Shared Foundation VI: Engage

 

Librarians + Love + Engagement =  

Responsible Digital Citizens 

My first interview was completed on March 29th at Cario Middle School in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, where Ms. Gomez is the school librarian.  Upon arriving at the school, I chose to plan my interview questions around the AASL Shared Foundation of Engagement.  Without an in-depth reading, one may think that this foundation pertains to how a school librarian keeps his/her patrons entertained and if the students are "into" the lesson.    As a classroom teacher, examples of engagement in the classroom may look like students who have their hands raised or are working in small groups towards a common goal.  Engagement may sound like students asking questions, about the topic, and their peers and/or teacher giving answers or clarifying misconceptions.  However, the foundation of engagement is a bit different for the school librarian.  

In this day and age, students are constantly bombarded with information via some type of screen (whether that is their phone screen or tv screen).  With that in mind, it is important that school librarian's expose students to the ideals of being responsible digitally.  According to the AASL's description of the Engagement foundation, the school librarian should direct (and model with) students about how to use information, media, and technology responsibly and ethically and how to evaluate information for biases, validity, appropriateness, etc.  School librarians should also model and promote how to ethically reproduce and credit others' work appropriately.  I believe these statements are so powerful because we live in a world of Google and Wikipedia. Students live in a world of easy "copying and pasting".  Many times, no credit is given to the author.  Additionally, students are stimulated with media constantly and may have trouble deciphering what is real and what is fake.  School librarians should give students (and all patrons) the tools that they need to be able to critically analyze and evaluate information, before internalizing it or sharing it (and possibly spreading false information to others).  Overall, this foundations' objective is to model to student how they can be ethical and responsible digital citizens and then apply what they have learned in their daily practices.  Ms. Gomez is a stellar example of how to model engagement, as a middle school librarian.  Little did I know that this interview would be filled with many tidbits of wisdom and even tug at my heart strings a bit (I had to get a tissue by the end of our interview).    

Our session started with me asking Ms. Gomez how she has implemented the domains and competencies of engagement in her library.  She responded by saying that this domain/competency focuses on ethical and responsible search for information and its attribution. Her school library website offers resources for teachers to implement in their lessons and helping students with writing papers properly.  She shows and models ethical use via her daily news programs.  She makes it a point that her ending slides properly give credit to works that were used in the presentation.  

Additionally, she also collaborates with teachers with the engagement competency/domain.  Recently, she collaborated with 8th grade Social Studies teachers on a unit on documentaries. The students had to create a documentary on what it meant to be an American.  Mrs. Gomez worked with teachers to compile a website with resources specifically for this research project and she also taught a lesson to introduce the concept of documentaries to the students.  Another collaboration was with a science teacher and Ms. Gomez taught a lesson on evaluating websites with news assignments.  

Overall, Ms. Gomez did not vocalize many challenges to implementing this foundation. The main challenge was getting teachers to deviate from their curriculum.  Many times, teachers have so many standards to cover and do not have additional days to spare to incorporate enrichment activities.  COVID-19 restrictions did not play a huge factor.  She explains that this foundation intertwines seamlessly into the daily work of the school librarian.  I believe that this foundation definitely seamlessly intertwines with the school librarian's work and Ms. Gomez does it well!  Thank you for your service, Ms. Gomez!

Image Source: 

GIPHY. (n.d.). All you need is love [GIF].

        GIPHY. https://media.giphy.com/media/3g11bxnPa4Fgs/giphy.gif