I've had a chance to think

I have had a chance to reflect on my previous post, to think about what is going on and how I can take it in the right direction.  Though teachers know that they can bring students to the library for a research lesson, they don't.  They also know that I will put together a pathfinder for students on the topic they are researching, but they don't ask for it.  So, the obvious question is 'why', which leads to 'what can I do about it'?

First, for a explanation of who has been using the library, for what purpose and who is not using its services as often as before.  The majority of classes, which come through the library are from English, science, humanities and music.

The English classes come mainly for book talks.  I am hoping that one of the grades, which does a research project on the 50s with their study of The Outsiders, will be persuaded to book a research class but that is for the future. 

Humanities use the library a lot, especially in grades 9 and 10, but also in the other grades.  They are in the habit of bringing their classes in whenever there is a research element in a unit. 

Some science classes started to come in last year and I did give lessons for them on using online databases, on how to find books and on bibliographic referencing.  Interestingly, this year the teachers seem to have 'forgotten' to book classes when they are doing projects.  Instead, I have students wandering in and asking for help to find material in books.  Their teachers require that they have at least one book source but fail to let me know and fail to ensure that their students even know how to find books in the library.

I became quite frustrated and went to talk to one of the teachers involved.  I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that the teacher thought that his students would know how to find books because they were in grade 9.  He also thought that they would know how to do a search on the Internet or in the school online databases because of course, they're teenagers and they know how to do that.  Oh dear!  If only that were true!

Well, this talk brought me a little closer to understanding my problem.  Many teachers believe that students know their way around the Internet, in which case there is nothing to teach them about doing a search.  This is my first hurdle.  Bring the message to my colleagues that their students don't know as much as they think they do.

(More to follow!)