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

Posted on February 27, 2020 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.
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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

An Easy System To Help School Librarians Weed Fiction Books

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Barbara Paciotti

If a School Librarian had to list the 3 most dreaded tasks, weeding would be right up there with inventory and overdue books…right? I’ve written about my 6-step process for weeding Dewey books, so now it’s time to tackle weeding Fiction books.

When I began as School Librarian at my middle school, it was only 2 years old, and we still had 3 years of higher funding to build our collection, so my first 3 years I didn’t do any weeding at all. Needless to say, by the 4th year, the Fiction section looked pretty well stocked, but I wasn’t satisfied with some of the titles on the shelves.

Often new school libraries are stocked with a vendor package of book titles purportedly chosen for the grade levels of the school. I discovered that what they actually do is clear their warehouse of old books that have been sitting there awhile and throw in enough new titles so the average age of the collection isn’t some time in the Stone Age. No wonder kids couldn’t find anything interesting to read!

So, that first time I weeded Fiction was, to say the least, a learning experience, and it helped me develop an easy system for weeding Fiction books that has served me for a decade.

WHAT TO WEED IN FICTION

When weeding books from the school library collection, we first need to decide our purpose:

We can weed for currency, that is, remove old publication date books to update the average age of the collection.
We can weed for relevancy, that is, remove books that haven’t circulated for awhile to increase appeal of the collection…and boost circulation.

I always weed Fiction for relevancy. If the purpose of our Fiction collection is to promote independent reading, then we want books on the shelves that are interesting to students. Relevancy means students are drawn to a book—for whatever reason—and will check it out. Relevancy allows older, popular “classics” to remain, but removes undesirable old publication date books, accomplishing both purposes.

Weeding for relevancy means deciding on the date range and circulation numbers of books we want to remove. Many librarians weed Fiction books with under 10 checkouts in 5 years, and you may want to do that, too. I choose to weed any Fiction book with 0-5 checkouts during the past 4 years. How do I justify these numbers?

In our middle school, we have every-other-week library visits with ELA classes for book checkout and sustained silent reading (SSR) which we call DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read). I’m poor at probability, but here’s my reasoning:

A student can check out 3 books at a time, so a book has 3 chances of being chosen by 1 student during a single library visit.
ELA visits the library 15 times during the school year, so a book has 45 opportunities to be chosen by a student during a school year.
We have roughly 650 students, so each book has 29,250 chances to be chosen within a school year.
As a 6-8 middle school, each incoming group of students has 3 years of visits to choose Fiction books, so each book has 87,750 opportunities to be chosen during a 3-year period.
I allow an extra year, just to be sure, which puts it over 100,000 chances for a book to be chosen. If, after that many opportunities it hasn’t been checked out, it’s cluttering the shelf and preventing other books from being noticed.

I choose 0-5 checkouts because my minimum appeal number is 2 students/year. I figure, if a student likes a book, they’ll tell a friend about it. If that happens each year for 3 years, the book will be checked out 6 times and I’ll leave it on the shelf. Fewer than that isn’t worth the shelf space. Even if a book had high circulation after initial purchase, when it’s checked out fewer and fewer times within any 4-year period, then it’s lost its appeal and needs to go.

WHEN TO WEED FICTION

The flexibility of weeding Fiction is that we can do it any time. Think about it: any books that aren’t on the shelves—that is, checked out or on re-shelving carts—are being used by students so they don’t need to be weeded! And it isn’t necessary to weed the entire Fiction collection every year, so that’s why I do mini-weeds.

What’s a mini-weed? If we set up a schedule to consistently weed small sections each year, we’ll regularly rotate through the entire Fiction collection. We can start with the books on one side of an aisle. If time presents itself during the school year, we can do another side of an aisle. Eventually we’ll complete the schedule.

HOW TO WEED FICTION

To set up my weeding report, I identify a certain range of Fiction books. Before I reorganized Fiction into Subjects, I set the range for the Call Numbers on one side of an aisle, like FIC AAA – FIC CRU. During Fiction reorganization, I assigned a book’s Subject to our system’s Home Location field, so now I set my report for the Home Location Subject I want to weed. In either case I have the report sort by Call Number so it’s in alpha-author order, the same as the books on shelves.

For the actual weeding, I take a bookcart and a printout of the report to the location, then simply go down the aisle, pulling books off the shelf to the cart. I don’t bother crossing off the list; I just indicate where I stop in case I get interrupted. Once I’ve gone through the entire report, I take the cart to the circulation desk and scan the book barcodes into DISCARD. Last, I remove identifiers and pack the books in boxes, ready for pickup by the district warehouse, which does our book disposal for us.

The weed report goes into the trash. Even if there are books on the list that didn’t get pulled, they’re either checked out or on the book re-shelving cart, so students are reading them and they don’t need to be weeded. Even if a book is mis-shelved, some student has put hands on it, so it’s still of interest. If not, it’ll get weeded next year!

WHAT IFS

What about lost or missing books? They’re extraneous to the weeding process; because they’re already off the shelves, they’re a matter for inventory, not weeding.

Many School Librarians share stories of horrified teachers and administrators seeing them throw out weeded books. Here’s a possible explanation you might use to justify what you do.

Books are like great food, but instead of feeding the body, they nourish the mind. When we encounter food in our kitchen or—gasp!—at the grocery store that is past the expired date, we know that food is no longer healthful for us.

The same is true of a book: when it’s past the time that it’s accurate or relevant, then it’s no longer nourishing, and in fact, can be damaging. That’s why we weed: to be sure our school library is providing wholesome and beneficial sustenance for the intellect and the soul of our students.

If you’ve been holding back on weeding for whatever reason, I hope this article stimulates you to jump in. It’s actually quite a satisfying process, knowing you’ve “pulled the weeds.” Students are better able to notice the remaining books on the cleared off shelves, so they read more and our circulation improves. And isn’t that the whole point of a library?

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