus moving away from the probable into the possible.” (pg. 323) In this way, refusal may be a route to addressing demoralization.
In order to enable work based in the politics of refusal (refusing AI, for example, or refusing classroom surveillance), unionization is critical. And as my own faculty union says, “Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions.” This is true of the working conditions of all library workers, regardless of faculty status.
As one of my students shared: “I think it’s still important to stand up for our values, even if we know we’re going to lose.” This is the most important part of a “pedagogy of the depressed.” If nothing else, we must remind ourselves that we are still human, still kicking. Still here.

Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
McGranahan, Carole. “Theorizing Refusal: An Introduction.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 3 (2016): 319–25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579449.
Santoro, Doris A. “Is It Burnout? Or Demoralization?” Educational Leadership Magazine, June 1, 2018. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/is-it-burnout-or-demoralization.
Schaberg, Christopher. Pedagogy of the Depressed. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.

For reasons of privacy, student quotes are approximate and representative, not exact, throughout this post. ↩︎

Developing a Teaching Style… In Style!

A commonality among this year’s first-year academic librarian bloggers was the daunting task of standing in front of a class for the first time. We were curious to discuss the similarities and differences that exist between becoming a teacher for the first time in a post-secondary setting and how we developed our style over our first year as librarians.

Eleanor: Collaboration is key

I never knew what to say when asked to describe my teaching style in a job interview. When I taught one-shots during my MLIS, I simply hodge-podged together various activities I’d enjoyed as an undergraduate. Regardless of whether it was effective or ineffective, what I was doing didn’t have the level of intentionality required to be called a “style.” What is a teaching style? I wondered. How will I know if I have one?

But over the last year, I’ve gained experience navigating the classroom and developed confidence in myself as an instructor. Collaboration and conversation with other faculty have been key to my development as a teacher, which is why I think this is a valuable conversation for the FYALs to have together. Through co-teaching experiences and working through teaching challenges together with my colleagues, I was exposed to a wide variety of ideas about teaching. I began to understand what makes my approach to teaching similar to or different from theirs and develop the language to articulate why a lesson felt right (or didn’t!).

For example, I was introduced to TILT Higher Ed (Transparency in Learning and Teaching) through the new faculty colloquium at UNI, and I experienced it in action during my first semester as a co-teacher. TILT is a teaching framework that emphasizes radical transparency in teaching methods, classroom expectations, course design, and more. This helps level the playing field between all students, which is especially important in the library classroom. As many public and school libraries are forced to close or reduce hours due to drastic budget cuts, our students enter college less familiar than ever with libraries and research strategies.

But ultimately, the most important thing about my teaching style isn’t any specific framework, technique, or activity. It’s the fact that now, I’ve developed intentionality in my approach to teaching. That means I can actively evaluate, critique, and grow my own teaching. My teaching style will not be static over the course of my career. It must evolve in tandem with my students, my course material, my institution, and the wider cultural context in which I teach.

Lisa: Take-away materials & take-away friends

When first jumping into the role of an academic librarian, it was overwhelming just to think about even getting through that one, two, maybe three hours that I had in front of a class. Especially as someone who used to have a fear of public speaking and still has remnants of that anxiety in different caveats of daily life, teaching alone as a fresh graduate seemed like a tall ask. Now that almost three semesters’ worth of teaching have passed, I feel that I have really relaxed into the role thanks to different pockets of fun and confidence that I’ve identified to lean into when teaching.

Something I try to think about when I am teaching are the tangible take-away points for students so that they can leave the session with a better sense of their research topic, the library, and other new intersecting thoughts. This might also be due to the fact that I support subject areas in STEM with students who are looking to finish school with professional careers rather than learn about the ins and outs of the research lifecycle. Relevant examples, recent cases, real-life scenarios, and pain points from previous students are ways I try to incorporate discipline-specific needs into traditional information literacy sessions.

