How a School Librarian Can Overcome Feeling Discouraged

Changing from a respected classroom teacher to a School Librarian in a misunderstood job can make us feel quite discouraged. Here's a heartfelt response to frustrated colleagues, and some ideas for expanding your impact and subduing that frustration. | No Sweat LibraryOur School Librarian listservs and Facebook groups are generally upbeat, but at times, one sees a post expressing job frustration because teachers and administrators don’t understand what we do. Invariably, our peers give us a virtual hug, along with some thoughtful suggestions that do help.

We are especially sympathetic when a new School Librarian becomes disillusioned, feeling worthless in their new role. Many School Librarians do feel discouraged, especially the first year or two after moving from classroom to library, because it’s just not what we expected it to be. Hopefully I can encourage you newbies by clarifying why you may be feeling this way. And for you veterans, maybe this “bigger picture” will remind you why you decided to leave the classroom and become the most valuable teacher in the school!

THE TEACHING DIFFERENCE

After becoming a School Librarian, I came to realize the big difference between being a school librarian and being a high school science teacher is jurisdiction—that is, having authority over our classroom instruction. Even with federal, state, or district requirements, a classroom teacher decides what to teach, when to teach, and how to teach on a daily basis.

Often School Librarians are not viewed as teachers—we’re seen merely as book caretakers. Most educators don’t know about our National School Library Standards or our information literacy curriculum, nor are they aware that we have a teaching degree and years of classroom experience before getting a library certification/degree. As a result, we are seen as expendable, and many schools no longer have a certified School Librarian.

It’s doubly hard when library information literacy skills are embedded into subject curricula without identifying them as such. Teaching these skills, then, looks like the responsibility of classroom teachers, who have no time—so they get ignored—nor the training to teach them properly. They just aren’t aware that we are trained to—and supposed to—integrate info-lit into their classroom activities. To paraphrase Tom Clancy, “If it isn’t written down it never happens,” so a School Librarian has to work extra hard to convince classroom teachers to collaborate on a library lesson visit.

Additionally, a classroom teacher has continual personal contact with students, with their learning, and with their assignments. As School Librarians, particularly at the secondary level with a flex schedule, we can’t really plan a learning “unit” as such. Instead, we teach haphazardly, rarely continuing through to the end of the teacher’s assignment, let alone having input on how it is assessed. As a result, we may try to cram as much information as possible into a single visit, which overloads the students and alienates the teacher.

Lesson color blocks are the visual organizer that lets School Librarians organize subject curricula and Library Lesson. #NoSweatLibraryThe solution to this is an information literacy curriculum matrix on which we can identify where to integrate skills into classroom activities and record which Standards are addressed. This handy tool allows a School Librarian to document National School Library Standards across subject areas and through grade levels so we cover them all by the time a student moves on to their next grade level building. As a result, lessons are more focused on specific learning objectives, are less overwhelming for students, and more gratifying for teachers…who then are eager to collaborate on future lessons.

THE ROOM DIFFERENCE

Another big difference between a School Librarian and a classroom teacher is dominionhaving authority over our own “classroom” domain. Unless a school is particularly pressed for space, no one else uses a teacher’s assigned room, so they have complete control over it. Au contraire the school library! Because of its size and layout—and being cozier than the cafeteria or gym—the school library is frequently appropriated for meetings, professional development, and special events, as well as student testing, guest speakers, and presentations.

No one hesitates about using the school library for their needs, and all too often they don’t think to notify, or even ask, the librarian. What is unthinkable for a classroom teacher is a common occurrence with every School Librarian. Many an afternoon a teacher or administrator would enter my library and begin moving things around to set up for their event the next day, and I’d have to scramble to make alternative arrangements for the groups of students I’d planned to have in for lessons.

Such occurrences are why a School Librarian can ask to be in charge of the print and online school event calendar, so folks have to consult with us about any event in the school. Not only does this help immensely for scheduling library use, it also gives us an “in” for taking photos or videos to add to the school and library websites.

THE ROLE DIFFERENCE

There's a huge contrast in responsibility when changing from a classroom teacher to a School Librarian. If we understand & accept the 3 main differences, we can work toward our "new self" and avoid becoming discouraged. | No Sweat LibraryA third big difference between a School Librarian and a classroom teacher is power—having authority over our daily activity. It may seem that we have no control at all over what we do in the school library. This is the downside of our job—and what is often the cause of our discouragement. We’re “always on call”, and everyone is unconcerned if we’ve made our own plans. Many of us have ‘assigned’ time periods with students that limits the time we can spend on library administrative tasks. We’re treated somewhere between a sub and an aide—until we accomplish some feat of wizardry, and then we’re regarded as a genius and everyone wants us to help them accomplish the same thing in the 5 minutes between their phone call to us and when their class starts. Along with all that, we need to now know everyone’s curriculum and the entire print & digital library collection, supplying relevant resources when asked for at the drop of a hat.

