Tales Out of the School Library: Developing Professional Dispositions

This groundbreaking book about developing the professional dispositions of school librarians uses three fictionalized librarians to serve as authentic models addressing familiar topics and situations.

Tales Out of the School Library: Developing Professional Dispositions is a book that empowers anyone working in the school library to redefine their practice to meet the needs of young learners today. It covers familiar, everyday topics of the most concern to practitioners-assessment, literacy and reading, diversity, intellectual freedom, communication, collaboration, and more. But it is the approach that makes this book unique.

Each chapter of Tales Out of the School Library begins with a story from one of three fictional, yet recognizably authentic library media specialists-composites of real professionals, each with distinctive personalities, strengths, and challenges. These tales of elementary, middle, and high school librarians play out over the course of a school year, and serve as the focal point for discussions of essential aspects of teaching, communication, and leadership. Follow-up questions, an annotated bibliography, connections to AASL’s Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, and discussion questions further add to the value of this innovative volume.

Features a foreword by Theodore R. Sizer, an educational reform scholar, who developed the fictionalized nonfiction style of writing about Horace Smith, an amalgam of the teachers Sizer met crossing the country during his cross-country research of the practices found in American high schools in the 1980s

Offers follow-up questions and answers that drive home the lessons of each tale, plus discussion questions

Presents an annotated bibliography of additional helpful readings