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**"School librarians are the heartbeat of the school... they are like the drum - the beating heart of Mother Earth. They are to be respected, valued and protected." ~[| David Bouchard 2010] ~**

If what makes a school live and breathe as an organic system is the people who learn there, then the school library becomes more than a static hub of resources and resource links: it becomes a vibrant meeting place of ideas, centre of intellectual risk, and taking off point for inquiry. To truly flourish, it needs to be cozy, because we all learn best and play best when in a contented space. Today's library is a place where we exercise our intellectual intelligence and our emotional intelligence to mindfully engage in various educational practices. Strategically and intentionally, today's school library, physically and intellectually, can scaffold an environment conducive to learning, placing channels in place along that scaffold to assist learners, gradually releasing them to independence. Indeed, in this role, the library becomes the "heart" of the school, and the small electrical pulse that assists it in its function is the school librarian, providing the heartbeat that Bouchard alludes to above.

The challenge above, though, is big. New Teacher-Librarians often feel adrift at sea in a position that doesn't necessarily come with a specified job description, and certainly doesn't come with a cohort of department members at hand to provide ongoing support. This is where formal and informal professional learning communities and associations come in. On many levels, the online support distributed among Teacher-Librarians is arguably about the best professional support around. The isolation we feel, coupled with Teacher-Librarians' natural willingness to support colleagues (as isn't this why we're in this world in the first place?) places the members of Teacher-Librarian PLCs at immediate ease and with support at hand to assist at every step of the way.

Once we're more established in our emerging roles, the support doesn't end. As we grow our libraries into the emerging inside-out learning spaces of today's learning commons, infiltrating every nook and cranny of the school, our PLCs remain at our side, nudging us along with experiences, reminders and suggestions from around the globe and through various communication tools. In fact, as school itself becomes increasingly global in nature, we quietly are already drawing from the expertise of our most amazing global "department" of colleagues, to assist our system in growing best practices across all subject areas, with all students. No longer the traditional vigilant guardians of the books, we are now the openers of doors to new learning resources and opportunities for twenty-first century inquirers. We are turning traditional librarianship, like the library itself, inside out - but can only do it with the support of our colleagues, as well as teachers across departments and adminstrators, on board. How do we get them on side? By aligning ourselves within each community.

What is the difference between a professional learning community and a professional association?
Each provides us with support, thus breaking through the challenges of working in isolation. In the 1900s, the Professional Association came into being as a way for professionals to unite in furthering their ongoing professional development, potential political impact, and other mutual business, such as [union] salary negotiation practices and member services--all activities that best take shape when one works as a collective. Teachers' professional associations, such as the Alberta Teachers' Association, or its subset Specialist Councils, such as the School Library Council, each with its own autonomy and structure, are examples of professional associations. In the late 1990s, the notion of professional learning community, organized among individuals with mutual focus of interest or inquiry, started to become popular. Unfettered by the traditional structures and functions of Professional Associations, a PLC potentially can drive meaningful change through collaboration among like-visioned participants. Not necessarily formally structured, a PLC can be a structured province-wide PLC project or simply a small group of schools sharing practices focusing on an emergent area of inquiry or even one's own network of support that provides the ongoing knowledge, skills and processes to help one become an effective Teacher-Librarian...within a school where the TL is able to inspire colleagues by sharing what they have learned to inspire change within THAT professional learning community of the school itself:



The ease of social networking online has shifted how change is populated today. The lower arrow on the image below illustrates how, to impact change in the past, we needed to work from within the organizational structure provided by the professional association, building the capacity of an idea with like-minded people, to then work together to popularize that idea. As time moved on and PLCs began to emerge--often even as extensions of the professional organizations themselves (e.g. 2Learn.ca was brought into being as a collaboration among several stakeholders, one of which was the ATA)--so did social media, spawning a wealth of other PLCs, some of which are highlighted in our wiki's Professional Learning Communities page. The impact of so many PLCs, as you can see in the image below, shifts whatever vision for change may initially have been envisioned by groups in the first place. More recently, interesting next-step change is starting to happen, where the nature of professional associations themselves may be shaped by their associated PLCs, rather than vice versa: NECC, the educational technology conference sponsored by the International Society of Technology in Education, grew out of ISTE, yet a couple of years ago became a strong PLC itself through the ongoing NECC Ning. Now into NECC Ning's third year, it, along with the conference itself, has been reframed as the ISTE Conference, the ISTE Ning.
 * The relationship between the two...**

The ability in the twenty-first century for an organization to permit its members to redefine its identity through social media activity is exciting. Rather than stalling at the messiness of PLC inquiry and rhythm, it has thrived on the richness of insight that emerges from less predictable online environments.



Take a look at this fascinating article, [|Critical and transformative practices in professional learning communities], about professional learning communities--it provides an interesting reality-check, contrasting the merits of PLCs as ways to transform education to the dubious measured impact of PLCs in Alberta reported to AISI, especially at the high school level.

