(upbeat music) - All right, folks.

My colleague, Jacqui Tricarico, joined me down in Atlantic City for the New Jersey Education Association Convention.

And Jackie sat down with Eva Elliot, who is the president of New Jersey Association of School Librarians, to talk about a whole range of important issues affecting school librarians and students in our public schools who rely on those libraries.

Here's Jacqui.

- Joining me now is Ewa Dziedeic-Elliot who is the President of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians, has over 10 years experience as a school librarian and is here today at the NJEA Convention.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

- Thank you for having me here today.

- So let's describe the Association of School Librarians.

What is that in here at New Jersey?

- We are NGA members and what we do is we provide professional development and support for school librarians across the state of New Jersey.

What that means is that if the school district, let's say is writing new curriculum or if they are hiring a new librarian and that librarian needs additional training, we're able to provide that training.

We're able to provide that professional development.

We're able to provide mentorship but also in the light of the latest book challenges, we have created a task force and the task force is able to provide resources to support school districts, school administrators, school board members and the school librarians across the state of New Jersey.

- Well, let's talk a little bit about that.

We're hearing that word book banning, that term, a lot now in the media.

What does it mean for a school librarian the role that they play in terms of book banning or specific issues that community members, parents, caregivers, bring up about the books that are being presented on the shelves in the libraries of our schools.

- This is actually very complex problem and I think that at the core of it is something that shows very negative impact on our librarianship as a profession because we as school librarians, we have teaching certifications and on top of that we have library certifications.

So we are dually certified and here we have community members coming to our libraries and saying that we don't know what we're doing.

And we are specialists in the field.

We are trained to provide expertise and proper materials for our school libraries.

And this is something that we have to remember.

School librarians materials are supplementary materials and they support state standards.

So anything and everything that we provide in our libraries is to support already existing policies and curricula and state standards.

We don't come up with these recommendations and with these books out of thin air.

If there is a certain book in the library, that book was purchased keeping in mind that we have to provide some level of support for classroom or for some kind of lesson plan.

So it's a well thought out process.

When it comes to book banning, it's again, very very complex issue, but it's greatly under reported and our biggest problem here right now is that a lot of school districts are not following their school policies and are not following the state standards and laws.

So the issue is very under reported.

We as an association receive information from our members that school administrators or school board members come into the library space and make requests to remove something out of fear of potential book challenge.

That's sweeping the problem under the rug.

- Well, yeah, and playing devil's advocate a little bit, what do you say in terms of parents who say let's leave it up to the parents to decide if these books that are causing these issues or that are coming up in a lot of these school board meetings as books that should be taken off the shelves, leave it up to the parents to make that decision if the kids can have access to them.

- I would say to those parents if you are not comfortable for your child to read that, you have the right to do it but you cannot make this decision for all of the children because there are children out there who look forward to have these resources in their hands.

They really need it.

In some cases, seeing a protagonist struggling with the same problem that the child or the student is struggling, it might be life saving.

So I would say to those parents, if you are not comfortable having these conversations with your child, if you are not comfortable with your child to be exposed to certain subjects, you have right to do it.

But take care of it with your child.

Don't put this on everybody else because remember if you are putting that pressure on yours or my child, another parent may do the same to your child.

They may put something that is not compliant with your belief system.

So it works both ways.

- It's a challenging conversation and something that we're consistently hearing.

Lastly, how important is the role of the school librarian?

How important is it for us as a community, for parents, to support the librarians that are in our children's lives as part of their education?

- So there is a lot of studies.

Librarians love data.

We love studies and data.

There is a lot of studies that are showing that having a school librarian actually increases all kinds of scores in all state standards if they're properly aligned.

And what happens is having a school librarian actually helps with literacy more than having early interventions which basically means that if you're talking about money if you're talking about hiring someone as a school administrator, you are better off hiring skilled librarian with proper certifications who can provide support for your child, for your student, rather than even having certain programs.

Then, on top of that we are providing all kinds of research assistance.

Our job changes from grade level to the grade level.

Elementary school librarian has completely different job description than middle or high school.

Elementary school librarian is more like an intervention teacher for library literacy, skill reading literacies, and then middle and high school is more college prep oriented.

We are the only people in school buildings who actually work with everyone who knows the curricula and lesson plans across the board.

We are prepared and ready and trained to work with absolutely any department in a building.

I can provide assistance to art teacher I can provide assistance to science teachers, to math, english, social studies because I'm trained to do it.

We are the only people in a building who can also provide IT help.

So we are very diverse in that.

- Ewa, thank you so much for giving us some more insight into the challenges right now facing school librarians and just how important that role is in our children's lives.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

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