School Library Social Capital Goals for 2021

As we start our 2021 in Australia, it is good practice to set you and your team some goals for 2021. 

They might be to increase senior readership or increase understanding of the research process, but it is also important to continue to build our social capital within our school community. We can get so bogged down in what we are doing that we become invisible because we are so busy.

Building social capital is also about building reputation and positioning our school library as the essential service that we are.

The majority of teachers in our school
don't see how hard the Library staff work
to keep the curriculum resources accessible by everyone.
[source]

So consider the following ideas as possible goals for your school library.

We will touch base with EVERY pre-service teacher in our school to promote the role of the school library and library science professionals.

An easy one to measure, what % of pre-service teachers did we speak to? Create a pack of pamphlets advocating the school library and the role of how library professionals might support them with their teaching . How can you help them resource their lessons. Return on investment for this goal isn't one that you will see, but perhaps the pre-service teachers will develop an appreciation for school libraries and will engage with them when they get their first contract.

We will make sure that the school library is "on the radar" by being present or being on the agenda of every curriculum meeting in the school.

The agenda item should ask for a "call to action". The completion of a survey or something to add value to that curriculum area. Regular updates to my team on what is happening in each learning area. Popping book pamphlets into pigeon holes isn't going to engage teachers to engage with your service.

When you are a one-man-band this can be difficult, but how can you use curriculum meetings to engage with teachers and identify area where the school library can help them?

The School Library team will continue to develop their social capital by working collaboratively on knowing our teachers and their teaching and learning needs.

How can you build school library organisational knowledge of what teachers are teaching and where their needs are? Do we need to use a customer relationship database to keep tabs on our conversations or sometime more simplistic like a google doc? How can we build our social capital in the various curriculum areas? How can your team address this goal?

I am sure that discussions with your team will uncover many other social capital goals that you can engage with.

Good luck for 2021.

How did we build School Library social capital in a covid-lockdown environment?

Reflecting back on 2020, it has been interesting to look at my role and how it has grown throughout the year. 

It was only five years ago that I was just starting out as a Teacher Librarian, however I did have 20 years of teaching and leadership roles behind me. I was blessed to find a great School Library leadership role with a fabulous team in a school with a Principal that is supportive of what we are trying to achieve.

It has been interesting to watch the profession and how it has changed throughout 2020. 

School Library leadership roles, that had once been held by teacher librarians have been watered down into Education Support roles, but they still have curriculum development requirements tacked onto the job description. Those schools that liquidated their TL roles the year before found they didn't have any support from their library staff during lockdown. Many of those school libraries have just disappeared from the "radar" of educators in their schools.

I was adamant that in 2020, I was going to promote my role as a teacher librarian and what we are doing in the school library. 

A school specific school library Instagram wasn't going to happen easily, but I wanted to seperate what I was doing on my @konstantkaos Instagram from my active school library work. 

@LovemySchoolLibrary was formed. Instagram is a great way of documenting what you are doing in your school library and celebrating what you are achieving. Using tools such as Prinkl to print out posters which show what you have achieved throughout the year.

One goal of 2020 was to set up my own "school library" instagram.
@lovemyschoollibrary

When the first lockdown hit us, I was adamant that the School Library would not become invisible. 

Library staff are good at just hunkering down and getting the work done, but when things move online you tend to become invisible. Invisible departments can't argue for more money or resources come budget time.

So what did we do:

1. We set up a Libguide for the school community.
2. We set up a weekly newsletter for staff which then evolved into a Libguide newsletter.
3. We made sure that we were included in the fortnightly newsletter that went home to parents.
4. We set up a Borrow Bag "click and collect" system for students so they could borrow physical books.
5. We made sure that the wider reading experience went online so that students would continue to have contact with the school library.

I think that this promotion of library services and development of social capital held us in good stead when it came to capital work applications at the end of the year. 2021 finds us setting up our own Tinker or Makerspace and hopefully giving our Library Foyer and circulation desk a make-over.

The "Students need School Libraries" website invited feedback from school libraries on what they did during Covid. Check out our response.

As we move forward into 2021, what will your social capital goals be? What will you put in place to make yourself more visible to the school community?