At the undergraduate level, especially in senior courses, when students are attending classes for the sole purpose of graduating, there are often instances when my energy is not being reciprocated. To alleviate this tension, something I started doing at the beginning of each session was to bring a bit of myself. Whether it be through a photo or an analogy comparing information literacy to Korean food, incorporating myself into the session helped me to become more familiar in a new environment while allowing students to open up to me and each other as well. Another strategy that I love are icebreakers. I love doing quick ones where students must hold up a number to identify themselves with a meme or submit answers to an interactive website (wooclap, kahoot, etc.).

An aspect that I took for granted in university was the social aspect of learning, whether it was participation in class, group work, presentations, or conversations. To utilize this unique aspect to the maximum, I have fun adding in activities that incorporate a social aspect in all of my sessions, whether they are one-shots, recurring workshops, or consultations. In my mind, if students didn’t get anything from the actual session, they can at least emerge out of it with having interacted with one new classmate, shared their research topic with a friend, found a research partner, or reinforced their classroom community further. One of my favourite parts of my role in the library is witnessing the growth of students throughout the year, and teaching is so exciting because it really is the first step in developing that relationship.

M: Gaining confidence in the classroom

When I first started library school, I didn’t envision myself teaching much. However, as I made my way through classes, I started to realize that if I wanted to be an academic librarian who primarily works with students, there was basically no way to avoid teaching. Like Lisa, I haven’t always felt the most comfortable with public speaking, although I’ve worked hard to be better at it and feel more confident. I decided that I would have to find a way to figure out how to be, at minimum, an average teacher if I wanted to continue on the academic librarian path that I’d chosen. There are three things that have helped me work on being a more confident and effective teacher:

First, in library school, I was able to take a course on Library Instruction. That’s the first place where I was asked to think about my teaching style and where I had to write a teaching statement. I haven’t looked at that statement since I started in my current position, but I plan to go back to it this summer and will be interested to see what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. Library Instruction helped me think about teaching as more than just lecturing students – students can also learn through back and forth dialogue, think-pair-shares, and other interactive methods. Since I only teach graduate students, I’m still working on how I can most effectively bring those forms of instruction into my teaching, but I know I’ll figure it out. Big thanks to my professor for this class, Dr. Rawson, for her own incredible teaching.

Second, I’ve had the opportunity both in library school and in my current job to observe instruction sessions led by other librarians. Those experiences have been invaluable in helping me figure out what works or doesn’t work in front of a class, what I currently do well, and what I can improve on. Sitting in on those sessions, especially when I then have time to talk to the librarians afterwards and ask them questions, has been a fantastic way to learn. I would encourage anyone to find opportunities to do this – if it’s not built in to the structure of your library school program or current position, ask the librarians at your school or your colleagues at your job if you can sit in on some of their sessions informally.

Last but not least, practice, practice, practice. It sounds obvious, but it really makes a difference. I was so lucky that my supervisor at my Graduate Assistant job, Kate, was so willing for me to co-teach with her and also gave me opportunities to teach on my own. Getting that practice over and over while I was still a student went a long way to helping me feel more confident. I still feel the most nervous when I teach a session for the first time after a long break, but when this happens, I think back to the advice that Dr. Rawson gave our class – you can still be a great teacher even if you have a lot of nerves. I’ve also been glad to learn this year that once I’m back in the swing of teaching, I still have butterflies before an instructional, but my nerves aren’t nearly as bad. I’m trying to gear up now for what will probably be an instruction-heavy fall and will be interested to see how that impacts how I feel about teaching for the rest of the year.

So, what’s my teaching style? I’m still working on it. I love to include interactive components in my teaching whenever I can, but I feel that there’s still a place for sharing information with students in a more traditional format. I’m trying to figure out what icebreakers work well for graduate students and if I can ask them to do activities or not. And I’m working on building up the confidence to try new things in the classroom and to be okay if they don’t work out. I’m not sure if those things constitute a teaching style or not, but I hope they do – or that they will.

