Reading on the job

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php

Librarians reading on the job was a hot topic for discussion this week on LM_Net. Tere started it with a posting that included these comments made by other staff as she was reading a children's book during the school day:

Well you would have thought, I was lying down taking a nap. Everybody that walked by my door (my desk is right by the door ) made a comment. "I'm going to give you a job." "If you've got time to read, I've got something for you to do." Etc. Next time, I'm going to go hide behind the stacks to read!

A few responses were similar to Allan's:

I don't give a hoot what people think of me or what I am doing. When I have received a remark about "wouldn't it be nice if....[one could read books all day]?" I have responded. "Yes it is very nice." If I am feeling a little nasty or don't like the tone of the remark, I have responded "I would be more than happy to get you some information about a library school if you are interested."

While many of us have probably wished we could say these sorts of things, we don't. For some good reasons including  job security and our concern over how our profession is viewed by others.

My personal rules about on the job reading have always been to:

1. Read at my desk (no slouching in the bean bag chairs)
2. Read with a pen and paper my hand
3. Read materials related to my job
4. Read when I could be a role model, such as during Sustained Silent Reading time
5. Never, never, never be seen leaving my building without a bag o' work (just like the other teachers)
6. Work with the understanding that perceptions are as important as reality
   

Librarians have one of the few positions in schools with discretionary resources - time, budgets, and tasks - so therefore need to be transparent about how they "spend" all those resources, especially their time.

Mark wrote:

I made it a point to always be busy, to be seen to be doing something.  (It was NEVER of case of having to find something to do, it was a case of which job was most pressing.)  I did this because its the kind of person I am, but also because of the extremely negative comments I heard about a predecessor of mine who was often seen reading the newspaper, or a book, "on the job".  Sadly, the general public or faculty will never understand that keeping up with current events, what's new and valuable in literature, non-fiction, professional journals, etc. is part of the job... their view will always be 'I never have time to take a breath.. how come he can sit and read all day?' or 'We didn't get a raise this year, and were short a math teacher... and we pay him to sit and read?'  Now, imagine those thoughts in an administrator's head.

It's a sad world where reading = slacking, but given the lack of respect schools and society show for professional growth and development of educators, I suppose it isn't surprising.

Sigh... 

How did we manage to look busy before there were computers?
 

Filtering Follies

Filtering Follies, my most recent TechProof Column for Education World (November 2007) is now available.

Feedback, as always, is welcome! 

Lunches and libraries

Jeff Hastings sent this great (and saddening) post to LM_Net and has graciously given me permission to repost it here.

...lunches and libraries. This is a topic well worth revisiting often because schools are becoming more rigid and inflexible with each passing year it seems, and accommodating walk-in traffic during lunch periods is so, well, FREE, ELECTIVE, and NON-PRESCRIBED that it can be difficult to pull off in increasingly locked-down institutions...

You know, everyone seems to want our school libraries facilities to include a Starbucks and a stage for folk quitarists these days, and I'm all for kicking back our buttoned-down reputations, [as long as I can station a tip jar on the circ desk] but it's good too, to survey the realities we're up against.  Here are some of mine listed totally anecdotally:

1. I was really surprised once when one of my most faithful patrons, a kid who hung in the library during his lunch period each day, was "busted" by a teacher. The teacher -- who was also a lunch supervisor -- tried to explain to me that the boy "was hiding in the library to avoid going outdoors." Apparently this was somehow deemed severely dysfunctional. The kid was a great reader, by the way, and repeatedly this scholarly ectomorph was literally dragged out of the facility kicking and screaming by said, burly, lunch supervisor. I admit, I passively, umm, forgot to bar the kid from hanging for a few minutes each day and reading his way through noon. I also admit that I came to find witnessing this absurd cat-and-mouse game to be quite entertaining--not unlike Pink Panther cartoons can be if you're in a certain mood.  Anyway, the point here is that, for reasons sometimes unfathomable to us, NOT ALL ADULTS NECESSARILY WANT KIDS IN THE LIBRARY DURING LUNCH. This includes parents, teachers and administrators. I've found this to be the case more often than one would think.
2. WHICH IS WHY I now operate my library facility in a sort of DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL fashion during lunchtime hours. Meaning that, with a tacit nod from my principal, I cheerfully allow kids to pop in during lunch, though I have also been asked not to actively promote the facility as a lunchtime refuge, probably for some of the reasons I'll try and remember to mention below. The basic philosophy: allow anything that does not become a problem.
3. THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE THING only goes so far, though: I've found myself quietly contacting parents now and then to say hello and let them know how nice it is to play host to their son or daughter during the mid day hours. I tend to do this, especially, with kids who eschew lunch completely, to see if there are dietary concerns to discuss. Parents universally appreciate this kind of contact, by the way.
4. THE CUSTODIAL ANGLE. Here's news: We're not exactly rolling in school funds here in Michigan and that translates into less and less custodial help. Our cleaning staff was privatized lately in an effort to squeeze still more Pine-Sol out of the old mop. Even before that dire move took place, I was approached by our day custodian who demanded that I STOP LETTING KIDS EAT IN THE LIBRARY. The problem had nothing to do with the students being little piggies--they were actually neater than I'll ever be. The problem was that the remnants of their lunches --due to the dearth of custodians -- had plenty of time to rot and even ferment between garbage pick-up, attracting all sorts of rodentia and even a few really desperate alcoholics.
5. THE STAFFING ANGLE. Man, I had no idea how wonderful I had it back in the 1990's. Back then I had a full time library secretary, which gave me tons more flexibility to serve multiple patron groups simultaneously. These days, I have secretarial back-up in the afternoon hours only, which means that when I am actively teaching classes during a.m. hours, including early lunch periods, I have no choice but to close the facility to other traffic for lack of supervision and staffing at the desk. My lunch kids have grown used to the idea of looking for the closed sign on the door, but I REFUSE TO GET USED TO THE IDEA OF PUTTING IT THERE.
6. THE PASS THING. The hall pass is still the golden ticket of student mobility and, in terms of lunch traffic, the question is who grants a pass to a kid who wants to hit the library during lunch (which translates into: who is responsible for kids in-transit) There doesn't seem to be a perfect answer for that one, so I'd be interested in hearing from colleagues about that. I'm really lucky to be positioned directly across from the caf: We get long lunch lines and kids can pop out of them and visit us for a while instead. I've also had to chat it up with some of the lunch supervisors to let them know that it is quite okay for them to allow students to cross the great divide and visit us.
   

...I look forward to hearing from others and maybe brewing a more even-handed and realistic discussion about what school libraries can and cannot do within the current exigencies many of us are forced to work within.

Jeffrey Hastings,
School Librarian,
Highlander Way Middle School
E-mail: hastingj at howell schools dot com

My question: Is there a formal means of giving a wide range of stakeholders a voice in policy-making for libraries? Is Jeff's school, like many, "ruled" by only a few pushy folks? How are they counter-acted? One way is here: http://dougjohnson.squarespace.com/dougwri/advisory-advice.html