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Ready, Set, Teach!
by Uri Toch
One area of professional service that is often overlooked as a method of career rejuvenation is teaching at the graduate or undergraduate level. In my experience as a member of the adjunct faculty in the School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, IL, I've found that teaching is:
- A way to take control of your career and enhance job performance.
- A form of service to the profession.
- A way to expand your sphere of influence.
Teaching allows you to take control of your career because it is a form of self-directed learning. Teaching encompasses much more than presenting a list of sources or reference techniques; it provides opportunities for public speaking, curriculum development, and leadership.
For the average librarian, teaching opens up whole new career vistas. For example, librarians who have no management responsibilities at work will find that teaching provides an opportunity to plan and implement a program. You expand your ability to evaluate personnel, as you interact with students under deadline and via numerous assignments. Grading is a form of performance review, with all the attendant risks and rewards of critiquing a person's current performance and potential for growth. And, of course, you have to manage a workload, both for yourself and the students. As an instructor, you therefore begin (or expand) your ability to respond critically. After all, it is very easy to find fault with a particular assignment or presentation, but it takes real skill to provide informed feedback that allows the student to learn and develop.
Preparing a lesson plan is a great way to rediscover reference sources you've used but now need to describe fully to students. It is one thing to use a reference source to briefly answer a question. It takes a much more thorough understanding to explain why a resource is important, how to evaluate its access points, and how the source rates with other materials. Teaching also forces you to learn about sources that might not be in your library, and thus provides an impetus for collection development. It is a great way to discover new Internet sites and stay on top of recent developments in the field. Since many students are already working in the field, you can also learn about new resources and reference techniques from them.
On the technical front, teaching offers a chance to refine or develop presentation skills. You might decide to present a lecture in PowerPoint or similar format, for example, and use the occasion to expand your skills in this area.
Teaching is a neglected as a form of professional service, often outweighed by conference attendance, committee work, or writing articles/reviews. For those looking for a way to give something back to the profession, teaching offers a tangible way to impact future librarians and inspire people to get into the field. And, if you look at teaching as professional service, the relatively low pay may not be as much of an issue. (Adjunct faculty might earn about $2,000 for a semester course, and generally there are no benefits.)
Teaching is also a great way to expand your personal network. Developing a curriculum gives you an enter to networking with other faculty. To prepare the syllabus for our "Business Reference" class, for example, we searched the web and looked at many other syllabi. We saw an assignment that we liked so much that we e-mailed the professor and asked if we could adapt it for our class. He responded positively and noted that he too had adapted it from another teacher.
Of course, teaching also gets you in front of current or future librarians. You can quickly develop or expand your reputation by instructing some of the future leaders in the profession. (Of course, you want to do a good job, as the future leaders have memories of both good and bad experiences.) This networking can pay off down the road. Many times you might refer current or previous students for an open position, or a former student might contact you with a lead for a managerial job or consulting work.
Having mentioned some of the benefits of teaching, let's examine some of the barriers to becoming an instructor. Many people feel they do not have the subject knowledge to teach. Of course, you need some experience to teach. But, as an instructor I welcome difficult questions as a way of learning more about a particular source or subject area. When a student has a difficult question, it is really an opportunity to emulate good reference service. We research the topic and e-mail an answer to an individual student or to the class as a whole. We've found students to be very supportive of this process.
The issue of time can also be a real barrier. While preparing for lectures, grading papers, and teaching is time consuming, it is important to realize that the first couple of semesters are the most labor-intensive. And, you might want to explore co-teaching a class with a trusted colleague as a way of sharing the burden and expanding your network.
So how to you proceed if you want to explore teaching? After all, not having contacts is another barrier to success. I'd suggest contacting your library school alma mater or the library school nearest you. Check the American Library Association web site for a list of accredited programs. Many community colleges also offer programs in some aspects of research or library science, some leading to an associates degree.
Uri Toch works at the Schaumburg Township District Library in Schaumburg, IL. Most days he can be found at his desk or wandering around with his three children. He writes his own business outreach e-letter.