Professional+Commitment

=__** Professional Commitment **__=

Excellent teacher librarians ...

3.1 model and promote lifelong learning.

3.2 commit to the principles of education and librarianship.

3.3 demonstrate leadership within school and professional communities.

3.4 actively participate in education and library professional networks.

(ASLA, 2004)

** __Leadership (3.3)__ **

As the role of the teacher-librarian is a position of leadership, it is crucial you lead with confidence, conviction, and influence (Boyd, 2006, p. 7) The teacher-librarian at my school demonstrates leadership within school by showing commitment to our school community. Many times when the principal and assistant principal are absent, the teacher-librarian becomes the leader of the school. Working as a team with the library school officer, my teacher-librarian shows excellent leadership qualities, working to ensure the efficient day-to-day running of the library. The teacher librarian also engages with the school’s leadership team to ensure the presence of a teacher librarian is valued.

I hope that when working as the teacher-librarian I will be considered to be a leader. To lead a major event in the school such as Book Week, host the parade and have many regular assembly announcements, I know that not only do the staff view the teacher-librarian as a leader but the students do to. I plan on taking initiative to lead in my future school community wherever it may be!
 * __Professional Development Day (3.3, 3.4)__ [[image:http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:cIoEB9LlGXq-EM:http://www.chenega.com/images/meetings.gif width="122" height="112" align="right" link="http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.chenega.com/images/meetings.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.chenega.com/Pages/servicecenter_meetings.html&usg=__XBg5H6cU_jTneDXfDRPzrpgBbAw=&h=340&w=370&sz=52&hl=en&start=31&tbnid=cIoEB9LlGXq-EM:&tbnh=112&tbnw=122&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmeetings%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18"]] **

<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; language: en-AU; mso-ansi-language: en-AU; mso-arabic-font-family: Arial; mso-armenian-font-family: Arial; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-asciisym-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-bengali-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-bopomofo-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-braille-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-canadianabor-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-cherokee-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-currency-font-family: Arial; mso-cyrillic-font-family: Arial; mso-default-font-family: Arial; mso-devanagari-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-ethiopic-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-eudc-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-georgian-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-greek-font-family: Arial; mso-gurmukhi-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-halfwidthkana-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-han-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-hangul-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-hansurrogate-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-hebrew-font-family: Arial; mso-kana-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-kannada-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-khmer-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-lao-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-latin-font-family: Arial; mso-latinext-font-family: Arial; mso-malayalam-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-mongolian-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-myanmar-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-nonhansurrogate-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-ogham-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-oriya-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-runic-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-sinhala-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-syriac-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-tamil-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-telugu-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-thaana-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-thai-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-tibetan-font-family: Frutiger-Cn; mso-yi-font-family: Frutiger-Cn;">Networking provides opportunities to collaborate over interactive projects, improve professional practice; and provides empowerment for teacher-librarians through providing guidance for important decisions, the chance to view situations from different (and objective angles), opportunities to learn new ways of improving practice and a chance to reach out and connect with others in the same situation (Hosler, Kime, Webb & Wilson, 2005, p.13).

My teacher-librarian is an active participant in education and library professional networks. She attends all Professional Development days offered by Brisbane Catholic Education. She is a member of the BCE TLs network and regularly participates in email discussion. She encouraged me to join the BCE TLs email network myself which I have done. Recently when I checked my email I found this fabulous email put together after a Professional Development day recently. It was titled 'things that work well in libraries'. It was a PowerPoint presentation and showed images of great ideas Brisbane Catholic Education teacher-librarians had. It ranged from comfy couches to shelving, book displays, posters, cataloguing ideas and learning centres. It included many photos of school students and named each school and their teacher-librarian. Unfortunately I wasn't given permission to put it on this wiki for security reasons. The final slide of the PowerPoint presentation gratefully thanked the two teacher-librarians who had gone to all the effort to make the last Professional Development day possible. One of the names was my teacher-librarian's name! It showed me what a leader she is, not only in our school community, but also the wider teacher-librarian community in Brisbane Catholic Education.

I too aim to be a valuable member of the teacher-librarian community. I know it'll take time to develop the knowledge and skills that my teacher-librarian has and then pass it on to others, but it's inspirational to see how respected and valued she is because of the work she does. Hopefully I can achieve that too as a teacher-librarian.