Conclusion

Together with all of our combined experiences, it is evident that there are so many different ways to approach teaching – and always new ways to learn and grow.

The Supposed Summer Slowdown

I started my academic librarian position in August 2025. During the first few weeks of my role, before most of the on-campus students returned and the school year started, fellow librarians told me two (main) things: that I should enjoy the calm before things got busy again, and that the first year in my role would be a learning year.

I took both of those pieces of advice to heart and I can say now that both of them were very true. There was so much that I didn’t know back in August, and I learned a ton over the course of the year that will help me when the next school year starts. (I still have lots, lots more to learn.) I also made sure to soak in the quiet before orientation started and the students returned. My library is on the side of campus that has all the first-year student dorms, so we had a lot of students stop by with questions (library related and not) over the first few weeks of the fall semester.

I also heard from many librarians that things tend to slow down over the summer. Fewer students are on campus, many faculty members are taking time away, and the pace just tends to move more sedately. I’ve been looking forward to some time to reflect on the school year and work on the list of long-term summer projects that I’ve been compiling throughout the past year.

A month after graduation, however, I’m still waiting for this supposed summer slowdown to start.

Non-Traditional Program Support

In my role, I support nine programs, all of which are master’s or doctoral programs. Some of the programs follow a traditional schedule and enroll students on-campus full-time, but others are set up so that students can work full-time while completing their degrees part-time, often almost completely online.

I love working with all the students that I support. Fellow librarians have told me that it can be hard to engage online students, but I actually work the most with students in the part-time, online programs, especially the doctor of education program. I’m lucky to have support from a lot of faculty members and program leaders to help make this happen. I speak at orientation sessions for each cohort of Ed.D. students, and a new cohort starts three times a year. Although it’s primarily an online program, the students come to campus for their initial orientation and for several weekends throughout the three-year program.

The week after graduation in May, I taught my regular library session for the new Ed.D. students, and chatted with many of the students after my presentation. This was a Saturday, and the students were in orientation sessions for the rest of the day. I’m used to a couple of students booking appointments after a session, but on Sunday morning, I was surprised to see four or five students who had booked research appointments for the upcoming week. I had hoped to get started on my long term projects that week, but clearly they would need to be pushed to the following week. I figured that the students who reached out had wanted to go ahead and meet with me to get the recommended meeting with a librarian out of the way, and that my schedule would get back to the slow, standard summer I’d been told about after that first week.

However, I also remembered something that the education librarian at another institution had told me when I first started in this position. She also supports Ed.D. students who start three times a year. She told me that often, we don’t get the same summer break that other academic librarians do, because with a new (and large) cohort of students starting for the summer semester, they need a lot of library support just like any students do – except that they need support in May and June and even July, unlike many other students who are only taking classes from August through early May. I was now watching my colleague’s caution play out in real time in my own job.

Adjusting Expectations for a Different Type of Summer

It’s been four weeks since graduation and three weeks since this new cohort of students started. The research appointments haven’t slowed down – in fact, they’ve picked up. Working directly with students is my favorite part of my job, and I’m thrilled that so many of them want to meet with me for research help. But what I’m also starting to realize is that I may not be able to save my big, long-term projects for the summer slowdown like some of my other colleagues – because I don’t have a summer slowdown. For this summer, I’ll need to find a way to complete at least some projects that need to be done before the fall. But for the next school year, I’ll need to think back to this past year when I had slower months, and plan to complete other projects then. Spreading them out throughout the year is probably going to be more effective for me than saving them for a few “slower” months.

The advice I was given early on – that this year would be a learning year – is still true. Until this coming August, it’s still my first year as an academic librarian, and I’m still learning something new every day. But I love to learn, and it’s one reason I became a librarian. I know I’ll continue learning in my second year in academic libraries and beyond.

