24/11/2011
All seems so quiet now my two children have gone to bed, so I have decided to make good use of my free time to do my first blogging. I used to think blogging is for people who likes to rant about nothing and everything, but here we are, using it as a tool to document our learning journey. How wrong was I!!!
I have to say though it seems a bit daunting to work as a casual teacher, doing one day a week school library volunteering and studying for the TL course, I am beginning to be glad that the three roles I am undertaking seem to be complementing each other.
I'm a doer so I find having to study the theories behind how things are done in a certain way a very time consuming exercise. Having said that I'm hoping this course will be able to help me to get to know OASIS better, teach me how to do SCIS, Cataloguing and various technical stuff associated with the TL role.
The other day when I was helping the school TL to do some cataloguing I lamented on how nobody seems to be reading what I call the "all time classics" (Ann of Green Gables, Huckleberry Finn .. etc) anymore, the library assistant said to me that the kids are just not into that sort of novels anymore. Instead lower grade kids are reading Captain Underpants and Tashi, and the older kids are reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I am Four. It was then I remembered what Kennedy and various other authors' definitions of what collection management is all about. It's the "users" needs and the teaching and learning process of the school, not the teacher librarian's needs that will determine a school's collection. Though I don't personally understand the point of stocking books like Captain Underpants, but I do have to accept that is what the students want to read.
So far I have been fortunate enough to take part in helping the selection and deselection process in the library. Next week the TL is going to be busy with stocktaking so that's another good opportunity for me to witness how my background reading for this course is putting into practice , and how pros do their stocktaking. Can't wait.
