This is one in a series of posts examining the Common Core State Standards and the conversation surrounding their impact on teaching and learning.

It certainly is a difficult time to be a school librarian or media specialist in this country. As school districts trim back their budgets, it’s often the librarians that lose their jobs first — despite the fact that research shows a clear connection between student achievement and the presence in schools of well-run and well-staffed school libraries.

But as schools begin to live and breath the Common Core State Standards, is this an opportunity for school librarians to make a new, strong case for the work they do? Olga Nesi, a library coordinator with the New York City School Library System, makes the case in School Library Journal this month that librarians’ expertise in embedding “inquiry” into instruction fits “elegantly” with the Common Core’s focus on the “process” of learning rather than just the content that must be covered.

With this change will come a wonderful reshaping of our work. If inquiry is everywhere in learning, then our work is everywhere and the work we do is no longer considered the indefinitely postponable “library skills curriculum.”

How do you see the role of school libraries shifting in the age of Common Core?

(Flickr photo by The Daring Librarian)