Not Fixed vs Flex, But Responsive Scheduling for the School Library

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Barbara Paciotti

Fixed vs. Flexible Scheduling for school libraries has long been controversial, and AASL now recommends we implement “Responsive scheduling”. The purpose for library scheduling is often misunderstood by school administrators, by teachers, and even by School Librarians, so it’s time to take a fresh look.

To better understand the issue of fixed or flex or responsive scheduling, it may help to see how far we’ve come, and where we are now, so that we can effectively work toward where we need to be.

A SHORT HISTORY OF LIBRARY SCHEDULING

Fixed scheduling was originally a non-negotiable schedule of library visits set by school administration. Lessons came from a specific, fixed, scope-and-sequenced Library curriculum of what students needed to know about the library, just as English, Math, Social Studies, and Science were separate curricula. There was no coordination of Library skills with what was happening in classrooms, but that seemed OK, since none of the subject areas were coordinated either.

For the next 30 years we tried to coordinate and integrate curriculum to improve student learning, like adding literature, art, and music to Social Studies. Along the way we increased the use of technology and added authentic project-oriented assessment.

Educational advancements increased use of the school library, highlighting inadequacies in student information literacy skills and the need for an improved library program to address these skills at point of need. AASL’s Information Power (published in 1988 and republished in 1998) promoted the integration of library skills into the curriculum and a flexible approach to library use for the teaching of these skills. To make that happen, librarians and teachers would collaborate on how and when to teach what.

THE FLEX APPROACH: THE PROS & CONS

No more stand alone library lessons taught in isolation from other subjects. No more classes dropped off by teachers at prescribed times each day of each week. School Librarians would now flexibly schedule classes into the library when they needed to be there, for a few days in a row if necessary, and take time to plan with teachers to create lessons that integrate library skills into classroom activities.

Here’s where some misunderstanding arose. If fixed scheduling denied us power over our schedule, flex scheduling can also take away our decision-making power. If we’re told we can’t have any schedule at all, that we need to provide unlimited access, to anyone, anytime, to do anything, well, that isn’t what flex schedule means.

The key word is flexible. It means that, rather than being forced to accept specific classes on a regular schedule, WE determine who uses the library and when. It means we decide when a class needs to be in the library, and it means we can even have a fixed schedule for certain classes, because we have decided that is what students need.

True flex scheduling means we can say yes or no to casual drop-ins or last-minute requests, because we have a class scheduled to visit which requires our full attention, especially when we don’t have an aide to assist with book checkout. It also means that students working on projects we’ve had a part in teaching can come to the library at any time even if the class isn’t scheduled.

BENEFITS OF A COMBINATION FIXED/FLEX

A fixed schedule provides more opportunities for teaching and reinforcing library skills, so we must know our school’s curricula very well and develop a wide repertoire of activities to keep students engaged. Fixed schedules demand that we become as flexible as possible to plan with teachers and integrate curriculum into our library lessons.

Flex scheduling promotes integration of library skills into classroom activities; however, flexible schedules demand that we regularly plan with teachers and schedule classes for library and research skills. Either way, we must push ourselves to become a better professional. As fixed scheduled teachers work with us, they begin to see the benefits of having a flexible library schedule, so they can become our best allies when we ask administration to move toward flex scheduling.

I began my school library career with completely flexible scheduling, but after a couple years it became problematic. Once I understood what true flex scheduling meant, I created a combination fix/flex schedule that works for our school:

ELA classes come to the library on a set day every other week for book checkout and DEAR time (silent reading). We collaborate on a schedule so one week 7g & 8g classes visit on Tuesday & Wednesday, then the following week SpEd/ELL and 6g visit on Thursday and Friday. I can adjust ELA visit day if the library is otherwise needed: we switch to another open day that week, or they get books & return to the classroom for DEAR time, or the teacher sends a few students at a time for a new book.
linebreak
With 5 contiguous open days—Thursday through Wednesday, every other week, I can schedule other subject classes into the library for lessons and research assignments.
I can reserve Monday for library administrative work, for planning, and for collaboration with teachers, unless it’s essential for a teacher to bring students in that day.
Recurring yearly lessons, such as my Dewey Decimals Lesson with 6g and 7g Math classes, my Online Subscription WebQuests with 6g and 7g Social Studies, my Cloud Computing Lesson with Spanish & Art classes, and my Digital Citizenship Lessons, are all scheduled with teachers at the start of each grading period to be sure there are no conflicts with newly planned projects that may need to use the library and its resources.

