Looking back....and forward

In my second year of classroom teaching I got a job at St Kieran's PS in Moe. I was happy to have been offered the job and I loved working for the school. What made it so good, really, came down to having a fantastic principal. She was revolutionary - ahead of her time. Well researched, forward thinking, high expectations and a great leader and role model to the staff who worked for the school.

I didn't actually realise that she posessed all of these qualities though, until this week's readings about Principal suport in an Information Literate school. Everything I read made my mind wander to her and if I had a checklist beside me at the time, every point would have been ticked off.

I also noticed this week that from my (very limited) recent experience of school libraries, there seems to be a tragic waste of library collections and relevant IT resources. How sad that from the outside a school can appear to be growing, developing, changing and making advances in every direction but upon closer investigation, the soul of the school (ie. the library and it's many facets) barely exists.

Scarier still, is the opinion by some that this is a good thing. That libraries are becoming a thing of the past, outdated in our modern, digital world. What about collection management? What about responsibility for technology? What about the undeniable benefits of collaborative teaching and planning? What about the children? Perhaps they are right and the 'Library' as we often see in a traditional school setting is not an ideal setup but it seems to me, that in this particular example, they've thrown the proverbial baby out with the bath water.

I wish I had my qualification so that I could state my case for a state of the art 'Resource Centre'.