Celebrating Quiet Library Leadership

As I write this, for many of us, our school year is coming into the wind down. The students are looking forward to summer, classroom educators are counting down, and you are mentally preparing for your first morning where you can slowly sip your cup of coffee and read a book on the back deck.  I wanted to spend some time in this blog post celebrating the school librarians who go above and beyond each and every day in their libraries and school communities but sometimes wonder if they are doing enough.  So, let’s set the stage. 

The last bus has pulled out of the school.  The hallways are empty, you’ve had a full day. 6 classes back to back, just enough time to scarf down your salad from home, and students before and after school.  The hallways are deserted.  You are still in your library because today, you finally connected with a student who has never checked out a book before.  You finally got a smile, an enthusiastic response to a title and you wanted to send an email to the English teacher before you forgot.  While you were crafting that email, 10 others came in from people in need of assistance, and you thought, “may as well answer those now.” 

You packed up to leave, but then spotted a section on your way out of the library where the shelves that were in need of attention. You set down your bag, and before you know it, had weeded several shelves that needed it.

Throughout the course of the day, you fixed 25 chromebooks, checked out over 100 titles and talked the new social studies teacher off the ledge about her research project. 

You’re tired! You head home. 

Once you are settled in, you open your phone. You check out Instagram, Facebook, and spot that there’s a post with a title about transforming the library that has hundreds of likes. A person you went to school with launched a new newsletter and teachers pay teachers site.  Another person was named to a national committee and yet another decided to run for office in your state organization. 

You close social media. You sigh. You ask yourself, “Am I doing enough?”

Here me when I say this to you: You are asking the wrong question. 

I understand completely why you’re asking it.

What Leadership Actually Looks Like in a Building

It feels like at times, we have accepted a definition of leadership that is always in your face. Social media, newsfeeds, and the sheer amount of media we consume has changed the way we look at what leadership and success looks like. 

There is a version of success and leadership that gets amplified. Examples include,  the conference keynote, the viral thread, the newsletter with thousands of subscribers, and don’t get me wrong, each of those is real leadership. The librarians sharing those experiences are doing important work, and the profession is better off (much better off) because of it. 

I am incredibly grateful to those who put themselves out there, who are on the forefront of change and who serve in so many different capacities and volunteer to step up in our associations. But, that’s just one aspect of leadership. 

What follows is the leadership that does not show up in anyone’s social media feed.

Recognize Yourself?

• Leadership looks like spending time with the student who is so uncomfortable in the cafeteria that they come to the library every day at lunch, and they trust you.  You never made her feel strange or weird for wanting to spend time in the library. 
• Leadership looks like building the collection that actually reflects the students in your building: their families, their languages, their questions about who they are. You did that over hundreds of small decisions, budget cycles, and conversations with kids who told you what they couldn’t find. It was hard work; it was leadership work. 
• Leadership looks like supporting a teacher who now designs research units differently because you sat with her, talked her off the ledge and made suggestions without making her feel bad. She’ll never describe what happened as “professional development.” She’ll just say she finally gets it. 
• Leadership looks like the administrator who now defends the library budget because you showed up, prepared, every single time; not with a polished brand, but with data about your students and clarity about what the library makes possible. That relationship was built in hallways and thirty-second conversations and through consistency. 

It’s the Work

This is the work you do every day.  It is largely invisible to anyone who wasn’t there. That is not to say that we should not be advocating and sharing about our work. (We absolutely should!)  It’s more to say that every moment counts, everything we do to change our corner of the world is leadership, whether you share it on social media, guest speak at a conference, or publish a blog post about it — or not. We still are doing the work. 

Leadership in a school library has always been measured in the particular: this student, this teacher, this collection, this community. The metrics that matter most:  trust, access, belonging, growth, are stubbornly resistant to being photographed and shared. (I mean, who has not tried?)

That does not make them less real. In many ways it makes them more real.

I want you to remember, comparison is the thief of joy. It was Teddy Roosevelt who said that, and I think it rings true today. And these days, it’s all too easy to compare yourself online to what others are doing.

What you need to be a leader and to know you are doing amazing things are a building, and the people in it, and the willingness to show up for them. You have been doing that. It counts. It really, truly, and honestly does.  

So, What’s the Question?

So next time you find yourself letting comparison be the thief of joy, wondering if you are doing enough to lead in your building, or shutting down social media feeling like you are not enough, ask yourself these questions instead:

Who is better off because I was here today?

What did I make possible today? 

Who came in, and did they leave differently?.

What changed in this building because of me today?