Please Don’t Call Me Encore

Instead of being called Special Area Teachers we are now being called Encore. Please don't call me Encore. Call me collaboration partner, call me teacher/librarian, call me instructional partner, or just keep the old term of Special Area Teacher. Because what I do in the library is not as Webster defines: "a reappearance or additional performance" or "a demand for repetition." What I do is not "extra" or simple "repetition", libraries cover 44 of the 176 new Pennsylvania Common Core Standards and you need me because it's hard to hit all 176 of those standards in your classroom in one year! Synonymous for the word encore include: Repeat, Extra, Reprise, and Repetition. As most of the teachers in my building know I don’t repeat, I may enhance but I rarely repeat what is already being done in the classroom. I constantly ask my teachers what they are having a hard time fitting into the curriculum and I tackle it using my library curriculum. Next week in my library grade two will be learning about Simple Machines, we’ve already completed a research project and presentation using PowerPoint solely in the library because there is just not enough time to do such things with curriculums packed with other things. The same is true for other grade levels. We work, we do, we create, we evaluate, we interpret, we predict, we film, we write and blog, we use technology tools, we hit the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in the library, we do not repeat and reprise. Please don’t call me Encore.

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk... if you are teaching but no one is learning are you really teaching? Cherish and value the relationship between teachers and learners. Schools need a climate of possibility. I hope I can be a teacher/librarian that proves all things are possible because it is... what are you doing to change the climate of your school?