Librarian: The Job With Many Hats
I was working on my bio for a panel that I am speaking on in a few weeks and noticed something. I wear a lot of hats. This isn’t unique to me, in particular, but to all librarians across my district, state, nation and beyond. School librarians, like teachers and counselors and administration, have more responsibilities than their job title states in the description or what you assume they do. So many times I hear, “well, you’re a librarian. Surely all you do is read all day.” As much as I wished that were true, it is absolutely FALSE.
On my campus I have morning duty for 45 minutes before school. In a normal (non-COVID) year I have clubs such as Makerspace Club, Robotics Club, ProjectLIT Book Club, iREAD Book Club, Gaming Club such as Dungeons & Dragons, UIL Oral Reading & UIL Writing, etc. However, I am unable to have clubs such as these this year, but in regular years I have these clubs before school, during lunch and after school. In addition to clubs, I am also on the campus Team Leader committee, which meets once a month. I am on the Campus Improvement Committee, which meets four times throughout the year. I am the co-leader of the campus’s SPIRIT Committee that meets once a month to help make improvements in campus culture with various subcommittees. We also meet once a month with the district librarians. All of the committees I am on occur after school, past my contract day.
In my position alone I am the GT Facilitator for my campus, which means I am in charge of the entire program. I make sure the GT students are coded correctly in our PEIMS system, that they are all in the right classes and have a GT advisory class. I monitor their budget and order what they need. I hold meetings and make sure they’re following the district and state plan for the GT program. I am also the GT Facilitator for my district’s secondary campuses. This means I share budgets with the other librarians at those campuses and make sure they know deadlines. I am in charge of the field trips for the GT program, as well as our 7th grade competition, which is a huge undertaking on its own. I attend meetings at the district level and advocate for the GT program and teachers.
In addition to that title I am also the Project-Based Learning Leader and Trainer for all secondary campuses. This means that I am in charge of a team of teachers to ensure all our teachers are training in PBL every year. We have multiple meetings to plan our training, schedule the trainings and execute them in a 3 day summer professional development. We then do follow up trainings throughout the school year to keep PBL current and fresh in their minds. I am in charge of scheduling these, meeting with our district curriculum specialist to coordinate trainings, order items needed for the training and much more.
The elementary librarians in our district have lunch duty, before/after school duty (depending on the campus) and many are in charge of morning announcements. In a regular year, they are in charge of the GT program on their own, pulling students out of class to do lessons, which many times has them closing the library for the GT services. This year they are providing GT services remotely via SeeSaw or Canvas platforms. They don’t have library aides like we do at the secondary level so they’re in charge of processing, shelving, inventory, weeding, etc. all on their own in addition to many other duties that their campus requires of them.
The point I’m trying to make is that when we go to school to be school librarians, many times it’s not just being a librarian. They don’t really teach us that in graduate school, but if you’ve been involved in education at all, you know that in most schools in America, educators do way more than is required of them. We go above and beyond everyday, doing any and all that is asked of us for the good of our school and students. Teachers become nurses, counselors, social workers, art and technology teachers, etc. The list is never-ending sometimes in what else we do other than our job title. What hats do you wear on your campus?
