One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
—André Gide
Embedded librarianship necessitates the stepping out of an old, comfortable role and embarking on a new way of being, without the safety net of known results. When I made the decision to embed, there was so much that I did not know, so many guarantees that I could not make to myself, students, or the professors I worked with. I needed to rely on the growing feeling that there was a better way, that I could initiate something on my own that, while needing the permission of my library director and the support of my colleagues, I needed no particular mandate to get started.
I had been playing in the arena of embedded librarianship for quite some time—in actuality, about five years before I was actually able to embed fully. Working with different professors in different classes was akin to putting a lot of small and jagged pieces together in order to be able to see an emerging pattern. I met with so many different obstacles, objections, misunderstandings, and false starts. It made me realize, with more clarity than ever before, how librarians are thought of in the academic environment if, in fact, they are even thought of at all.
I actually had what I would call a “mixed bag” of obstacles. Since I am the English department liaison, it seemed, on the face of it, natural that I would embed in the Senior Thesis course and the required course for the major, “Interpreting Literature.” The library director was supportive and trusted me to come up with a workable plan. I had dabbled in “decentralizing” service by setting up regular reference hours in the Commons, a new building on campus that was a center of various aspects of student activity, including a food court. I would have a table, my laptop, and a bowl of candy. Word of mouth would spread this service, and because I enjoyed a friendly and cordial relationship with so many students on campus, I assumed this endeavor could be nothing but wildly successful. My colleagues were not all that interested in sharing shifts with me, but supported me, nonetheless. I would show up, feeling kind of puffed up with what I assumed was a great idea (I’d been reading about it in library literature for quite some time) and got a lot of reactions—none of them particularly helpful or appreciated. Students seemed rather confused about why I was there. Mostly, the students would come to the table for hard candy or chocolate that I provided as a thinly disguised lure. I actually managed to turn some casual and friendly conversations into research encounters, but they were very clearly contrived on my part (as anyone could see), and, admittedly, they were few and far between. Of course I believed in reaching out to students, and was intrigued by “meeting students where they are” (even if I did know where they were) and desperate for the chance, even if I had to find my own way to do it. When I was asked to provide statistics for the service, which were dismal, I decided, with very strong suggestion from the director, to abandon the ill-conceived idea. Nobody missed it.
Eventually, it became an exercise in futility to simply hang the proverbial shingle out advertising my services in an atmosphere where students clearly wanted to do a lot of things (eat, play pool, socialize, study, etc.), but actual research with a librarian was not one of them. And that is okay. I actually had begun to feel as though I was invading their space. I reasoned to myself that I had tried the idea and it didn’t work. At the time I felt some acute disappointment and some embarrassment since I’d been so vocal about decentralizing service to all who would listen. But, looking back now, I see that I was thinking in the right direction. That what I desired was an out-of-the-box way of reaching students. No more dabbling. Thus began what I have always thought of as the odyssey toward being embedded in the classroom. And after my experiences, I can claim not only to think of embedding as an odyssey, through my experiences, but I can claim it as one!
After my failure at taking reference services out of the library, I recalibrated. It was the end of the spring semester, and I decided that the time was right to approach the professor who would be teaching the English Thesis course in the fall. This professor, just two years away from retirement, was a noted scholar. He was also recognized as probably the most traditional in the English department. In fact, he’d been my undergraduate thesis professor many years before! In many ways, I thought that the fact that I was the department’s liaison and had, myself, graduated from the very program that I was seeking to embed in, would make things very easy for me: that I would be welcomed unreservedly and fully trusted. Nothing could have been further from the truth. While I would not venture to say in this case that familiarity bred contempt, exactly, it certainly did not open the doors that I thought it would.
I sat on the edge of the old wooden chair, facing the professor. It was five o’clock in the afternoon and the sun coming through his cloudy office windows blended uneasily with the fluorescent lighting. He rummaged through a voluminous amount of papers piled haphazardly and, without looking at me, said in his very precise and clipped voice, “Well, go ahead, Michelle. I am listening.” I was not encouraged, but I forged ahead, nonetheless.
“I’d like to be embedded in your Thesis course in the fall.” The papers continued to shuffle, he dropped his pen on the floor, and the department secretary poked her head into his office to say “goodnight” for the day. He looked up and smiled at her and returned the “goodnight.” He looked at me as though seeing me for the first time.
When I began to unfold my rationale and then my plan, I am not sure what I expected, but I know it was not the reaction I received.
