Engage with Ms. Henley

Background

Ms. Susan Henley is the Teacher Librarian at Academic Magnet High School in North Charleston, South Carolina. Academic Magnet is a school with 642 students, grades 9 - 12. It is known as an academically rigorous program and is currently named the number 1 high school in the U.S. by U.S. News and World Report.
The Academic Magnet library runs on a flexible schedule and is open to students both before and after school. The library offers a print and digital collection, research databases, a learning commons area, printing, and reference services.

The Standard

The AASL defines the competency of Engage in the following way:

"Demonstrate safe, legal, and ethical creating and sharing of knowledge products independently while engaging in a community of practice and an interconnected world."

How She Does It

Susan uses real-world experiences to explicitly teach research skills. She states that "ethically using information is one of the best skills that we can teach our students". As the majority of her students are self-motivated and academically gifted, ensuring that she engages them by facilitating student-centered inquiry experiences is an integral part of her library program's success. This all starts with teaching the teachers. In fact, Ms. Henley stated that coaching teachers to use the databases is perhaps the most important part of her job. 

She feels that by empowering the teachers to feel comfortable teaching the ethical and responsible use of information is the best way that she can ensure that her students think, create, share, and grow while "engaging in a community of practice and an interconnected world" (AASL. 2018).

Final Thoughts

Ms. Henley works to ensure that her teachers and students have the ability to fully engage with the world around them in a meaningful way. She equips them with the knowledge of how to gather and use information in a responsible way so that they ultimately become better students, and more importantly, better citizens. 

American Association of School Librarians (2018). National school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. Chicago: American Library Association.

Engage. (n.d.). photograph. Retrieved from https://standards.aasl.org/shop/