Nobody can save your butt but you
Monday, June 7, 2010 at 06:46PM 
The flyer above is for a workshop being presented for school library media specialists this summer by Gary Hartzell. Even if he weren't my friend, I would encourage others to go to this.
Having been a school administrator for many years, Gary presents a unique perspective and set of strategies to school library media specialists. His book Building Influence for the School Librarian: Tenets, Targets, and Tactics is a must-read classic. And it's one from which any number of technology integration specialists might learn a thing or two as well.
Given the current state of school budgets now and into the foreseeable future, the strategies Gary teaches are absolutely critical if librarianship as a profession is to survive. Unless you are a classroom teacher with about 35 kids in 6 classes a day - all required for graduation, you job is probably being considered by somebody, somewhere for elimination to balance a budget. So it ain't just teaching skills that will keep you employed.
I am encouraged by what seems to be an awakening by many voices that we need to do a better job of relating to and communicating with our principals who have a huge say in staffing:
- Infomaniac, Fran Bullington has a great post: Advocacy: Annual Reports
- Leigh Ann Jones at Shelf-Consumed says you should be Talking to your principal
- The ever-brilliant Buffy Hamilton shares her Unquiet Library Multi-Media Annual Report
And I've written about this once or twice:
We'd like to think state mandates and rules and ALA and ISTE and a just, intelligent world and magic fairy dust will keep all librarians and tech specialists in their rightful places. But here's the deal: The reality is that nobody's going to save your butt but you.
What Gary has to teach and what our leading librarians share as reporting models can help you do just that.
Stay employed, please - kids really do need you!
Reader Comments (2)
So true, Doug! When I started in my district, there were THREE full-time media specialists (one at each school in the district). Over time that's been reduced to just me...and now I'm at .5 FTE with another job (or two!) attached to my workload. I'm now the media specialist/PYP Coordinator/technology integration specialist. The learning curve on the new parts of my job have been HUGE this year, and I'm not doing justice to any of them (yet!).
A couple of years ago, I had to give a presentation to a "budget advisory committee"...justifying what I do, and why it's important. Although having the media position reduced to .5 is not the "ideal", at least it's still part of the makeup of my school. The same can no longer be said for the other two schools in the district.
I'm hoping (looking through my rose colored glasses) that the media position will, one day, be increased to 1.0 FTE again. We successfully increased the hours of the media assistants for next year, so THAT'S a positive step in the right direction!
I encourage your readers to attend this workshop. The work we do is SO IMPORTANT, and we have to do all we can to make people aware of that fact.
Love the blog, by the way. Keep up the GOOD work, and GREAT advocacy!
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the kind words.
We all need the skills that allow us to save our own butts too. It's a heavy load that has not been placed on us before. And I think some positions can't be saved by the best librarians - just too many external factors working against it.
The main way retain our media positions is by offering great tech support to staff and teaching a lot of tech skills along with the research.
For what it's worth,
Doug