A Letter to Jimmy Allen

Let me be the first to congratulate you for your uncanny ability to provoke debate. Your letter in School Library Journal's April issue, insisting that not a shred of teaching experience is required to work in a school library was masterful, eliciting a swell of letters to the contrary. The clinching line for me was your contention that "accredited library school graduates don't need to go to a teacher's college to run a school library or to teach bibliographic instruction," as if those two functions were merely interchangeable. Bravo!

Still, I'm sure you can see how waving away future school librarians' needs for teaching theory and deemphasizing instructional rigor sets them up for failure. You're asking MLS graduates to undertake a hefty philosophical transition the moment they walk into a school, switching gears from a library-focused orientation to a learner-centered one. Bereft of any instructional training, how will these neophyte media specialists teach technology classes or collaborate with teachers on lesson planning? How will they integrate their information literacy skills into the school curriculum? While some library schools offer a solid diet of coursework in school librarianship, many others do not.

You correctly assert that some states have waived teaching certification requirements in an effort to widen the potential pool of school librarian candidates. However, the notion that the shortage of school librarians is due primarily to a daunting pile of prerequisites is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Two fundamentals are at play: first, the mass retirements of baby boomer librarians and educators (which has also caused a national shortage of teachers); and second, the lack of an enduring positive image of the profession for young aspirants. Not withstanding the yawning gap between the number of school library jobs and the number of trained applicants to fill them, there are simply too few MLS graduates to keep pace with the proliferating number of school librarian vacancies. Besides, a vast number of today's library school students already have library jobs.

Our May cover story focuses on Colleen Smith, 24, a passionate school librarian in a suburb of Rochester, NY, who admits to having "laughed" the first time her guidance counselor at St. Bonaventure University mentioned school librarianship as a career option (see "The Only Young School Librarian? " pp. 52–55). Michele Linse, a fellow 20-something school librarian also from upstate New York, told me there are two "misconceptions" that "keep young people" from the field: librarians are considered "less than a teacher," and secondly, the librarian is an "endangered position."

Ironically, as Smith points out, the role of the school library media specialist should be viewed as the most dynamic job in education, with plenty of appeal for young energetic educators who want the challenge of teaching every student in the school, desire to be technology leaders, seek a varied workload, and are loathe to sit behind a desk. The rub is that Smith's peers see the library media specialist as exactly the opposite—a static position held by educators as old as their parents.

Placing librarians in schools without the proper instructional training only perpetuates the negative images held by many young adults. Mr. Allen, perhaps we could harness your obvious talent for provocation in an effort to galvanize the next generation of educators to consider the field of school librarianship.

Sincerely,

Evan St. Lifer Editor estlifer@reedbusiness.com