“Michelle [he pronounced my name “Mee-shell”], thesis students are seniors. They know how to do research.” This was clearly going to be one of the major sticking points: convincing him that it simply was not true. That in fact, I usually found seniors no better at research than they were in their sophomore year—just one of the reasons I felt that I needed to become closer, both literally and figuratively, to the students’ experience, perspective, and practice.
I attempted to lay out a rationale and then a plan for the fall semester, but became rather tongue-tied and anxious, which he seemed to notice. With a heavy sigh, he told me it was a lot to think about. He would be off to London for research in a few days and he promised me he’d check back in with me upon his return. In fact, defying my expectations, he did contact me. He reluctantly agreed to allow me to “embed”—“whatever that is,” he mused. While on the face of it, it seemed like a victory of sorts, it didn’t feel like one. At that moment, I did not have any idea of how challenging being embedded in a classroom with a professor who, despite my efforts, still had no clear idea of what I wanted to achieve with my idea and whose confidence in the process and the entire enterprise was dubious at best. I spent the summer thinking about and planning my course of action. I attempted to communicate with the professor twice toward the end of the summer, though I received no reply until the second day of the fall semester. I asked that my professional information and contact e-mail and phone extension be placed on the syllabus. I crafted a short paragraph that sought to explain to students why I was in the class and how I aimed to help them with their research. I explained that I felt “contextualizing” my presence would help to ensure the success of my mission. He denied both requests, reasoning that the students knew how to contact me if, in fact, they needed me and furthermore, I should just do what I needed to do instead of talking about it. Not an auspicious start, but I forged ahead. He had consented to let me be there, after all. I seriously thought that the biggest hurdle had been overcome.
I sat among the nineteen students in the long seminar room. Each student was instructed to introduce themselves and tell the class which text they’d chosen for their thesis. When it came to be my turn, the professor introduced me and told the class that I would occasionally be in class to help them with their research. I scanned the faces in the room and saw mild boredom and amusement. My presence, at that point, seemed not to make a bit of difference, except maybe to pique some curiosity. While the concept of the “embedded” librarian was not explained to them, as I had been hoping to do, they had never experienced a librarian in a classroom. For the next few weeks, to say that my efforts were marginalized is to put it mildly. Each class would begin in the same way: with the professor exclaiming great surprise that I would be joining them that day. It became a running joke. I wonder if those of you reading this right now might judge me by my seeming passivity in the classroom, most especially because it seems as though I was consistently being disrespected in very insidious ways, though to be fair to the professor, now retired, I don’t think he meant it as severely as it came off. I knew that to climb this mountain, which is how I had begun to think of the Thesis class, I needed to stick it out. I knew that it would be far from easy, so I was willing to sacrifice my ego in the service of long-term goals. So I began a sort of ethnographic approach and began taking meticulous notes on student behavior and in-class questions, expressed areas of difficulty, and classroom discussions as they unfolded in class. Thankfully, I was meeting with the students one-on-one in my office regularly, so I was able to collect a lot of information directly from them, and help them work through their Achilles heels.
It took an almost Herculean effort not to insert myself more forcefully in the class. There were so many practices that I thought might be effective, but doing so would have severely thrown the class off balance and would have seemed disjointed (and possibly contentious) in a way that most students would have been able to pick up on. A talk with the director galvanized my direction: it was all about them and not about me. I resolved to do what I could with the limited time and access to the students that were allotted to me.
After a semester of being in the class, I can say that I reached about 90 percent of the class and by that, I mean that is the percentage that took the initiative to come to me for help, even though it was an unwritten rule that each student would meet with me at least twice during the semester; the professor had not wanted to have to commit to anything on paper.
While the professor was not all that enthusiastic to “debrief” me at the end of the semester, he did casually mention to me in the spring, after the thesis projects were graded, that he felt that the final projects showed a “marked improvement” from the last few years, certainly the previous year, and while he did not attribute that directly to me, I was pleased nonetheless. More importantly, it was just enough feedback to put me back in the saddle again for the following semester, with a new professor, while the previous one was on sabbatical. I resolved to be flexible, though more intentional in my practice.
