TL statistic update ! Washington State Teacher Librarians

I am an elementary school librarian in Tacoma. I am assigned to the library 4 days a week and am considered Title I reading staff one day a week. How this works is that the library is closed to classes from 9:00 - 10:45 Monday-Friday while I use it as my classroom. This really makes me .3 Title in terms of hours, but the library function is given a lesser priority in this day and age of flailing around to try to get kids to meet standard. I am actually one of the lucky ones in that I am in my library five days a week. We have no para help at the elementaries in Tacoma, and most of us are asked to remediate in either math or reading. Collaboration between teachers and librarians is one casualty of lack of time--we must try to shelve and meet needs other than class coverage in whatever time we have that is not devoted to remediation or teaching (almost none)--as is reader's advisory, open times for students to come in and use the library as such, open AR testing, research blocks, our own planning and lunch breaks--you name it. The district preference is that we deal with all our classes in 25 minute blocks with five minutes passing. This would allow them to reduce FTE, i.e. make all of us part time. We suffered a reduction in FTE this year, with many librarians serving two schools--some schools were even slated to be served by three librarians, but that was averted for this year. We also lost our District Library Facilitator, which has left the program as a whole weaker. We have a full bargain coming up this year, and I am concerned.

Just want to let you know that I have been a library-media specialist/teacher- librarian at my school on the Gig Harbor side of the bridge since 1982 and have seen many changes. In 1994 our levy failed and I was asked to teach one class for one semester. Ever since, even after our levies have passed, I have been assigned to teach a class or two or three and this year I am up to teaching 7 sections of classes. My library assistant runs the library for 5.5 hours a day. My position is 2/3 classroom teacher and 1/3 teacher-librarian in the library. The library is not open before school anymore or during one of the lunch periods. It is only open after school everyother day and on Thursdays when homework club meets.

This wiki is part of Washington State Library Media Association's (WLMA) efforts to share knowledge quickly about the state of our school library media centers. All are welcomed to join in the sharing of local information.

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