Engage with Dr. Amy Savage, Stratford High School

 

The Shared Foundation of Engage was discussed in a conversation with Dr. Amy Savage, School Librarian at Stratford High School. Engage focuses on the safe, legal, and ethical use of information and products. At the high school level, this shared foundation seems to fit easily with a focus on research, the use of MLA formatting, and citations. However, my discussion with Dr. Savage highlights the changes that seem to have occurred within classrooms since COVID. According to Dr. Savage, teachers require MLA formatting and citations less, instead focusing on PowerPoints and website URLs for attribution. This change in expectation is concerning as for successful articulation to post-secondary settings, we know that students need to be prepared for the level of writing and research required. Dr. Savage also discussed the observation that less teachers are checking out class sets of books, instead preferring to post books online. This practice brings up the concern of copyright. As a librarian, our role is to promote the ethical use of information; this responsibility is not only to students but also to staff. It is within our role to ensure our faculty and staff are aware and practice copyright within their classroom, modeling ethical use of information for their students. As a school librarian, I must promote information literacy to both students and staff and communicate to teachers how we can collaborate to teach students these necessary skills. Focusing on these skills is also an opportunity to work collaboratively with academic librarians to ensure that students are prepared for the transition. 

Our conversation highlighted the intentional efforts that must be made to engage students and staff. Dr. Savage indicates that collaboration is primarily with English and Social Studies teachers and that there are limited interactions with students as teachers are less likely to bring classes into the library. The school librarian must utilize various communication methods and develop programs that interest students. To do so, librarians should assess student interests and obtain support from school staff, including administration. The school librarian should also advertise their willingness to push into classrooms rather than wait for the class to come to the library. We can better advertise our ability to go into classrooms to help teach lessons in the hope that our increased visibility will result in increased student visits in the physical library. Topics such as how to use Discus can be taught in the classroom setting with an invitation for students to come to the library if they need individual or additional support.

It was noticed that Dr. Savage initially had a difficult time talking about the Shared Foundation Engage. However, the more we conversated, the more information she shared. As school librarians, we are administering programs and planning opportunities in alignment with the AASL National School Library Standards though it seems that we might not realize it. As a school library community, perhaps having more opportunities to explicitly discuss the application of standards within our professional network will help us better describe our impact. In an era where we must advocate for our importance, being able to talk about the standards could play an integral part in ensuring we stay around as library professionals.