I felt as though the semester had drained me. While I enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with the English department, I was worried that my experience in the Thesis class would have been looked upon negatively by the professor that I worked with, a man who was greatly (and deservedly) respected, but a bit “old school.” In order to gain perspective on what I had been trying to achieve, I decided that I knew very well what didn’t work—and my own predominant feeling was that I simply was not given permission to do what I could have done in the class. Period. I decided to turn that corner quickly and focus on what did work. And there were more than a few things in this area.
What I could not implement in class, I did in one-on-one consultations. I understood early on that all I would be able to do in class, for the most part, would be to observe, but I made it work. Because my notes were so pithy, I had a keen insight into where students seemed to be having difficulties and where they seemed to do just fine. When students came to my office, we worked. And I recognized and respected different learning styles. From brainstorming ideas, annotated bibliographies, developing keywords for database searching, and everything else in between, information literacy was at the forefront.
I was a constant source of support. The students realized that soon enough. Because the class was largely a class based in literary theory, much of the class content was delivered through lecture, with a bit of discussion. Because I was receiving the same information that the students were, I understood where they were and where they should be. When they would meet with me in person, they would often refer to something in class that I had an immediate reference point for. There was no guessing on my part, not the usual request for me to see the assignment. I was there. One student said that coming to me for help was such a relief, in part because she didn’t have to “fill in all the blanks” for me—I could usually understand when a student was having difficulties. I vowed to be responsive to e-mails on the weekend, which is when many of the students actually did their homework and worked on drafts of their papers. I would often check in with students to see how their drafts were coming, or to follow up on our sessions, sometimes just to give encouragement. The majority of the class reached out—and often.
I never missed a class. Embedded librarianship is time-consuming, of that there is no doubt. It is a major commitment. I must admit that during the first few weeks I felt more than a bit superfluous, but I resisted the urge to pack it all in. I was committed to it and remembered my director’s mantra: “It’s not about you.” And so, while in nearly every class one or more students would be absent, I never was, an aspect that I am quite proud of. If I could stick through a situation that was not ideal (but had potential), then I was going to do that. I never regretted it and feel as though the time was well spent. While not every embedded librarian will feel the need to attend every class session, it helped me to begin to construct a way of being a librarian in a classroom; with each and every class session I gained so much insight into the students and how they learn and how I could impact that learning.
I built relationships with students that impacted their learning. A theme that I return to again and again in this book is that of relationship building in embedded librarianship. The old adage “relationships are everything” can be perfectly applied in this context. When the group dynamics finally began to unfold in the class and we all became more or less comfortable as a group, I felt that students did not need to pretend that they understood things that they didn’t. I have often thought that we have made too much of the “digital native” —and that we have endowed students with a false sense of their technological superiority. I have seen this enacted over the reference desk when a student will come to ask for my help, but become defensive when I ask what strategies, for instance, they have already employed, which must sound to them as though I am implying that they do not know what they are doing. In fact, sometimes they don’t. I suppose if they did, they would not ask for help. The difference in the embedded class was that they got to know me, and I got to know them, so we had a base of understanding from which to work. I have had students cry in my office out of sheer frustration and mental exhaustion, students that had such “senioritis” that they did not even think they had the wherewithal to complete a thesis. We have all been there. Librarians know the student meltdown as well as anyone—probably even better than their own professors do, since we almost always see them in a moment of crisis or desperation—and sadly, often as the last resort. Because students came to know me in the same way they would come to know anyone that they were taking a class with, they felt comfortable coming to me for help. The quality of their final projects that the professor claimed to see, compared to years past, could be said to be a result of this.
I demystified the role of a librarian. This is important. Fear of librarians is real and so is library anxiety. I am human, so I acted like it. I provided a sounding board for students to verbalize their thought processes and figure out the next step in research before I stepped in. I wanted to empower them and I could not do that by dazzling them with my bag of research tricks. More than a few students knew that I, too, was a researcher and would ask me about my process. I was not afraid to tell them that often my process looked a lot like theirs: all over the place. That yes, indeed, I used Google and, in fact, when I need to understand a complicated concept or familiarize myself with a topic I knew nothing about, I would consult (gasp!) Wikipedia. I emphasized that librarians did not have all the answers, but we were very good at knowing where to find them. I aligned myself with them in their research struggle and allowed them the luxury of finding their way—which meant that they would make mistakes, they would struggle and become frustrated. It also meant that they would see that research is never as easy as they’d like it to be. I aimed to show by example.
