Have we met the enemy?

"We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us" – Pogo (Walt Kelly)

In last Thursday’s post “Not your grandma's librarian,” I complimented the work of the tech integration specialists at the International School on Bangkok, Justin Medved and Dennis Harter, for their postings on Dangerously Irrelevant about the approach they are taking in teaching 21st century skills in their school. But I also asked, what’s taken you so long and "where has your school's librarian been in your lives that you are just now figuring this out?!”

Both Dennis and Justin left comments on the post which are well-worth reading in their entirety, but they also left me with a compelling question. Dennis writes: “While I am glad to hear that librarians have "understood this for at least the past decade", I do wonder why it remains largely un-integrated into classroom teaching and in the way that schools do business.” He asks if “librarians [are] holding on to ownership of these ideas?”

Justin observes: .

I have had the opportunity to work with some fantastic librarians in my time but I would argue that their success in embedding these "new literacies" was closely tied to "who" they were as people and the soft skills they possessed with dealing with teachers not their status as "librarian". You take this away and suddenly that part of the school and the skills that were taught from it fall to the wayside.”

Before I get to the business at a hand, I apologize for calling Justin and Dennis “techs” when, as they point out, they are “tech and learning coordinators” – teachers, not technicians. I knew this and my shorthand for this sort of position is sloppy, but not meant derogatorily. Like we've shorted “library media specialist” to LMS, could one refer to the “technology and learning coordinators” as TLCs? (What a nice acronym!)

I have fussed before