Teacher Librarian Reading Journal

Burnout in the education field is always a highly discussed topic. It is always important to be mindful; however, being present in your mindfulness is critical. Meditation is a wonderful avenue to reduce stress and it also helps to benefit the students as Roeser, et al. mention in their article about a mindfulness training study. There is a great breakdown for how a continued and consistent system increases self-compassion to reduce anxiety, stress, and burnout. Therein, the downstream when the teacher has developed advantageous coping and resilience methods the classroom management and supportive environment exist. This is a symbiotic relationship for reduction in stress and building teacher-student relationships. This alternately creates a classroom where student motivation and academic success is strengthened. One thing that initially struck me from the article was the idea that "teachers themselves report that workload, lack of collaborative time with colleagues, lack o...

Open copyright license required Right of access, adaptation, and republication Non-discriminatory (rights given to everyone, everywhere) Does not limit use or form (does not include NonCommercial limitations) Hewlett Foundation OECD UNESCO Cape Town Declaration Wikieducator OER Handbook OER Commons (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/What_is_OER%3F) As the digital movement expands, content available online for use by teachers and teacher librarians is growing. Open educational resources, OERs, are defined by Hope as "educational resources that are either in the public domain or have been made freely available through their license."Hope explains how new companies like Creative Commons licensing allow creators the ability to "copyright their work in a manner appropriate to how they wish to share their work." This allows for more information to be globally spread and create creative, uniform, and flexible...

Personally, I am not one to find it easy to boast. This is a reason I enjoyed the article by Ann Martin on advocacy. The question is whether advocates are born or developed. Her overarching note is that it is developed. That means there is hope for me to develop the skills necessary to be an advocate for myself and my library program. As a teacher librarian Martin shares similar ideas with other articles I read about being proactive in our field. This means being visible and diligent in our efforts to ensure all stakeholders know why and how the library program and certified librarians are key assets for the students achievement and schools test ratings. "Successful librarians... provide VALUE to their schools... They Validate, Anticipate, Lead, Understand, and Educate their clientele and constituents," (Martin, 2007). Validate: This is where we ensure that all members reap the benefits of our programming (the public/community, the district, the students, other staff...

Students today are living in a world of social media and instant access to information. So how do we as librarians effectively monitor what information is presented to our students, how do we disseminate this information in an ethical and legal manner, and where do we begin? In a look at an article on an independent school, it becomes clear that communication is critical. How we as professionals communicate the behaviors of navigating the information highways is at the forefront of ensuring legal and ethical procedures are followed. While independent schools differ from public schools, it is critical to student achievement that there is access to information, that is appropriate and analyzed for accuracy. The school librarian posted some great guidelines and tools to implement within any school system. All public schools I have ever worked in have filter systems in place to block specific websites due to content; however, as Seroff mentions, this causes an issue for stud...