My name is Chris Ellett. I have been teaching for the past five years at Elgin Park Secondary in South Surrey/White Rock. I was very lucky to get hired for a full time position immediately after completing the Bachelor of Education program at UBC. I never experienced life as a TOC. However, in order to keep my job over the past five years I have had to teach a variety of subjects. My teaching experience includes my specialization area of Socials and History as well as English, Law, Math and Computers. By teaching such a variety of courses I think I have more than made up for any TOC experience I missed out on.
Last year I returned to UBC to complete a diploma program in Language and Literacy Education which will go towards by PB+15. At this point I have completed 7 of the 10 courses. This is the first library related course I have taken at UBC. However, I am taking another this semester (LLED 461).
My primary interests lie in how technology can be used to engage students in using the library. At our school students do not get along well with the librarian and as a result have a negative attitude towards it. I think that technology could be a great way to get students back into the library and taking advantage of all it has to offer them.
My school has a technology specialist who deals with any tech issues in the school. However, the teacher-librarian is responsible for most of the technology that is being used in the library. We are very lucky to have such a technologically gifted teacher-librarian as she is able to introduce new technologies for traditional projects.
The teacher-librarian’s ability to catalogue new resources has been absorbed by Learning Resources. Our librarian only processes books that are purchased directly from the vendor and this is limited to a maximum of 1/4 of the total budget. However, the librarian is still dependent on LRS for the cataloguing. The remainder of the materials that are purchased must be done through Learning Resources and they do all of the processing there. Our librarian can add things like sublocations and genre labels, but the major stuff is done by LRS.
Our school uses Destiny as its automation system. It is a Follett product and was introduced district wide approximately 4 years ago.
With regards to district resources and personnel, our teacher-librarian has a staff member one day a week to help with clerical and shelving work. The librarian is also able to borrow inventory kits from LRS, but have to do the inventory ourselves. The librarian also noted that district personnel do not visit the schools.
I expect this course to teach me a great deal about the workings of the school library and what exactly is expected of teacher-librarians. I hope that with the information I acquire I can find more opportunities to use the library in my day-to-day teaching. Furthermore, one day I may want to become a teacher-librarian and this course may help me in that transition.
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