This combination (or semi-fixed/flex) scheduling worked well in my School Library for over a decade from the early 2000s.

“RESPONSIVE” SCHEDULING FOR THE 2020s

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action (2009) offered little about scheduling other than consistent use of the term equitable access. However, AASL issued a Position Statement on Library Scheduling in 2011, revised in 2014, which was printed in the new National School Library Standards (2018, p216), about “flexible scheduling”:

Classes must be flexibly scheduled to visit the school library on an as-needed basis to facilitate just-in-time research, training, and use of technology with the guidance of the teacher, who is the subject specialist, and the librarian, who is the information-search process specialist. … Regularly scheduling classes in the school library to provide teacher release time or preparation time prohibits this best practice.

Then in 2018, “flexible scheduling” was revisited to better align with the new Standards. The new AASL Position Statement on Library Scheduling was submitted to the board and approved in June, 2019. Their new recommendation is for “responsive scheduling”:

Scheduling of classes should allow flexible, open, unrestricted, and equitable access on an as-needed basis to facilitate just-in-time research, training, and utilization of technology with instruction from the school librarian and the content-area educator. The practice of scheduling classes in the school library on a set schedule to provide educator release or preparation time inhibits best practice by limiting collaboration and co-teaching opportunities between the school librarian and classroom educator.

Responsibility for responsive scheduling is to be “shared by the entire school community: the local educational agency, district administration, principal, school librarian, educators, the school library support staff, parents, and learners.” We School Librarians can use this section when we approach our principals for a more flexible schedule, and give them something to take higher up.

This new Position Statement on School Library Scheduling is a critical document for School Librarians “desiring to fully achieve a collaborative and integrated school library philosophy.” It emphasizes the importance of collaborative planning and helps us promote our Library Lessons as “an essential and integral part of all classroom curriculum.” I encourage all of us to print out this 3-page PDF document to show to our principals and our teachers and to develop a new “elevator pitch.”

With this new Position Statement we may need to make changes in our policies & procedures. I’d love to have an aide to help with book checkout and incidental student interaction while I’m teaching classes, but know that’s not fiscally likely. So, I set up a self-checkout station and teach students how to use it, having eliminated overdue fines and increased book limits to remove barriers for making this work.

I use the Open Dyslexic font for print and digital documents to make it easier for all students to read materials. I create videos answering some common questions students ask about the library and its resources, putting them on the School Library Website, so students can find answers when I’m unavailable.

I have computer administrators set the student browser homepage to the School or District Library Website so our virtual library is the first resource students see. This will ease student access to searching for books, using research databases, and locating Resource Lists, library guides, and other assignment helpers.

I’m sure there are other considerations I’ve not even thought about. If you have suggestions, please add them to the comments!

References:

AASL Board of Directors Meeting, ALA 2019 Annual Conference, Washington, DC June 20 – 25, p46-50

AASL Position Statement on School Library Scheduling

How Simplifying Library Orientations Will Simplify Library Management

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Barbara Paciotti

I’ve written about my simplified Library Orientations with English Language Arts classes, that focus only on reading and narrative literature. Students check out their first Fiction book and we establish DEAR time with silent reading as the pattern for every book exchange visit. Eliminating everything else from orientation gives students a pleasurable visit and makes ELA teachers avid library supporters.

