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#kylchat & Being a Librarian in the Classroom



Last Tuesday, April 24 I had the chance to participate in the #kylchat regarding 1:1 initiatives. This was purely happenstance; between my engagement in my practicum with two library rockstars, who are also great users of Twitter as a digital learning community, and the recent legislative circumstances in Kentucky, I've reactived my own Twitter usage. Scrolling through around 7:30, I saw some advertisement from those I follow for #kylchat at 8pm, so I decided to join. I'm very glad I did!

I have only taught at a single school, and we've been 1:1 my entire career (started midyear the year before I started), so my only conception of the classroom is with full access to devices. This Twitter chat showed me how I take many things for granted that would not be possible if I was to move to another district with carts or BYOD.

Though I've participated in Twitter chats before years ago, and more recently library chats as a part of  a graduate school class, I  found that participating in this Twitter chat once I've spent some time in my practicum experience is much more effective, as I feel I had a much more accurate feeling of what it meant to be a practicing librarian, working to collaborate with teachers, and more importantly offer library services in a 1:1 school.

I think the most important takeaway for me, right now, from #kylchat was thinking about how I can start to advocate for and teach the values that I've learned as an almost certified librarian in the classroom.
Knowing that I've learned so much during my training, but that at the same time I have no immediate plans to leave the math classroom, this has been a powerful train of thought for me. Perhaps it shouldn't have taken a Twitter chat question to make me think of this, but librarians are teacher leaders. Just because I am not in a librarian position doesn't mean that I can't influence students and serve as a leader to my colleagues regarding the new skills and knowledge that I have. Empowering & exciting as I think about building some specific goals for next year to hold me accountable to this.


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