Planning is Important

The theme for the readings this week is planning.  Woolls Ch. 5 talks about strategic planning - developing a mission, policy statements, needs assessment, collaboration with teachers, and planning for each day of the week.  The mission gives an overall purpose for the school library, the policy statements and needs assessment help enact that mission, and collaboration with teachers and planning each day help keep school library media folks on track daily to help with living out the broader mission.

Planning is a thorough process, and Woolls lays out the plan for planning.  For long-term planning, Wools advises librarians to develop a 3, 5, or 10 year plan.  Policy writing also involves a lengthy process of drafts, revisions, and collaboration with others.  Daily planning seems to be about keeping the school librarian sane - begin and end the day with quiet planning, start the day with one task that can be finished quickly, keep the planner up to date, meet all deadlines, etc.  Through all this planning, there is always the added mention of collaboration - collaborate with administrators, peers, and teachers during the planning process to have everyone on the same boat and striving the meet common goals.

Likewise, Doug Johnson argues that fixed schedules offer many advantages over flexible schedules.  A planned schedule enables school librarians to meet with all teachers/classrooms should they choose, cooperate with standards-based curriculum, promote life-long reading habits by regular library visits, more collaboration with teachers on continuous projects, and maintain job security.

In her article, Kathy Hribar discusses the advantages of taking time to go to a conference on Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.  She planned to take the time to learn from and collaborate with her peers, and as a result her school library benefited.  Kathy learned to carefully plan her lessons to revolve around inquiry in the midst of her fixed schedule.  Students became more curious, open to learning, and had a desire to come to their classes in the library.

Since I am a planner, this sort of talk makes me feel good.  I like scheduled days and scheduled goals.  Also, having regularly scheduled days and goals seems like it would be easier for collaboration between the school librarian and public librarian.  The school librarian is able to quickly assess her calendar for time and fit in the public library with her library's mission and policy statements.  However, what happens if there is no room for the public librarian in the school library's mission, or no time in the school librarian's schedule?  Hopefully calendars and planning are not so fixed as to prove disadvantageous to the school library, both internally and externally.