BVSD 21st Century Teacher Librarian Vision

Check out the video about the new BVSD 21st Century Teacher Librarian Vision & Website! You can also read along in the transcript below.

Welcome to a tour of the BVSD 21st Century Librarian Website. During the last three years, the teacher librarian group participated in a visioning process to help strengthen their libraries, schools, students and staff. As part of the process, the teacher librarians felt that a website with information about this vision, as well as practical examples of what this “looks like” in a library would be helpful to both the librarian in his or her own professional development, and also for teachers and principals to understand the ways a teacher librarian can support the learning and instructional goals of a building.

On the homepage, there are links to each characteristic that librarians will work to embody as they continue to develop professionally. When you click on a characteristic, you are taken to a page that provides a description of the characteristic, a video featuring a BVSD teacher librarian demonstrating how they apply this characteristic in their libraries, as well as additional resources for information that supports continued growth of the topic.

For example, if I click “Student Outreach and Advocacy Leader”, I am provided a detailed list of attributes, a few videos explaining and demonstrating this characteristics, as well as resources for more information. Each of these characteristics will be updated as our teacher librarians continue to produce exemplars of their work with their students and staff.

This website has helped to provide a framework for how teacher librarians are viewed in BVSD. This website and subsequent white paper information was presented to Dr. Messinger and cabinet as a way to provide talking points with principals about staffing a 21st century library. We’d also like to point out the links to the visions of our librarians that are a part of the 21st Century Cohort--these visions are reflections of the passion this group has for their own learning as well as student learning in BVSD!

Our goal throughout this process has been to increase the information available to our district in regards to the role of the teacher librarian, as well as a way to help support movement and growth opportunities for our librarians. This past year we were fortunate to have Regina Hoskins, librarian at Southern Hills Middle School and Arlene Gregersen, librarian at Mesa Elementary School, serving in a role as teacher librarian leaders to help finalize this website as well as find ways to support teacher librarians into developing into these leaders. Their leadership, along with the leadership of Technical Services Librarian Amy Bland, District Cataloguer Rae Ciciora, and the BVSD Ed Tech team helped to finalize this material!

We will continue to work with the teacher librarians to develop these characteristics as ways to support the learning and instructional goals of our schools! And most importantly, to impact the growth and learning of our students!