On the other hand, the upside of our job is that we do have more control over what we do and when. In the classroom we had one role: a content-area teacher with a prescribed curriculum. Not so as a School Librarian. We must be the supreme multi-tasker: a secretary, a custodian, a curriculum specialist, a tech whiz, an accountant, an audio/video engineer, a babysitter, a therapist, and a diplomat, and in between still a teacher. We surely are never bored with the ‘same ole thing.’

The School Librarian can be a true renaissance person, expanding into every avenue of education and technology, finding personal satisfaction in our own accomplishments, and knowing that it will take at least 5 people to replace us. We can strive, daily, to make the library a Knowledge Production Center—the place students come to for creating audio, video, digital, and designed work products, and where teachers come begging to help them learn and integrate!

FINDING OUR NICHE

I’m still convinced that other educators will gradually “get it,” that eventually they’ll realize the information & media literacy knowledge and skills learned from the School Librarian are important to our children’s futures, more than just about any other thing they learn in school.

While waiting for that time, we can trade jurisdiction and dominion for influence: becoming a compelling force on the actions, opinions, and behavior of everyone in our sphere. We can slowly turn each teacher, student, and administrator into viewing us as the most indispensable person in the building. That’s an incredibly impactful vocation!

It took until my 5th year as a librarian to master library administration and to convince colleagues that “I really am a teacher.” For those who find they don’t like school librarianship, there’s nothing wrong with going back to the classroom. We all need to find our niche, and having tried something that doesn’t quite fit should not be disappointing—it’s actually a giant step on the road to self-actualization.

I remember in one of my MLIS courses a couple teachers were retiring from the classroom to become librarians because it’s ‘easier’. Of course, we who had already begun as librarians laughed uproariously—this is the hardest job we’ve ever had! But thankfully, it’s also the most rewarding job we’ve ever had when we focus on what we’ve gained: flexibility and autonomy. Actually, it might be good for librarians to periodically spend some time back in the classroom, just to keep fresh and remember why we changed jobs, although who they’d get to cover for us is beyond me!

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Updated  & changed from 2015.

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Helping School Librarians Understand Dewey 300 Social Science

Helping School Librarians Understand Dewey 300 Social Science - Many School Librarians are confused by the organization of 300 Social Science. This School Librarian & Social Sciences college major explains Dewey's disciplinary numbering based on the fields of study found in the 300s.If your school library collection is like mine, the 300 Social Sciences takes up large part of your Dewey area. What boggles the minds of students, teachers, and School Librarians alike is the mish-mash of disparate topics with an arrangement that doesn’t make much sense. Plus, the 300s seem to have many books that belong in other Dewey sections!

As a lover of the Dewey Decimal Classification system and a college major in the Social Sciences, I hope to help you understand this Dewey Class…and suggest some changes that might better serve your students and teachers.

THE METHOD OF ASSIGNING DEWEY NUMBERS

Remember that Dewey Decimal Numbers are assigned by discipline, that is, the field of study—the profession. How does that differ from subject?

  • Subject asks, “What is this about?” and is the topic of a book—the informational content inside.
  • Discipline asks, “Who is this for?”—who will use this—and assigns a Dewey number so those folks find their professional information in one place.

A particular subject, then, can be assigned more than one Dewey number depending on which profession uses the material for their own purposes. Here’s a DDC example of a simple water report that can apply to 5 different Dewey numbers:

Use 333.91 for monitoring to protect water quality, 553.7 for chemical & biological status, 363.6 for assuring compliance with standards, 628.1 for technical aspects of water treatment, and 628.93 for effectiveness of sewage treatment. (Abridged 15, p65.) [edited for brevity]

Also keep in mind that books for more than one discipline or subject are assigned the lowest Dewey Decimal number that includes all disciplines—using the rule of two or the rule of three. This explains why the 300 section is so large: its numbers are lower than 6 other Dewey Classes, so multiple subject/discipline books are placed in the 300s rather than where we might need them for our school curriculum.

Visit my blog posts on Dewey 590s Animals for more about disciplinary alignment, and Let’s Put Dewey Decimal Books Where Students Can Find Them for more on the rules of two & three.

WHAT DOES 300 SOCIAL SCIENCE REALLY INCLUDE?