From the very beginning, I began to see that simplified Library Orientations also simplify Library Management: scheduling visits, facility organization, collection development, library advocacy, and even my own professional development. My whole approach to our School Library Program became simpler, more focused on what students actually need. Let me share some details and you will want to simplify your program, too.

SIMPLIFIED LIBRARY SCHEDULING

One simplification of my Library Orientation was establishing sustained, silent reading (SSR) so students can begin reading their book choice, during which I do a silent book checkout by individual tables. The result is that students are more quickly engaged in their story, are reading more, and need to exchange finished books for new ones more often.

Having DEAR Time during library visits convinced ELA teachers to schedule a regular “ELA Book Exchange” day, every other week, for each grade level and SpEd/ESL/Reading Improvement, throughout the school year. Here's our schedule for first semester. | No Sweat Library

ELA library schedule

Having DEAR Time convinced my ELA teachers to schedule regular whole-class library visits throughout the school year. Now we have an “ELA Book Exchange” day, every other week, for each grade level and for SpEd/ESL/Read180. I schedule a semester of visits and send event emails to teachers that automatically add the dates into their online calendars.

This scheduling—fixed for ELA, flex for everyone else—has been a perfect solution for our library. ELA teachers are very adaptable if we have to change for another library need, but this regular visitation has also allowed me to create short Library Lessons for each new ELA unit on expository text, persuasion, and poetry.

SIMPLIFIED FACILITY ORGANIZATION

My goal for the organization and arrangement of library materials is to minimize the time it takes students to find what they need. Simplifying library orientations led to an ongoing library re-organization and re-arrangement that promotes reading, supports subject curricula, and makes the School Library more student-friendly.

Students like the Special Collections I feature at orientations because their smaller size and specific topics makes it easier to find a book that interests them. Teachers like these customized reading choices because they support curriculum and reduce the time students spend searching for books during visits.

Before creating my first special collection I thoroughly planned how to do it: apply a Subject sticker under the spine label, a transparent color symbol or label protector over the Call Number spine label, change the Home Location in the automation system, and shelve the books together with colorful customized signs and shelf labels. This S-S-S System—stickers, shelving, and signage—is simple and fast, and anyone can sort books for re-shelving with a quick glance at the sticker or color label … as in, “Judy, I need you to shelve all the ‘red’ label books.”

I’ve written about some of my Special Collections, but here’s a list of all 10 of them, in the approximate order I created them over the years:

Texas State Reading List collections – the middle school Lone Star books and selected high school Tayshas books.
Careers – books pulled from other Dewey sections and shelved together under the 331.7 Dewey books; they’re easy to locate for pleasure reading and for the Careers class project.
Multicultural Fiction – I decided not to separate these books from the rest of the fiction collection, so I applied stickers at the top of the spine. You could also add a tag in the MARC record so a Subject search for multicultural fiction would bring up the collection.
Graphic Novels—fiction and non-fiction plus Manga series.
Picture Books and Quick-Reads (easy-readers & books <100 pages) – I moved Picture Books, Quick-Reads, and Graphic Novels to adjacent shelves for ELL, SpEd and Read180 students to progressively build language and reading skills.
Quick-Bios (books <100 pages) for ELL, SpEd and RI, and Memoirs, a curriculum topic for 8g ELA.
Spanish Language Fiction and Spanish Language Dewey collections to support our IB language program. Spanish teachers schedule a Library Lesson for students to learn about, and check out books from, these collections.
Multicultural collections in 973.04 for Multicultural U.S. History (Civil Rights movement, etc.) and on the shelf right below, 973.08 for Multicultural America (.08 is for “kinds of people”).
Fiction Subjects: Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Humor, Mystery, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Scary (Horror), Science Fiction, and Sports.
Special Social Studies Collections: GlobeTrekkers (fiction & Dewey sorted by continent), Totally Texas (Texas Fiction & 976.4), and Read America (Historical America fiction & 973)

DEAR Time during ELA visits prompted me to add additional furniture and create special seating areas in the library. I now have a chair or bench at the end of each aisle so students can look over books. Students earn the privilege from their teacher to sit in a solitary chair to read by themselves or in the small group seating in the magazine area. I didn’t use library funds—I raided the district warehouse for discards, accepted donated chairs from parents, and donated a couple of my own. Even the theater teacher gave me seating items to clear out her props room, yet they are readily available when she needs to borrow them back for a performance!

