Semester Review: Practicum Thoughts

Now that the practicum period is winding to an end, along with the school year for my first-ever full-time librarian position, I'm thinking about the pros and cons and how it's all felt for me over the course of the year. A quick bulleted list might look something like this:

Pros:

• Excellent hours (school day only, out early)
• Small manageable collection (great for a first-time librarian)
• Hands-on experience in EVERYTHING (because there isn't anybody else to handle any of it!)
• Room to make decisions and take self-directed action (with administration support!)
• Great patrons (kids are for the most part great)

Cons:

• Constantly teaching classes all day (more on that below)
• Little direction when needed (expectation that librarian will "figure it out")
• Difficulty avoiding conflicts with curriculum (little communication from teachers)
• Un-library-related duties (Title I, etc.)
• Secret Expectations (more on that below, too)

I think I definitely can't overstate the value of working here as a learning opportunity; as a solo librarian position, it involved practically applying soooo many of the things I've done as coursework, from book preservation to intake of new materials to budgeting to marketing to website design to technology updates to wedding and soon inventory. Another practicum might have given me more specialized experience - for example, I'd have maybe gotten specialized archival experience in an archival position, or more direct customer service in a public library position - but this one gave me a kind of rounded do-it-all setup that will probably stand me in good stead no matter where I end up going. Not to mention that it was also in a school, which I didn't have any coursework pertaining to, so I gained some experience in things I wasn't even planning on!

There were definitely things I did not enjoy, though, which made it especially evident that a school library might not be for me (which is of course why I didn't study it in depth). For one thing, I've pretty much determined that I really, really don't like teaching - at least, not in a formal, teach three classes a day every day to every student in the school kind of a way. It's stressful and I often feel out of my depth, especially when there's so much pressure for certification and teaching standards that I don't have a lot of knowledge of. Teaching occasional classes, specifically on information literacy topics, that I could definitely manage - but constantly, day in and day out, with no support from the homeroom teachers (especially of note with younger grades that may need their teachers if something upsets or confuses them)? Would prefer not to be doing that.

Also, the Secret Expectations were a bit much. This is something that happens with any new job, I know: the old librarian did a lot of extra things and had a lot of extra duties that probably developed organically over her 20+ year tenure there, and that were not described as part of the librarian job description but that other faculty members expected to happen. These were things like filming religious services and creating archival versions for the parish, helping setup for school fundraiser races, chaperoning student events, running the morning announcements for the school, and so on. Maybe it was just the length of time the previous librarian had been there, or maybe it was something more common in schools, but the year has been a neverending process of discovering things that people wanted to know why I wasn't handling, and then scrambling to get them. Of course, if I stayed, less of a future problem!

It was definitely a positive experience overall, especially in terms of gaining knowledge and expanding experience.