This should have been the first entry....

... but I had it saved as a Word document and just found out it needed to be posted on the blog. So here it is:

Erin Shaughnessy
CED 599
“Before practicum” reflection
August, 2009

I’ve been a patron of libraries as long as I can remember. As a student, teacher, and community member, I have used libraries in a variety of capacities. As with any job or career, there is a public perception of what a person in that career does all day long and an insider’s reality is. I have been considering working toward my library certification for the last two years, so I have been paying closer attention to the inner workings of the library at Nathan Hale. In these casual observations, I am amazed at how much I do not know about managing a school library. The ignorance is a bit daunting, quite frankly, and I hope the experiences in these practicum hours start to erase the vast lack of knowledge I currently have.
My interest, should I leave the high school English classroom, lies primarily in an elementary school library position. This interest stems from personal concerns, honestly, and I hope the personal needs and professional challenges fuse in a manner which satisfies me. The little I now realize I know about the management of a school library is expounded by the fact that I have worked in a high school for my entire 15 years as an educator. The shift to an elementary school will be an entirely differently world for me. I hope that the elementary practicum experience alleviates some of my anxiety about the unknowns I am facing.
I think many people perceive a librarian as a stuffy, humorless person who sits and checks out books all day only to shelve them when they are return and grumble about people messing up his/her stacks. I am fairly certain that no one considers where the materials came from, how they got here, where the money to pay for them came from, how they are catalogued, why they were selected, who uses them, and so on. Further, the librarian’s role as a technology integrator and collaborator is probably a new concept for the public to grasp. In most people’s heads, “library” equals “books.” What this practicum experience will hopefully show me is not only how to do all of things mentioned, but more than I even realized.