It is no secret that students learn much more from teachers than what formal lesson plans indicate that they will. Teachers’ actions, both positive and negative, provide a constant model for student behaviors, actions, and attitudes.
One of the toughest challenges for school library media specialists in today’s Internet-networked classrooms is to teach the students to use quality resources like our online subscription databases for research rather than relying on web search engines such as Google. Yet, no matter how often I went over this concept in the media center, I found that our teachers’ actions were unintentionally undermining my lessons. After talking with a few members of the faculty and working with their classes on research in the media center, I came to four key realizations:
- Many members of the faculty did not know the difference between a search engine such as Google and the websites it found as compared to a search in an online subscription database and the articles it found.
- Many members of the faculty did not realize the benefits of using an online subscription database.
- Many members of the faculty were not familiar or comfortable with our school’s online subscription databases.
- Many members of the faculty frequently modeled “Google-ing” as a form of research in both action and speech.
Based upon these realizations, I decided that I needed to start at the top and first teach the faculty about online subscription databases and their benefits. Once they were comfortable using the databases and convinced of their values, together we could consistently teach the students.
I approached my administrator and asked for some time at our next staff meeting. Although he could not give me a large chunk of time, he allowed for me to give a brief presentation. During this time, I went over the handout that I created—Databases vs. Google linked above. I then presented a schedule for voluntary in-service that I titled “Getting to Know our Databases.” A copy of the schedule is linked above.
For the next several weeks, I held after school in-services in the media center where I would introduce teachers to one or two of our online subscription databases each week. During the in-service, I would show them how to get around in the database, what types of topics were most applicable to that particular database, how to get citation information and print its articles, and the strengths and weaknesses of each. To help take notes and retain the information I presented, I created the organizer linked above and provided copies for each participant. I also sent out weekly reminders through email.
I was able to reach all members of our faculty during a staff meeting and stress the importance of using online subscription databases for research. In addition, I provided each faculty member with a handout to help them teach the students the benefits of using our subscription databases. With this united front, our students will hear a consistent message and observe a consistent model. Although not every faculty member attended the voluntary in-services I provided, those who attended became better acquainted with our school’s online subscription databases and better able to help their students perform effective research.
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