Santa Sabina College

In the morning of the 4th of September, we had SCEGGS Darlinghurst and in the afternoon we trekked across Sydney to get to Santa Sabina College in Strathfield. What a contrast this visit was to the one in the morning. Both girls schools, but two very different functioning libraries.

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We had an excellent presentation from Helen Schutz, Coordinator of Information Services on the role of the teacher librarians in promoting development of information literacy and research skills.
They still had a fiction reading section for their students, but it was made clear from the Teacher Librarians that their clients were the teachers. In the Library a total of 2.6 Teacher Librarians were actively involved in action research projects using an evidence based model for improvement in student learning.

Reflecting back on what Kate Burnham mentioned at the ABC Sound and Reference Library earlier in the week, "Statistics are your fundamental accountability", Helen had spent a lot of time gathering evidence over the last 8 years on how Library initiatives had impacted directly on student learning. Their in-house iLearn Framework was developed by Library team. This included Planning Conversation Template, Process-Outcomes-Indicators, UbDesign - Understanding by Design templates and data gathering strategies.  They showed some excellent examples of the fruits of their Action Research labour via Libguides and weebly. It was refreshing to hear that they used "whatever tool got the job done", rather than hanging onto a one-size-fits-all solution for the classroom.

Santa Sabina College Library had a clear vision and goals established by library team supporting school’s professional development strategy that included supporting and using timetable space for professional learning. They had a clear information literacy strategy that acknowledged that not one inquiry process was the best one. They offered support on various Models of Inquiry including Reggio Emilia, PYP (K-5), ISP (Guided), PBL.

Representatives from the Library were featured on the school's Learning Innovation Team, College Management Team, Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools and many other committees set up to support teaching and learning at the school.

Their reading program encouraged their students to participate with a number of school supported challenges; Reader’s Cup, Book club, Pee’n’Read and participation in the Youth Review Forum.

Their Network Infrastructure was Amlib, Bolinda, Wheelers, Clickview, LMS Haiku, Libguides, Weebly, Twigworld and Skwirk.

I would have loved to have spent some more time at Santa Sabina College working with the TL's there, what they were doing was fabulous and I hope that I have a change to participate at this level at my school.