Inquiry and the School Librarian

ARIS librarian Katie, recently had the opportunity to go participate in an IB Librarian training at the AISA Conference in early March of 2015. This was an incredible opportunity to meet and collaborate with other librarians in Africa along with it being set in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. The three day conference was packed with interactive sessions with the facilitator Dawn Rutland, who is a certified IB trainer at St. Johns International School in Waterloo, Belgium.

Many topics were covered, a few included: cycle of inquiry, academic honesty, library resources, OPACs, e-book platforms, and the learner profile. Katie found the workshop unique in the way that it spanned the three IB Programmes and had a big emphasis on international resources for students around the world. Katie gained a sense that many of concepts in the IB overlapped in the area of international mindedness. Culminating projects, Mother tongue resources, multiple language courses, made it clear that the IB Programme is striving for a way of exploring, researching, and looking at the world in a way that other school programmes do not.

Katie was endeared to Dawn and the two other women in her training for being open minded, kind, and honest about the obstacles that librarians have. The training emphasized the importance of having face-to-face conversations with other librarians who can understand and help each other over the hurdles. Katie hopes she can give to ARIS what Dawn and AISA gave to her, which is the opportunity to be a teacher and learner at the same time.