The Unexpected Overlaps Between a Don and a Librarian

Something that I try to think more about these days, is to find meaningful intersections between my current career and the various experiences I had in the past. Maybe it’s due to my lack of confidence due to lack of experience as an academic librarian, but I always find myself leaning on my past experiences whenever I encounter a question that I don’t know, or a new workaround to a problem that I hoping to solve.

One particular experience that comes back to me even throughout library school was my time as a student residence staff (aka a “don”). Residence dons are upper-year students who live on the floor with students who are often in their first years, or on exchange. When I started library school, there was a class called “The Information Experience” which was my first encounter with a whole new side of academia for information science and information behaviour, in particular. The major project for the course was doing our own study conducting information horizon interviews (IHI) with 3 participants who share commonalities between each other and discover their information behaviour. Being freshly out of undergrad and still in my 4^th year mind, the first thing I thought about was to ask my friends who were and are still student workers in residence. The interviews and conversations confirmed my gut instinct that indeed, the two professions had more in common than I originally thought.

A Librarian (in a different sense)

One of my favourite memories from working both in student housing and libraries always seem to be from the events that often took a lot of hard work and organizing. From screening the entire world cup tournament across 4 residences, to hosting campus-wide alumni reunion events at the health science library, being able to creatively adapt and proactively start initiatives is something I am grateful that I could pursue. Going beyond the open house booths and orientation day tables, programming combining both departments is something I wanted to bring to fruition.

During final exam time or programming that dons were recommended to host, some ideas that my fellow student staff and I had were around writing, academic integrity, time management, even things like using softwares like OneNote and Notion. ChatGPT and its related academic-AI friends unfortunately? fortunately? blew up after I finished undergrad, but I am sure this would be an interesting topic to tackle in a residence program that could be both fun and educational. Guest presenters were often invited as well, from off-campus housing, academic advisors, writing centre staff, and collaborative sessions across campus with other dons occurred often.

Outside of programs and creative field trips on and off-campus, regular questions would come at my way in the hallway, the shared bathrooms, the cafeteria, on the way to class, through text, through email, and so much more. Being able to direct the student to the correct resource, developing effective workflows depending on the subject area, and being a liaison to academic resources and the student were also just some day-to-day responsibilities (sound familiar? haha).

A Possible Untapped Synergy?

Often during graduate student consultations, library anxiety is something I realized was a phenomenon. Especially for first-year students and even undergraduate students, I realized that there was a hurdle to access resources and become familiar with the building, website, staff, and services. Because I had worked and volunteered in libraries since junior high school, I think that I automatically thought libraries were my comfort space, so I did not even realize this was a thing. So when the first student told me about this back, I was kind of shocked.

After doing more reading on this topic, I realized that there were ways to combat this, such as in-residence librarians (Nicholas et al., 2015). These in-residence librarians would work inside the first-year student residences bringing awareness and breaking down any barriers that may exist. I think that this anxiety is still a thing even for profs and grad students as I always recognize the same names popping up in my emails asking questions or requesting instruction. I love seeing familiar names and faces, but reaching those who have never encountered me or library services is something I would want to try by breaking down this invisible barrier. This extra step would be possible especially through collaborations external to the library, and what better way than with experienced student housing staff who already recognize student needs and wants!

Bringing this to a close, I just want to mention the existence of libraries inside many student residences based on personal experience. In the building I worked and lived in at Western University in London (Ontario, Canada), there was even a huge room on the first floor with a nice “library” plaque. Although the books were either donated textbooks or leftover belongings, the space that it provides for students and residence staff were similar to any other academic library especially during exam season and community building events. The residence at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto where I lived in during grad school was also equipped with an in-residence library with many books on subject areas that the college specialized in.

I hope that this at least sparks some interest and further discussion on being more involved within student housing and student residence staff as the interest is definitely there, and we share more similarities than we might think!