Photo of special library seating at the end of certain aisles of books.

A few special seats

SIMPLIFIED COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

Simplified Library Orientations and Special Collections makes collection development easier because I know exactly what to look for in catalogs and book reviews. The first expenditures from my book budget are for Special Collections, so I can keep them fresh and inviting to students. With vendors I create a separate book list for each Special Collection. I print out each collection list—so when books arrive I can quickly separate and label one group at a time—then combine them into the vendor order to clear the lists for future additions.

My district has a standard for book processing, cataloging, and spine label call numbers, so using only stickers and transparent labels to identify Special Collection books means NO changes to call numbers or spine labels. In my automation system I’ve added Special Collection names to the Home Location field—the one that shows when a book is on the shelf or checked out. I use the batch feature to set each name so I can scan all the new books in each collection at one time. An online catalog search displays the Home Location field so viewers know that a book is in a Special Collection location (or that it’s checked out). It’s also very easy to generate customized reports using that field:

Circulation statistics show which collections are most popular and need more books or which titles need additional copies.
Aged and low-circulation statistics allow me to quickly weed books throughout the year, one special collection at a time.

SIMPLIFIED LIBRARY PROMOTION

I’m not a bulletin board person. The 3 bulletin boards outside the library near each grade-level hallway were decorated at the start of school and left until the end of the school year. After customizing Library Orientations, I was inspired to create a bulletin board specific to each grade level that changes every grading period to coordinate with classroom activities and to promote reading and the library. Each board has signs for:

ELA grade-level theme that changes with each GP unit, and pictures of books related to that theme.
Social Studies grade-level theme, along with pictures of books to coordinate with classroom content. Each board has a pocket with grade-level Social Studies bookmarks so students can grab one if they need it.
Subject area library visits scheduled for the grading period, along with Dewey-book pictures and infographics of online services for any research projects that will bring subject area classes to the library.

When students talk about a good book, I have them create a book review on a 3”x5” card and staple it on the board. It’s a great way to involve students and to update bulletin boards without a lot of extra work.

Learn more about Purposeful Library Bulletin Boards by joining my Mailing List and downloading the FREE ebook with signs you can use!

Snip of several colorful topical bookmarks side-by-side

Examples of topical bookmarks

Changing the focus of orientations to reading also prompted me to create my own customized Reading Records and Series & Topical Fiction bookmarks. Using letter-size color card-stock I can create 6 bookmarks with lists of books on both sides. From a ream of card-stock I get ~3000 bookmarks for the same price as 500 from library suppliers. I also customize bookmarks for Lexiled reading lists for ELL/SpEd/Read180 classes and for research project print & online resource lists.

SIMPLIFIED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

I’ve written before about my science and social studies background, which helps for choosing non-fiction books and coordinating content-area reading into lessons. Even for my own reading I prefer non-fiction (except mysteries). Consequently, following orientation changes, my professional development became more focused on ELA standards, on reading levels for students and books, and on middle school fiction. I read professional books, attend workshops, and indulge in librarian blogs featuring fiction books and promoting independent reading. I’m also more attentive to book reviews and recommendations from other librarians in my district and on the listservs. I’m still not as adept as someone from an ELA background, but every step forward improves student use of our library, the circulation of books, and my ability to help students find a perfect book to read.

I have many products for facility management and library lessons in No Sweat Library, my TPT store. You’ll especially like my Library Orientations, customized for each grade, 6-8.

Updated 2026.

Looking Backward with No Sweat Library

School Library Lessons & Management That Work

Tag Archives: libraryscheduling