What It Means to Be the Librarian I Never Had as a Kid

I pay particular attention to what students experience because I know the clear disadvantages of losing libraries and librarians. There was no one in my life as a child who asked me to think outside the box. The first time I learned that I could sometimes disagree with a text was when I was in college. It’s too late. So, the most important thing I try to do as a librarian is that I try to get my students to think creatively and encourage problem solving, rather than searching online and looking for answers. What’s important to me is to encourage as many students as possible to think creatively, disagree with the text, and challenge the way things have been done. Otherwise, I would be complicit in encouraging young people to fall into a mindset that makes them more susceptible to authoritarianism.

Sometimes it feels like high school librarians are the childless uncles and aunts of the education world. I have more freedom than a school teacher to ask questions about how my students think and what kind of impact they want to leave on the world. We emphasize what the teacher said— Your opinion matters, your voice matters, you’re allowed to disagree. — and watch the understanding bloom on the teens’ faces. Sometimes you need another adult to say it a little differently to get the point across. The words coming from the boring old teacher that kids see every day aren’t that “cool” or “appropriate.” That freedom is becoming more urgent every day. Students who cannot agree with the text and are able to question what is handed to them are difficult students to manipulate.

Recommending books is also a way I can impact students’ lives in a way I never could. My job is to stay up to date on what’s trending, read with my students, and highlight authors who don’t get much attention in the classroom. Ordinary people in a child’s life – parents, coaches, teachers they see every day – tend to recommend what they already know. You can go further. I recommend genres that are often dismissed by academics, such as graphic novels and romance. I can expose my students to more women writers, writers of color, neurodivergent writers, translated works, LGBTQ+ writers, and more. I have the privilege of introducing my students to their next favorite authors, authors they may have never heard of before. And I’ll be the one to tell them about that author’s extensive backlist.

It reminds me of the librarian I never had. This is the person who might have handed me a book by a writer who thought the same way as me, who might have told me it was okay to push back, and who might have opened up the world to me a little earlier than in college. I can’t go back in time and be that person for my younger self, but I can be that person for every student who walks through my library doors. That’s no small thing. In a world where young people are increasingly told what to think, librarians handing children the right book at the right time is a radical act.