AASL Standards Shared Foundation: Inquire

School Librarian Domains and Competencies:

1. School librarians teach learners to display curiosity and initiative when seeking information.

2. School librarians promote new knowledge generation.

3. School librarians guide learners to maintain focus throughout the inquiry process.

4. School librarians implement and model an inquiry-based process.

   
   

Today I was fortunate to have been able to observe Karen Williamson in her high school library. Karen has been in education for 26 years and in the library for a good portion of that time. She has been working in the same school for a good deal of time and has been able to form good working relationships with the teachers at her school. She has also had time to find what works for her library and the school and students she serves. While she freely admits she did not know anything about the AASL Shared Foundations prior to my interview, she also mentioned that she has always used the Future Ready Library standards and is a member of SCASL. After being able to sit down with the standards with her and through discussion and observing the way she runs her library I learned a lot about how focal inquiry is to her library program.

Some ways that Karen implements the inquire competencies are that her instruction is more individualized and in collaboration with their classroom teachers who plan research assignments where students get to choose topics that are of interest to them or can make the assignment their own by focusing their research on the questions they are most interested in. They often use the SOS strategies from Discovery ED as well. These assignments have students using SC DISCUS databases and references books from the library that Karen helps to curate for given assignments and topics. She is also on a team with the physical science teachers and biology teachers to help increase literacy in these subjects. She helps to plan science experiments and lessons, as well as map scientific vocabulary to reinforce those ideas.

One thing that she thinks makes implementing these competencies more challenging is that 95% of the work she does is entirely in collaboration with their classroom teachers, and she often doesn't know the students' strengths and weaknesses as well as they would. If they have an IEP she is not made aware of those things. While the teachers ultimately are planning most of the assignments that she is helping them with, she works in conjunction with those teachers to provide the resources and encourage them to ask good questions and ways to find the answers.

I think one takeaway I would have from seeing the way several different schools and age groups operate in their library is that every school has different expectations and requirements of their library program and their librarian. As librarians, however, some of what we do is to lead by example and if we are always seeking to improve and are lifelong learners ourselves, we will be more likely to model and pass down those skills to the students we are working with no matter what content area or role we are playing in that process.