AASL Standard 3

Collaboration and Leadership

School library media candidates provide leadership and establish connections with the greater library and education community to create school library media programs that focus on students learning and achievement; encourage the personal and professional growth of teachers and other educators, and model the efficient and effective use of information and ideas.

 

Standard 3 recognizes the importance of the academic and educational community that surrounds the media center. Not only does it stress the role of the media specialist as “instructional and educational partner,” but also the value of connecting with other library communities in increasing the resources available to the media center.

During my internship, I was involved with Standard 3 on a regular basis. Not only did I continually work with teachers as a partner to deliver instruction, but I also actively sought resources that would support their curricular goals. I played a key role in delivering reference lessons and teaching students how to use resources for information seeking purposes. A major project that I worked on was to develop a booklist of materials that would support a year long language arts curriculum for second grade. To accomplish this goal, I consulted the web, other media centers and the public library. This project helped me realize what a valuable tool the “outside” community really is.

Developing our Program Development and Evaluation Plan reinforced the partner/leader role as well. One of our primary goals was to foster the relationship with teachers by developing curriculum maps, improving communication, and participating in staff development and grade level meetings. I think all of these actions show the need for a proactive role by the media specialist to ensure that strong collaboration opportunities can exist. We also talked about the role of the media specialist as a school leader, involved in various committees, which involve the staff and community members. My own experiences in the media center support this theory in practice. Not only is my own media specialist an active leader in our school, but so was my mentor. In addition, they both participate in cluster wide Media Technology meetings to support one another and their programs.