In what areas can professional learning communities and professional associations assist me?
Questions that PLCs and professional associations can assist the new TL with are:
 * 1) Visionary - e.g. Where do we want our libraries to go and how do we want to get there?
 * 2) Practical - e.g. How can I advocate for increased funding? How do I manage my workload?
 * 3) Political - e.g. How can I promote the literacy agenda as being much broader than one that promotes the growth of science and engineering students, and why is that so critically important today? How is the Teacher-Librarian a critical component of the instructional leadership of a whole school, and how can we drive that message home to decision-makers in our school districts? What are the bigger ramifications of the the big-picture growth of PLCs?
 * 4) Social - e.g. Funny stories, that we share in our PLCs, keep the spirit alive; successes make it all worth while--those students returning years later to tell you what a difference YOU made in their lives are inspiring!

Where do we find these PLCs? First of all, check our Professional Learning Communities resources - here!

 * 1) online, through websites of professional associations
 * 2) online and in print, through publications of professional associations
 * 3) through Twitter - through communications with fellow TLs as well as through TL hashtags
 * 4) through formal and informal online communities and the interactions therein, such as online discussions and events promoted through the Classroom 2.0 Ning or through an informal PLC of teachers of a particular unit linked up through multipoint video conference
 * 5) through online and in-person webs of support provided by vendors of products we purchase or subscribe to, such as online databases or software support
 * 6) through online communities related to specific aspects of our job, such as book communities on Shelfari or LibraryThing, or educational leadership communities, such as Learning Forward (new name of NSDC) or ASCD, curricular-focused communities, such as NCTE Ning, or educational technology-based communities, such as Classroom 2.0, or ISTE
 * 7) through blogs of well-known teacher-librarians, such as Joyce Valenza, who have a sincere professional interest in supporting the rest of us
 * 8) through the University of Alberta TL-DL program! I mean, really, all we ever needed to learn about becoming a TL is surrounding us in our immersion in these courses
 * 9) we make them, setting them up and starting to populate them ourselves - for our schools, our like-minded colleagues, our students....and our families, our friends....
 * 10) we encourage others to make them, keeping in the background and then letting go - the more teachers we inspire to create PLCs for their students or for each other, the more we develop a culture of distributed learning and thus begin to break through the traditional paradigm of top-down expert->novice expertise transference that has stood in the way of real constructivist learning practise for so many years.

What do we get out of a PLC?
Participating in formal and informal professional learning communities will help us
 * transcend the morale and practical pitfalls of working in isolation
 * creatively manage today's reality of working with a limited budget
 * rise above if not completely resolve presuppositions of stakeholders - even colleagues and students - who view Teacher-Librarians more as paraprofessionals
 * be energized and inspired by the journeys and discoveries of others
 * engage in dynamic online conversations about teaching, learning, and support of teaching and learning
 * manage our workload and define our best //niche//
 * develop a web presence for our school library, integrated with useful just-in-time literacy (including digital literacy) support for teachers and students alike
 * distribute our own and each of our schools' online presence across the 'Net in various reiterations (through Twitter, RSS feeds, podcasts, etc.)
 * become advocates for informed and ethical posting and use of online information
 * be ambassadors for digital citizenship as one aspect of overall character education
 * learn about, seed and grow best practices online and at school

So what? What is the bigger picture of all this?
The advantages of being an active participant within a PLC or even a professional association are personal and professional (impacting and affirming vision, informing decisions, etc.), as well as public, impacting the school, by one's getting the word out about the school's philosophy, approach and accomplishments, always framed positively to best position the school for possible future reference in emergent scenarios (grant applications, etc.).

But even that is not all. In fact, in today's brave new world, PLCs arguably provide the best professional development and even informal niche marketing target group out there. You already know that the community is of like-minded people, so your interests and solutions are ones that will be met and appreciated in a PLC. Unlike even just ten years ago, when you had to check which workshops were offered by which PD group at what time and location, today's PLC is there for you 24/7. Unlike the traditional school structure within which most of us work even today, where we need permission and funding from the school to engage in PD, our PLCs are there whenever we wish them to be there, at usually no or very limited financial cost. As teachers become used to PLCs, and are also increasingly influenced by social media constructs such as Facebook (especially as our profession is becoming younger), we see the classroom itself beginning to expand beyond traditional boundaries. Facebook Groups, for example, which have for some time provided PLC support for teachers in various subject and interest areas, provide a way for teachers to provide informal ongoing support for students, meeting students where they are without having to be their actual Facebook "friends". All of this reveals the most important function of the PLC, and that is its political function as a means for influence: by connecting like-minded people, particularly those who are otherwise isolated, the PLC holds tremendous potential to effect meaningful, informed and sustainable change.

Carol Wilkinson, Julie Ross and Janet Bell, EDES 540, University of Alberta, March, 2011