Learners ENGAGE

Patricia Hynes teaches library for Pre-K through 5th grade at Gables Elementary School and has recently rewritten the library curriculum for her district to align with the most current AASL standards. The competencies of the Engage Shared Foundation are implemented mostly with grades 3-5, not with the younger grades due mostly to content and time constraints.

The focus of the Engage foundation is ethical use of information, so this approach makes total sense. She starts out with the 3rd grade as they begin to learn how to do research. They talk about using Google images and citing sources using the National Geographic website. In 4th grade, they move up to adding a citation to every slide for the information contained on that slide. By 5th grade, the students are writing full bibliographies. This scaffolding of the complex idea of ethics and legality of digital ownership is likely very successful. Some challenges Patricia runs into with implementing these competencies is finding resources the students have access to for free. Credible sources at no cost can be hard to come by.

Patricia made a point about the standards that hadn't been discussed yet in my conversations with other librarians; while the standards might be best practices for library professionals and something we look at and say "yes of course we are doing that," administrators aren't easily able to do that. The language of the standards are difficult to understand for someone who is not a library science professional which makes it a challenge for administration to see that you really are meeting the standards in what you are teaching.