I strengthened my relationship with my liaison department. I proved that I had both the content knowledge (holding both undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, though this is not a prerequisite) and the competence to lead students toward a satisfying and productive research/learning experience. While respected, I did not always feel (and this feeling was shared by my colleagues) that faculty truly understood what it is, exactly, that we are capable of doing. While the professor in my class may have felt threatened, in some way, by my presence or he may have felt that my contributions could not have made much of a difference, in the end he spoke enthusiastically to those in his department about my efforts. Word-of-mouth testimonials are perhaps the best, and I felt encouraged by the fact that in the end my efforts were constructive and appreciated. This was the foundation I had hoped for and would prove fruitful in helping me to make further headway into the department.
I was invited to a department meeting to speak about my experience with the thesis class. This turned out to be my chance not only to talk with the English faculty about what I did in the class, but also what was possible in future classes. Because faculty often assume that librarians simply teach “skills,” I disabused them of that notion and encouraged them to talk to students who had been in the class, which the chair of the department did. While I could not yet see myself embedded in the actual department, I very much desired to be permanently embedded in the Thesis class and spoke in detail about strategies for the class. I expressed a sincere desire to be an educational partner with the end goal of student success.
Students thanked me with sincerity. I mourned the end of the class, even though I found it exhausting. The ramp-up to beginning a new practice is intense to be sure, but eventually the students and I worked our way into the ebb and flow of the class and when it was over, I felt a bit of relief, but also a void. However, much to my surprise I was rewarded with e-mails thanking me for my help, as well as students who would drop by the library just to say “hello.” This was incredibly gratifying to me, and more than their good grades, made me realize that I’d made a difference in some way.
The success of my first semester as an embedded (though not fully integrated) librarian was one of learning how to function within limits and aspiring to greater growth within the mandate that I had set for myself. As I will show, often the success of any endeavor, particularly being embedded in a class, comes in increments. It is hard to gauge the success of efforts during a semester, when one’s nose is to the grindstone. Enlightenment about your own process and your own assessment of your performance will come in increments, too. It helps to share the experience with your colleagues, just as we encourage our students to talk to each other about research, because feedback is an important part of any practice. My colleagues were incredibly helpful in listening patiently to my triumphs as well as my moments when I felt that the entire enterprise was doomed from the outset. I was (and still am) my university’s only embedded librarian, and while my colleagues don’t yet have an interest in embedding as fully as I have and in the way that I have, they have been incredibly supportive of my efforts. When in the throes of an odyssey, that support means just about everything and I am grateful for it.
The following fall, I was embedded, once again, in the English Thesis seminar, but this time it was taught by another professor with whom I had always enjoyed a good working relationship. We met a few times at odd intervals in the summer where he expressed his being “totally on board” with my being embedded in his class. Interestingly, he laughed lightly one day and said, “I hope you won’t be bored!” This took me aback a bit, but the fact that even faculty we have worked closely with continue to misunderstand our mission should not surprise most librarians reading this. I told him that I would be far too busy to be bored at all. I was able to make it clearer to him than I had in my previous experience that I had both goals for my students and myself. And I laid them all out. For me to be able to achieve in the classroom what I’d planned, I would need a (small) portion of class time—regularly.
Because I felt more confident this time around, I was more assertive in my approach right from the beginning, an approach that the professor appreciated. I told him that I would introduce myself during the first class and lay out my expectations, both of what they could expect from me and I from them. I knew many of the students in the class, as I’d encountered them in other English classes in which I did sessions, so I found the atmosphere immediately comfortable and welcoming.
The atmosphere in the class was a relaxed one due to the fact that the professor combined lectures with a large amount of class discussion, creating a balance that resonated with the students.
Because I felt deprived of the proper contextualization the first time around, I stood in front of the class this time and laid out my plan. My name and contact information were included on the syllabus, and I was ready to dig into the semester.
The English Thesis class (EN490) is, for students, a rather uncomfortable blend of theory and thesis writing. Beyond the EN299 class in which theory and synthesizing research is prominent, they are encouraged but not required to use theoretical approaches in other English classes. By the time students get to their senior year, two things come as a shock: the actual writing of a thesis along with having to both (re)learn theory and apply it to their paper. This presents a few challenges. Students have felt that the actual writing of the thesis is sacrificed at the altar of theory. Discussion and assignments, including reaction papers to the large amount of readings that they do, they feel, detract from the writing of their thesis. And while every attempt is made to have the two topics blend and overlap, there are distinctions that keep them separate.
