There’s no required amount of minutes for library instruction in the state of Illinois.
In a fact sheet to WBEZ, CPS officials touted the expanded virtual libraries available to all students. And at the very top of the page in bold letters and underlined, a spokesperson wrote “we will not be satisfied until we have central and/OR classroom-based libraries in every school.”
Cusick said librarians do so much more than just check out books. They teach kids how to do research, how to find and evaluate information, a skill that’s becoming even more important in the digital age.
“Kids don’t just know how to do that,” Cusick notes. “It’s not a skill that they develop just because they have an iPhone or because they have a computer at home, which many of our students don’t have.”
Cusick and her colleagues don’t want to see librarians added at the expense of other positions, like art teachers and physical education teachers. But they also don’t want to see school libraries just become places where meetings and press conferences are held.
Article Appeared @http://blackstarjournal.org/?p=4263