11th Feb 2022 | News & Events
Fitzroy High School Library
I feel very privileged and excited to become part of the FHS Community. 2022 begins a new chapter for FHS Library with the appointment of a teacher-librarian – the challenges are many and varied – ones I am very much looking forward to in both leading change and to further my professional learning in this setting. I have been a classroom English, Humanities and Psychology teacher for over 20 years and managing school libraries for 15 years on top of that, these roles incorporated teaching and eLearning.
The power of teacher librarian collaboration with classroom teachers is a vital part of enhancing student learning across the as can be evidenced by reading the work of Dr Margaret Merga in her work Here’s how teachers can partner with librarians to teach media literacy at school. Over the course of this year we hope to pilot both a Reading Program and Information Fluency Program to enhance both reading and writing skills skills across years 7-10. We are busy already doing the background work for these programmes and the change will become more visible as the year progresses.
I am also interested in what’s known in teaching circles as `student agency’ – where students have a genuine part to play in how the library looks and feels. Success to me would be having peer lead activities, based on student interest, in the library on some days during the week. I have a particular interest in wellbeing – Dr. Merga is also an expert on the role of the school library in wellbeing and her research can be explored further on this link titled `How can school libraries support wellbeing?
Our work over the course of the year will be evidenced based and I am excited to see where this journey will take us.
Eileen Cooney
Teacher Librarian.