Resources

Hartel, J. (2017). INF1323: The Information Experience – An Information Behaviour Study Using the Information Horizon Interview. http://www.jennahartel.info/uploads/8/3/3/8/8338986/assignment_handout.pdf

Nicholas, P., Sterling, J., Davis, R., Lewis, J. C., Mckoy-Johnson, F., Nelson, K., Tugwell, Y., & Tyrell, K. (2015). Bringing the library to you!: The halls of residence librarian program at the University of the West Indies, Mona Library. New Library World, 116(5/6), 316–335. https://doi.org/10.1108/NLW-06-2014-0080

Integrating interns with disabilities at the library

For the past three years, Michigan State University Libraries has participated as a job site in Spartan Project SEARCH, an MSU-based iteration of the larger Project SEARCH program. Project SEARCH is a transition program for young adults with developmental disabilities in which participants, often recent high school graduates, learn job skills such as how to write a resume while also working half days in various job settings. At MSU, participants work everywhere from the dining halls to the library, learning how jobs work and how they like different job environments.

Spartan Project SEARCH began at MSU in 2016 and the Libraries’ Accessibility unit started participating in Fall 2022. Since then, we have hosted two interns per year, one in the fall and one in the spring. The interns’ rotations in the library typically last about 10 weeks.

When we first began the program, we started small, with interns only coming in a few days per week, but more recent interns have spent four days a week at the library. This would not have been possible without the participation of several units around the Libraries. Usually, our interns spend between one hour and two hours working for one unit before moving to another, allowing them to work on a variety of tasks in a single day.

Currently, interns work on resetting furniture, scanning books for controlled digital lending, collecting books for reshelving, and checking in returned books. They also have the opportunity to assist with smaller projects as they arise, including installing exhibits and participating in user experience testing. Interns also tour other units in the library, such as Cataloging or Maps, so that they can see the breadth of work happening in the library.

Overall, participating in Project SEARCH has been extremely rewarding, but we have learned some things along the way. First, we would not have been a successful program site if the interns worked in only one unit. Having multiple host units allows for interns to learn an array of different skills and experience different kinds of work and work environments. It also helps to fill out their schedule and provides some flexibility as we respond to interns’ interests and needs.

Each intern is different, and though we’ve now developed a process that generally works, we’ve found flexibility to be key in making the experience useful for the intern. We train interns extensively on their tasks, with the goal of them completing their work independently. We do, however, always have someone scheduled to check in with the intern or to provide extra support and training time if they need it. Some interns feel more comfortable shadowing for a longer period of time, others work well when we double check their work with them, and occasionally some just want a bit of company during their shift. Again, responding to interns’ needs and requests has helped to make the training process and transition to independent work run smoothly. Depending on interns’ interests and abilities, we’ve also added or modified work for them.

Providing the interns with routine and consistency also helps to set expectations and keep the internship running smoothly. At the beginning of each new internship, we create a schedule that stays roughly the same, with work in specific units happening at the same time each week, along with some free slots to add in tours. We print a full schedule each week for the interns to reference and take home if they want. This helps interns to anticipate what’s coming up, know where they should be, and know who they should expect to see.

Finally, establishing methods of finding and asking for help has been critical both in the early stages of an internship and later on when interns are working independently. We of course make sure interns know where to find our offices, but because we are so often moving around the building or in meetings, we also give interns our phone numbers and encourage them to text us if there’s a problem. Because there are two of us managing the interns, group messages have been particularly helpful.

Project SEARCH has sites throughout the US and internationally, but it isn’t everywhere. If you’re interested in participating in a similar program in your library, I encourage you to look into similar alternatives as well. Project SEARCH, for example, collaborates with Michigan Rehabilitation Services, and there are likely other similar programs in your state. We’ve found Project SEARCH to certainly be a commitment of time and resources, but also completely worthwhile and a way to make a direct impact in the community.

If your library participates in a similar program or if you’re interested in starting something like this, I’d love to chat more in the comments.

Special thanks to Heidi Schroeder, who initiated the Project SEARCH program in the MSU Libraries and works with me on supervising our interns. This article in the Libraries’ newsletter has more information on MSU Libraries’ participation in Project SEARCH.