Calling the 300s “social sciences” may be a slight misnomer: the social sciences include geography and history which Dewey places in the 900s, as well as psychology which Dewey places in the 100s. Thus, of the 7 social sciences, only sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics are in the 300s.

Since these four disciplines are about social relationships and the organization & function of human societies, I’ve chosen a more specific name for this Dewey number which students understand better than the generic “Social Sciences”:

Dewey 300 –  Society, Government, and Culture

Unfortunately, the materials for these 3 broad headings are not necessarily in contiguous divisions and sections, so here’s the 300 divisions each one encompasses:

  • Society: 300 Sociology & anthropology and 360 Social problems & services
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  • Government: 320 Political science, 330 Economics, 340 Law, and 350 Public administration & military science, and 380 Commerce, communications & transportation
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  • Culture: 370 Education & 390 Customs

NOTE: You probably won’t have any 310s in your school library because it’s just for statistical records.

SOCIETY

300 Sociology & anthropology
The 300s begin with society, specifically sociology & anthropology. If we consider psychology (the 100s) as the social science of the individual, then 300-307 is the social science of groups. It includes behaviors like bullying, gangs, prejudice & discrimination; interactions such as social change & civil disobedience; and relationships between individuals, groups, and communities. It does have one section important for School Librarians:

  • 305 Groups of people introduces those used throughout the rest of the 300s by age, gender, social class, race, ethnicity/ancestry, occupation, and illness/disability. School Librarians need to build this section with high-quality, equity-sensitive resources because it can so strongly influence the minds of our students.

360 Social problems & services
This division may be, I suspect, the one that gives School Librarians the most headaches. It’s categorized according to type of problem and how the service is provided:

  • for specific groups of people (according to the groups in 305),
  • as governmental services such as public safety, crime & punishment,
  • by public & private societies & clubs,
  • by commercial insurance services,
  • by associations.

Some books in this division are victims of the rules of two or three, such as substance abuse and mental & physical disorders. I relocated many of these to appropriate higher numbers for better student access.

363 Other social problems and services
If the 360s are problematic, this section is particularly exasperating for School Librarians. Like any “other” section of the 300s, it’s a dumping ground for disparate topics. To understand what’s covered in this section, think of it as the basic needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy: physical needs for human survival, and our need for safety & security.

  • 363 begins with Public safety from hazards, followed by police services with crime investigation & forensics, and ‘safety’ from moral ‘problems’, like alcohol, gambling, prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, drug trafficking, and abortion. The public safety portion ends with another dumping ground—363.3 Other aspects of public safety which has just about everything else, from censorship to terrorism to gun control to firefighting.
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    363.34 Disasters is actually disaster relief, and school libraries may have sizeable sections here on earthquakes & volcanos, floods & tsunamis, and other earth & weather-related disasters. I relocated many of these to 551 Earth science so they’d be together for science class assignments.
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  • 363 ends with physical needs and the services that provide for it. This section includes housing, public utilities like water treatment, food supply issues including malnutrition of the poor & famine, and population issues like family planning & birth control, sterilization, and over-population.
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    363.7 Environmental problems is another perplexing spot, because so many popular school topics about environmental protection are crammed in here. I added additional numbers (below) to better define the different topics:
Description Dewey number
Environmental problems 363.7
Sanitation – waste control, recycling .72
Pollution .73
By source – oil, toxic chemicals, acid rain .738
Of specific environments – air, water, soil
Global warming from CO2 (greenhouse effect) &
ozone layer depletion (You may find ozone books in .738 due to the rule of 2 regarding refrigerants, but I moved mine here because it’s a global issue of the atmosphere.
.739
Noise pollution .74

GOVERNMENT

It’s no surprise that 320 Political science, 340 Law, and 350 Public administration & military science align with the 3 branches of U.S. government. (Be aware that other countries may not have this structure, but most of those books are in the 900 section. )

  •  320 Political science includes civil & human rights, the political process & elections, relations between nations, and the legislative process, hence, books about the U.S. Congress.
  • 340 Law covers international, constitutional, regional/state, economic, criminal, and civil law, and includes the United Nations, the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • 350 Public administration covers the executive branch—the U.S. Presidency, the Cabinet, and management of departments or agencies such as national security, justice, foreign affairs, health & education, and those with economic or environmental oversight. 355-359 military science covers all branches of the military, which is administered by the head of state.

 

MAKING THE 300’S MORE STUDENT-FRIENDLYMaking the Dewey 300s More Student-Friendly - This Class name & several sections of 300s Social Science are exasperating for students and School Librarians, but a few changes can help. Calling it Society, Government & Culture helps students, as does actually adding decimal numbers to clarify different topics.

