Week Two Class

During this week's class, we finished our history lesson on the support of school libraries-- carrying on from the advent of No Child Left Behind to today's Race to the Top.  During these last few years, we see a trend towards viewing the role of school librarianship/media specialization seek to enable a more holistic understanding of our own profession.  We also see a trend toward standards-based education and evaluation which the AASL jumped on to create the Standards for the 21st Century Learner. 

During class, we reorganized the standards in to different categories in order to observe relationships between different standards.  My classmate and I created a chart with two axes-- the perceived level of importance and the measurability of each standard.  We then ranked them all accordingly.  I was most fascinated by the trend in the most measurable and least important category.  Each standard within this sector dealt with reflection after a task.  It seems like a relatively easy standard to meet, however we rarely incorporate self-evaluation and reflection after a work is complete.  We move on to the next without much thought.  This activity, overall, gave me a better sense of how to actively incorporate the standards into my future professional practices.