"The Reflective Practitioner"

The phrase, "The Reflective Practitioner" caught my eye in the Service portion of the Improve Society thread. According to my undergraduate college, my education as a teacher required me to be a reflective practitioner. This meant that I was to be capable of doing a number of tasks including but not limited to: effectively using research-based models of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, meet the diverse learning needs of students, promote local, state, and national standards, and promote inquiry, critical thinking, and problem solving in students. (2010-2012 Guide..., 2010)
According to the Atlas, this policy gives teachers access to a wide scope of information and tools to navigate it. Basically, teachers can analyze and evaluate resources. Thus, the ERIC database and AskERIC were established. I never understood the reasoning behind the creation of these databases until now. However this policy changed under the Bush administration. Teachers spend a great deal of time teaching and were considered too busy to navigate and analyze and pick out the best resources. The What Works Clearinghouse was established to provide quality resources that were scrutinized under the peer review process and the information's publisher could prove that the information was indeed effective. This was also not effective because the standards of the material were now too high. (Lankes, 2011)
Honestly, as a trained teacher, I understand that teachers lead busy lives. However, it's part of the job. Teachers are well educated and don't need their hands held to navigate databases and find information on their own. That's where school librarians come in. I came across an article posted from a fellow library student on a social networking site discussing the elimination of school librarians due to budget constraints. I must admit I have a clear bias on the subject considering my course of study. However, as a teacher, I have witnessed how school media specialists help the entire school community. New York City's chief academic officer considers librarians as in a support position and not as a teacher. He also stated that since more classrooms are equipped with laptops, e-readers, and other technological advances that it was simply not necessary for a class to go to the library for research. The librarian teaches students valuable skills in finding quality information. Nancy Everhart, president of American Association of School Librarians, said that in this Internet age, we need trained librarians more than ever to guide students through the basics of searching and analyzing information found online. The fact that school districts see school librarians as unnecessary or disposable is a shocking discovery. It is my hope that with time, these confusions may be worked out and school officials will truly understand the value of the school librarian. (Santos, 2011)


2010-2012 guide to student teaching. (2010). Potsdam, NY.
Lankes, R.D. (2011). The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Santos, F. (2011, June 25). In lean times, schools squeeze out librarians. The New York Times, p. A17.