ASLA National Journal - Access - President's message Rob Moore

Executive Reports - Leading edge

First things first

ACCESS, Vol. 23, issue 1 2009, p.3.

By ASLA President, Mr Rob Moore

The multiplicity of management roles that fall within the ambit of teacher librarians is astonishing.

Consider a typical day:

  • You check your webmail at home before leaving for work and deal with a couple of issues before you’ve made it out of your pyjamas.
  • Having made it to school, on your way from the car park to your library a teaching colleague mentions that they are chasing a video about the Big Bang that they used the year before last for their lesson in period three – could you grab it for them?
  • The phone is ringing as you reach your desk. The deputy principal would like to use the library for a vaccination clinic next Tuesday – can you clear the decks on the online bookings page?
  • If you are the ICT co-ordinator in your school there is a good chance another phone call or two will follow before class regarding a software problem, a hardware problem and a password problem.
  • Between phone calls you help a student who must print out their assignment before school and another who needs to know how to reference a great website you helped them find yesterday.
  • Meanwhile, two boys have decided that the reference section would be a great place to sort out their dispute while the romance of your 840s French poetry section has proved too much for year 10’s latest hot couple… and the bell has not rung yet.
  • Before this day is done, you will be managing your classroom; managing your support staff; liaising with teachers, admin and finance staff; talking to a parent or two; helping resource some units of work; selecting some new materials from a travelling book rep; fine-tuning your budget; and doing some more work on that grant application.

Is this an exaggeration? Okay – so maybe not all of those things happen in one day (and maybe they do), but the reality of management for teacher librarians is that we must negotiate and prioritise a raft of demands each and every day. From helping individual students and staff to the macro level of helping our schools realise their big-picture vision to contributing to the even bigger picture embraced by our professional associations such as ASLA, our management role is demanding.

Do these demands invigorate and excite you, underpinning why you love your job, or does the to do list that never shrinks weigh heavily upon you? Wherever you find yourself on this spectrum, you could do worse than to check out or revisit Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix (1990). While there is no room here to go into a detailed discussion, he sums up the main point of this in stating that:

Effective management is putting first things first. While leadership decides what ‘first things’ are, it is management that puts them first, day-by-day, moment by moment (p. 148).

It is often difficult when you are under pressure to know which tasks are the most important but in his matrix, Covey emphasises a focus upon quadrant 2 – Important, not urgent. Engaging in professional enrichment such as reading the articles from your peers in this issue of Access certainly qualifies.

Reference
Covey S 1990, The seven habits of highly effective people, New York, Simon & Schuster.

Last updated 5 May 2009