330 Economics
Economics is probably nestled between 320 and 340, because legislatures (320) set taxes and budgets. This division also includes careers, money, banking, credit cards, the stock market, and taxes. (You may also see books on socialism & communism because they are economic-based systems, but I prefer all books on types of government together, so I relocated mine to 321.)

School Librarians need to know that 330 also covers economic development and management including that of natural resources, so that’s why we find a sizable group of books in 333.7-333.9. I actually added decimals to my books to differentiate between the different topics, according to the table below:

Description Dewey number
Economics of land & energy 333
Land, recreational & wilderness areas, energy 333.7
Conservation & protection .72
Land .73
Grasslands .74
Forest lands .75
Rural lands .76
Urban lands .77
Recreational & wilderness areas .78
Energy – alternative, renewable .79
Primary forms of energy – solar, nuclear .792
Secondary forms of energy – renewable .793
Photovoltaic energy .796
Subsurface resources – nonrenewable 333.8
Fossil fuels .82
Geothermal .88
Other natural resources 333.9
Water energy – hydroelectric .91
Wind energy .92
Biofuels, biodiversity, wildlife refuges .95

380 COMMERCE, COMMUNICATIONS, TRANSPORTATION
This division may seem redundant with topics in 330 Economics; however, this division is for regulatory aspects (law & public administration) and public consumption—the socio-cultural perspective of ‘products’ & ‘people’, that is, services that sustain or benefit our way of life. Here we find:

  • domestic & international trade
  • the infrastructure for communications—postal, telegraph, computer, wireless (radio, television, satellite), and telephone
  • the infrastructure for transportation, including railroads, waterways, air traffic, roads, local mass transit, and pipeline transport of utilities.

You may see here books that are topical with those in the 600s, and they may get increased circulation by relocating them there.

CULTURE

Near the end of the 300s we find the two divisions relating to culture and it’s institutions.

370 Education
Education is how our culture and traditions are passed down from adults to children. Most books with this division number will be about teaching, so will be shelved in our Professional collection. You may, however, want to do as I did, and build a circulating group of books on schools for the historical time periods our students study in their social studies classes, and books on study skills topics.

390 Customs, etiquette, folklore
This is the division we probably think of when we refer to “culture”. It differs from 300 Sociology & anthropology in that 300 is about groups & institutions, whereas this division is about our personal or informal way of life. We find here sections on personal adornment such as clothing & accessories, cosmetics, jewelry, and body alteration like tattoos and body piercing.

We also find sections on customs for home & family life, death, and special occasions, like marriage, festivals, birthdays, and holidays. Interestingly, it’s also where we find such arcane topics as cannibalism and taboos. The topics may seem similar to 306 Culture and institutions, but 306 is about behaviors and interactions, whereas these sections are for specific celebratory rituals.

  • 398 Folklore, especially 398.2 Folk literature can be a sizable section in school libraries, and if yours is not well organized, you might want to read my post Let’s Put Dewey Decimal Books Where Students Can Find Them. I offer alternate numbers to group these books according to how our students study folklore.
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    At 398.8 Rhymes and rhyming games we find Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes, as well as lullabies and jump rope rhymes. If your school library serves PreK, you may want to build this section and relocate related books from other areas to make it easier for you and your teachers to find them all together.

WHEN THE 300’s ISN’T THE RIGHT PLACE

School Librarians Can Change Dewey to Improve Student Access -Many School Librarians get frustrated with the Dewey Decimal Classification system and want to “genrify” it like we do our fiction literature. I believe this is because they don’t understand the purpose of DDC:

works that are used together to be found together.

It’s that purpose of DDC which gives us the freedom to change a Dewey number. Since our disciplinary use is different than career professionals, we can locate books where they will better serve the needs of our school curriculum.

For example, one DDC rule of two/three victim is U.S. slavery before the Civil War. Books on this subject can be found at 2 places in the 300s:

  • 306.3 Culture/economic institutions if the content is slavery as an established socio-economic culture of the time.
  • 326 Slavery and emancipation if the content is about abolitionism and antislavery movements, the political issues of that time period.

I didn’t like either location, so I changed all these books to a little-used but legitimate DDC number where students would find the books within the historical time period:

973.71 Civil War – Social, political, economic history

This number already includes the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation, so now all U.S. slavery books are together. After relocating the books, students easily discovered them there and even thought I’d bought new ones!

So, School Librarians don’t have to give up Dewey for radical organizational changes to make their school library more student-friendly. For additional creative ways to use DDC, get my new E-book How to Make Dewey Decimals Student-Friendly found at No Sweat Library, my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

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