Remote School Librarianship

Me at my remote library office

Me at my remote library office

Due to the COVID-19 coronavirus, our school buildings, along with most of the rest of the world, have been closed for almost two months now, and will be closed for the rest of the school year. We have been teaching and learning completely online since Friday, March 13, 2020 (Friday the 13th, after the start of Daylight Savings Time and a full moon).

It’s a challenge being a librarian from a distance, but we can curate online resources as well as physical ones. The challenge, as with physical resources, is getting people to use them. I really enjoy being able to attend staff and content area meetings online, and I’m able to meet with the other district librarians weekly instead of annually, which is wonderful! I’ve been able to communicate with a few students through Canvas (the Canvas LMS, or Learning Management System, https://www.instructure.com/canvas/), and I’m using some Canvas features more. It’s really unfortunate that we had to spend the rest of our budgets before the schools closed, because now we don’t have the funds to provide the online resources that our students are asking for.

I have to tell you, I am so proud of our teachers and administrators for the way this teaching-from-home is working for our school district. Our administrators had the foresight to begin implementing our 1:1 laptop initiative AND staff training years ago. Our teachers and students were already used to using Canvas and other online tools, which made it much easier (not easy, but easier) to go completely online. In talking with other teachers around the country, it seems like the plan that many districts made was “Let’s hope it doesn’t happen”. Our school had a few meetings before the closing, and then we were pretty much ready to go. We just had to make sure everyone took their laptops and chargers home.

We didn’t think we would be out for longer than a few weeks. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out for the upcoming school year. One thing is for sure–things will never be quite the same again, and that might be a good thing for education.