Practice Makes Progress: Finding Your Authentic Voice in the Library Classroom
On June 7, 2024, I was so honored to be the keynote speaker at the Innovative Library Classroom conference in Williamsburg, VA. What follows is a written version of the speech I gave there, about how to teach in a way that feels authentic and connected to you. Hope you enjoy!
Where this post began
When I first decided to become a librarian, I knew that I wanted to work as an instruction librarian at a university. I worked throughout my master’s program to gain experience in teaching, including face-to-face instruction for undergraduates, tutorials on how to use databases for scientists, and more. Upon graduating and looking for a job, I wanted to stay connected to teaching in my work. For the first six years of my career, I took jobs that I would describe as “many hats” style librarianship - I cataloged resources, ran checkout desks, monitored building facilities, and yes, taught.
In my most recent job search, I decided that it was time to only select jobs which focused on teaching. I wanted to have the time and space I needed to improve my teaching, and was able to get a job which focused on teaching information literacy skills to undergraduates and supporting my fellow library instructors on learning how to teach. This was my chance!
Upon starting my role, I observed some of my colleagues teach. And what I saw shook my confidence. I was seeing things I had never seen before: colleagues asking students to draw out the peer review process, to solve real-world scenarios using library resources, to work together to improve their topics. “Oh my god,” I thought, “I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing.” Even though I had gotten experience in teaching through my MLS and professional career, I did not have a formal background in how to teach. I was working based off of instinct.
As the panic set in that the impostor syndrome might have been right all along, I took vigorous notes and chose to emulate what I was seeing in my classrooms that fall. I took heavy inspiration from others, reusing lesson plans and trying to see if I could be like my colleagues. I learned a lot in these months about student learning assessment, writing learning outcomes, lesson planning, and a lot of pedagogical techniques I had not been aware of before. That being said, though, that fall something was missing. I felt like I was doing an impression of my colleagues’ teaching, rather than implementing my own style. How could I both be myself and teach “the right way”? What was I doing before I came to this university that my colleagues could learn from too?
This work is a reflection on my process of developing my own authentic voice in my classroom - both in the library and otherwise. It has not been a perfect or linear process, nor is that process finished. As such, I do not offer this as a perfect model or a blueprint to follow word for word. Instead, I wrote this to talk about what I thought about and continue to think about as an opportunity to open the conversation.
What is one word you hope your learners use to describe you?
Seriously, think for a second about what you hope your learners take away from your instruction. Are you hoping that they think of you as warm? Approachable? Knowledgeable? As library instructors, we live in the first impression of the first day of school, basically year-round. Even if it’s October and the students have been together for 8 weeks of the semester, they’re meeting us for the first time. What do you hope they take away from their first time meeting you?
For me, that answer is: fun. I hope my students get surprised by how much fun they can have in the library, that my instruction session defies some of their expectations. Regardless of your answer, consider it as your first step towards setting your vision for who you want to be in the classroom. Keep it towards the top of your mind as you consider how you plan classes, especially in how you’ll set up your lesson plans.
In fact, there are a series of questions I’d recommend you consider as you begin to craft what your authentic teaching voice might look like. Just like setting the learning outcomes for a session before beginning to plan the lesson, these questions can provide a road map for where you hope to go as a teacher.
What is one word you hope your learners use to describe you?
How do you believe learners learn best?
What, to you, is an effective instruction session? How do you know whether something was successful or not?
What values do you hold that you want to implement in your teaching?
What do you love most about teaching?
Now that you’ve thought about what your learners might get out of your teaching - consider what you find energizing, exciting, and fulfilling about teaching. Teaching can be truly exhausting, especially during the busy part of the semester. You might end up teaching a large number of sessions in a week, and only if you’re lucky will they end up being about the same topic.
How do we maintain energy in the face of our workload? Well, first off - it might not be possible. Some workloads are unmanageable, and sometimes extenuating circumstances in our lives can make it impossible to navigate a workload that would otherwise be OK for us. That being said, one of the ways I try to fight burnout is to stay connected to what I love the most about teaching.
For me, that’s connecting with students. I love seeing the a-ha moments when they discover their research interests or laughing with them when they reference a TikTok trend to help explain a topic I’ve covered. It’s energizing to me to learn together with the students, in an environment that’s low-stakes and (hopefully!) fun.
Again, whatever your answer, keep it in mind when planning sessions. How can you stay connected to what you love the most when you’re teaching? Here are some questions you might consider asking yourself as you’re continuing to set up your vision:
What do you love most about teaching?
Think about a time where you felt the most connected to what you were teaching - a time when you really felt like things were going well. What were some of the
characteristics of what, how, and where you were teaching?
Now think about a time where you felt less connected to what you were teaching. What were some of the characteristics of that teaching moment?
Putting it into action
Now that you’ve reflected a bit on what your teaching style could look like, it’s time to try putting it into action! I’ll share, here, using my answers to some of the questions above, but remember that this is a personal process. How can your answers to those questions inform your lesson planning process?
When I’m planning sessions, I start with three core questions.
Is this fun?
Is there enough variety?
How am I cultivating inclusion?
When asking myself is this (lesson plan, resource, module) fun, I’m asking myself about a few things. Firstly, as I mentioned above, that’s a core part of what I want my learners to take away from my sessions. What have my students found fun in the past? But it’s also connected to what I love most about teaching - for example, I try my hardest to build in chances for students to express their personalities in the classroom. That’s fun for them and for me, because connecting with students is a core part of what I find energizing in the classroom. I also believe that students will learn better when they’re having fun, both because that usually involves some sort of active learning, and because I know it will lower their barrier to entry into the lesson.
When I’m asking is there enough variety, this is connected to a core belief I have about student learning. I believe that students learn best through mixing it up and not spending too much time on one activity. In the lesson planning process, this means thinking about my time slots for each activity. How long am I spending on each activity? Is there a way for me to break down larger activities into smaller ones?
I also always ask myself how I’m cultivating inclusion. Inclusive library instruction matters to me on a values level, as I believe it matters when students feel specifically included by me. How can I incorporate Universal Design for Learning? What about principles from anti-racist pedagogy?
I don’t always answer these questions perfectly, and everything here is a work in progress. But keeping my vision in mind helps me to feel authentically connected to my work, while still opening the possibility for me to learn, grow, and adapt my instruction to fit my audience and my evolving expertise. How can you use these questions, which are based on my vision, to help you shape your own? What type of lesson planning process might you follow to get closer to that vision?
Moving forward
If I were to provide a TL;DR for this article, it’d be this: there isn’t one right way to teach. Teaching and learning are constructed and contextual, to paraphrase from my favorite frame of the ACRL Framework. Your teaching and learning will depend on the subject you support, learners you teach, and your vision for the classroom. Your way is the right way for you, and that’s what really matters.
This doesn’t mean we can’t integrate some best teaching practices across the board. Active learning, for example, is often cited as a best practice for teaching, but there are many different ways to include activity in lessons. Leading discussions, asking learners to respond to real-world or fictional scenarios, and game-based learning are only three examples of the variety of ways a teacher can encourage their learners to take an active role in the classroom.
Your teaching doesn’t have to be perfect to be valuable. In fact, I’d argue that perfection isn’t even possible in the classroom: the only thing we can do is experiment, learn, and adapt things as we go.
Thanks for reading! This is the first post of Info Literal, a blog that I’m hoping will become a place for us all to come together and talk about library instruction! I’d love to hear from you - you can find me on LinkedIn or at my website, or subscribe below to get notified via email of future updates on this blog.