I am in the first weeks of teaching an online graduate course for school librarians on managing the school library and my students are wrestling with the words for their mission, vision, and philosophy statements. Although you may not have those statements written down for your library, you communicate them each day in dealing with students, teachers, administrators, and any who walk through your library doors.

You need powerful words to reinforce what you are doing.  “Empowering Learners” is the title of the AASL Guidelines for library programs.  Those are strong words. Empowering shows how we teach the tools for future success.  Learners is far better than students, since it implies we are learners—and must be for our entire life.  Contrast that with “supporting or enriching the curriculum.”  The AASL phrase is active.  What too many librarians say is passive.  It’s not what is meant, but it is what is communicated.  Words are powerful.

If you want to be perceived as indispensable, you must be pro-active, interconnected with what is happening in the school, embedded in the curriculum.  And no one will give that to you.  You claim it by providing the information teachers and administrators need.  Don’t wait to be asked.  You won’t be.  Be the person with the answers—or the one everyone knows can find the answers.

Watch how you express yourself. I had a co-librarian who said in conversation, “you teachers,” and with those two words she separated herself from the faculty.  Never minimize the teachers’ workload and no matter what the truth is, don’t suggest you have more on your plate than they do.

What you think also gets communicated.  If you are thinking the teachers regard you as a babysitter it affects how you deal with students. Without realizing it, any negative attitude you have is conveyed through your body language and often in the tone of your voice.  It gets picked up, usually subliminally.

Listen to what you say.  Note your reaction to others and whether you got the message from their words or from non-verbal signals.  When you catch yourself with a negative attitude towards a teacher, student—or administrator, quickly reframe it into something positive.  You will find it does make a difference.

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What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

© Langston Hughes http://www.cswnet.com/~menamc/langston.htm

I always loved the poem not ever seeing how it applied to me.  An avid reader from my early childhood, I dreamed of someday becoming an author myself.  Perhaps you share that dream as so many readers do. I was ecstatic when my first book, co-authored with Ruth Toor, The Elementary School Librarian’s Almanac: A Complete Media Program for Every Month of the School Year (The Center for Applied Research in Education, 1979, 256 p. 0-87628-299-0) was published.  It was followed by fourteen other books for school librarians.  The latest being School Librarian’s Career Planner (ALA, 2013, 126 p. 978-0-8389-1178—5).  I am proud of all of them, but this wasn’t the writing career of my dreams.

In 2004, I retired as a high school librarian (obviously, that’s all I retired from) and the following June when I would have been working, my daughter took me with her to International Women’s Writing Guild’s summer workshops then held at Skidmore College. Along with lots of other writing I did during those five days, I started a novel in one of the classes.  I completed it in fits and starts thanks to the gentle (and not-so-gentle) prodding of others.

Six drafts later, a hunt for an agent proved fruitless.  (I may not have been sufficiently diligent.) Then a small independent publisher began a separate company for young adult books and accepted Woven though Time.  On October 9, my dream of so long ago became a reality.  In the opening of the “Acknowledgments,” I say, “Sometimes it takes a village to make a dream come true,” and conclude, “never lose sight of your dream, and share it with the people who care about you.  They may very well be the ones who help you make it come true.”

Do you have a dream you think will never be realized?  Try sharing it with others and find a plan to make it a reality.  With a few weeks to go before the end of the year, now is a great time to put things in motion.

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