LIS 5100 : ‘Elevator speech’ for school-library staffing

For LIS 5100 this week, our instructor wanted us to explore Voki’s “Speaking Characters for Education.” Voki is an app that is used in an educational setting, to create animated presentations. It involves selecting an avatar, setting it against a background, and then creating an audio message for the avatar to deliver.

We were tasked with using Voki to create an “elevator speech” about the importance of school librarians. The scenario posed by our instructor was that we encounter a school board member at the grocery store, and this person tells us that the district plans to eliminate the certificated school librarians.

The school board member says, “A page or paraprofessional can check books in and out and put them on the shelf, we don’t need to pay a librarian!” The person also mentions being able to search in Google as a reason for not needing a school librarian.

Here is the URL to view the animated message I created with my Voki avatar: https://tinyurl.com/ybjfsx7u

Transcript, with citations:
Yes, support staff should check books in and out, and put them on the shelf. Paralibrarians are expected to be responsible for technical services in the school library (CSLA, 2018).

But when you tell your students to look for things with Google, who will teach them to critically evaluate? Who will model, and teach, using other people’s work and giving credit? (AASL, 2018)

By state law, Classified staff cannot provide the services of a certificated teacher (CSLA, 2018).

So, no, I don’t agree that you don’t need to pay a librarian. Support staff and librarians each have their place in the successful school library (AASL, 2019).

Observations:
I enjoy expressing myself through various cartoon avatars, Bitmoji and Pokemon GO among them. So I had fun with Voki, but it took some getting used to: navigating to different levels and sub-levels to locate various options. The option I selected looks pretty close to how I look in reality; I tend toward close resemblances between myself and my online avatars.

One thing that was important to me when crafting my response to this question, was to uplift the value that is played by a paraprofessional. So often, when advocates stress the importance of having a full-time school librarian (which is a certificated teaching position), they make no mention of how paraprofessionals contribute to a library’s success. But the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) actually endorses full-time support staff for each full-time school librarian, as well as a district-level librarian who oversees the site programs. And, as I mentioned when citing the position statement of the California School Library Association (CSLA), paralibrarians really should be responsible for technical services in the school library. (All the better for the teacher-librarian, who can focus their time on developing curriculum and on teaching students.)

My main challenge with this exercise was keeping within a character limit set by the Voki app. I composed my response in Google Docs, and then I copied and pasted into Voki, only to find a sentence or two cut off at the end. I then had to prune back until I was within-limit.

References:
American Association of School Librarians. (2018). National school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. ALA Editions.

American Association of School Librarians. (2019). Appropriate staffing for school libraries [Position statement]. https://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/advocacy/statements/docs/AASL_Appropriate_Staffing.pdf

California School Library Association. (2018). The duties and responsibilities of school library staff [Position statement]. http://csla.net/csla-position-statement-on-essa/