If you are interested, "Beyond the Stacks: How Librarians Support Students and Schools" is in the Winter 2014-2015 issue of American Educator, published by the American Federation of Teachers.
Excerpt:
For years, whenever I met someone who asked me what I did for a living, I simply said, “I’m a librarian in an elementary school.” I had always thought of myself as a librarian first, and I also knew this was an answer people would immediately understand. Almost everyone has an idea of what the job entails, even if that impression is decades old. Cue image of a woman wearing glasses and sporting a bun, sitting behind a reference desk, shushing students, or walking between the stacks to help them find just the right book.A few years ago, I realized that for me, answering “librarian” was the easy way out. School librarian positions were being cut right and left in districts across the country, including in my own state of Washington, touted as an easy way to save money and jobs that would not directly affect class size or student achievement. Between 2006 and 2011, the number of public school librarians in the United States dropped from 54,445 to 50,300, a nearly 8 percent reduction.1 Over that time, it became clear to me, and to many librarians, that most people do not understand the role librarians play in our schools—and we need to correct these misunderstandings.Today, when I am asked what I do, I say, “I am a teacher librarian in an elementary school.” This response invites inquisitive looks and questions about my job, giving me the opportunity to educate people about what teacher librarians do in thousands of schools. I am putting the “teacher” part of my job ahead of the “librarian” part, though they are intertwined throughout my day. After all, I am a librarian, but I am also a teacher—a teacher of students, staff, families, and community members.
