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Candidates are able to articulate the role and relationship of the school library program's impact on student academic achievement within the context of current educational initiatives. Utilizing evidence-based practice and information from education and library research, candidates communicate ways in which the library program can enhance school improvement efforts.
SLM 501 School Library Program Assessment Part of being an educator is to be able to evaluate your own practices to ensure that you are educating your students effectively. During SLM 501 Library Administration and Leadership, I was able to conduct a library program assessment at one of the local elementary libraries in my county. Using the L4L Librarian Performance Evaluation model and the Empowering Learners with School Library assessment rubric, I was able to evaluate and observe an active elementary library and librarian. According to AASL standard 4.3 librarians are to “articulate the role and relationship of the school library program’s impact on student academic achievement…utilize evidence-based practice and information from education and library research…communicate ways in which the library program can enhance school improvement…” In order to provide the best opportunities and education for our students, we (educators) have to be able to evaluate and self-evaluate our efforts in order to be effective in our profession. This artifact outlines the evaluation I conducted on a small elementary school within my county. I observed and discussed many of the practices this librarian was able to implement within her strict fixed schedule library. There were a couple of areas where I could see the librarian could have improved, but I also saw where these areas were also skewed by the lack of support from the school board. For instance, the fixed schedule provides no opportunities to conduct any real collaboration with teachers. All of her collaboration is done beyond the school day, which hinders the opportunity since many teachers do not have the time after school to participate. Many of her collaborative lessons are worked out through email or meeting briefly with teachers before school starts. I learned from this assignment that while the standards require librarians to conduct and participate in specific opportunities to improve their professional practice, the end results really rely on the librarian to follow through on his/her own, and that they often times do so without any support from the administration. In a way it was a little discerning that even though the school follows the standards and has encouraged ideas like collaboration with teachers, there has been little to no effort to actually provide the opportunities for these practices to take place. With this experience, I hope to be able to encourage more collaboration on my own. This has also made me aware of how collaboration might be handled in other schools as well. I have also learned that the evaluation process needs to be conducted continuously throughout the year in order to make changes and to adapt to the ever-changing education system and to accommodate our students’ needs. |