I understood this on a deep level, since the thesis class has remained virtually unchanged since I received my BA in English at the university. I remember, acutely, feeling so confused at that time—knowing my grade would depend almost entirely on my final project, but receiving no real direction in the process of writing it. Forget the fact that I was an English major and had already written more papers than I can remember. The thesis was different.
In the case of my students, nearly from the beginning of the prior semester, they expressed real concern over the guidance they felt they needed, which I addressed in the ways previously described.
The professor who I was working with was relieved that I would be, along with him, guiding them through the process. I could employ a many-pronged approach to work toward maximum success.
As a librarian, I felt the need to reinforce the fact that I would take them through the project step by step. I passed around what was a very simple “intake” form, where I asked students to name the text they would be using, how they begin research, and so on. One outburst in class jolted me out of my good feelings about what I was about to embark on. A female student, slightly older than traditional age, thrust the form back at me and told the professor she refused to fill it out. A few others expressed concerns. I was stymied. I couldn’t begin to fathom what the objection was. I told everyone if they did not want to fill it out that was fine. I explained it wasn’t a contract, and they were not held to the text they thought they were going to work on at this moment, but just that it gave me a baseline of information that I felt would help me to help them. I relate this anecdote here to give readers a bit of a sense of the particular kind of resistance a librarian may encounter—and it does not always come by way of faculty in the classroom. This was not only an issue of anxiety that students felt, but testified, in my opinion, to the kind of authority they perceived me to lack in the class. One could not imagine they would challenge the professor in the same way, and of course, they didn’t. This was a battle not worth fighting. I would have them come around in other ways.
I felt strongly that so much of the anxiety the students felt right at the beginning was because they could not let go of the fact that in fourteen weeks, they would need to produce a draft of a thesis and then would only have about eight weeks into the spring semester for revision, but would not have the benefit of in-class support, though of course I would be there if they needed me. I needed to pry their focus from simply the end result, which they were fixated upon. It seemed huge to them. I needed to build a bridge for them between the process and the product. Time and time again, I have seen students believe that a paper is simply a matter of amassing information that they will haphazardly sift through to prove an already predetermined conclusion. Research is done to know, to find out. We begin writing to know that we are on the right track—or we aren’t, and if we aren’t going in the right direction we continue to research and think and process.
I was lucky to be working with a professor who was a wonderful proponent of process. He believed in it and he reinforced the idea of it. I was there to make that process actually happen. At the professor’s preference, we did not use any learning management system in the class, so all interaction took place in person—in the classroom, computer lab, or in my office. Later in the semester, when students were deep into the actual writing of the thesis, I answered a lot of e-mail questions, which were really thinly veiled appeals for moral support. I was happy to oblige!
Roughly the first half of the semester was reimmersing the students in literary theory. This involved a lot of reading and the unraveling of difficult concepts. Usually each week the professor would present a new theory and each student was required to choose one to both present to the class and produce a short paper on. Discussion on theory tended to be intense, with students constantly referring back to their thick theory text and engaging in the conversation. While I took part in the conversations, this was not the part of class that I was most involved with—and yet I still count it as a valuable experience to have been there, because gradually, as I began to lead more sessions directly tied to the writing of the paper, theory would figure prominently.
My sessions with the students in this class were not relegated to the last half-hour, when their minds were tired and they felt rather drained. In fact, this semester had a more organic flow to it, which seemed to work. When we would arrive in class, the professor and I would go over again what each of us aimed to cover and then decide in what order we would do so. I loved when I was able to teach at the start of class. I would begin by taking the class’s “temperature”—gauging their mood, and so on, and to see “where they were” mentally and emotionally at that point in their week. This cleared the air a bit.
Nearly all of the students had come into the first class knowing exactly which text they wanted to focus on for their final project, and I liked to give them every opportunity to talk about it. We would go around the room and everyone would state their text and the issue they were going to focus on. I aimed to familiarize students with each other’s work, which provoked interest in other topics and approaches. Conversation that leads to in-depth discussion and critical thinking was a crucial component of my time with the class. More often than not, the professor would participate as well, which was fine by me, but I really enjoyed the time when I had them by myself; they were relaxed and more freely expressed their frustrations and difficulties that I needed to be aware of in order to help them. This was also a time when they could, with pride, hold forth on what they did know about their topic, author, or text. These aspects of their work were just as important to share because it served to build their confidence, and afforded them time to connect with one another, not just as peers in the class, but through the challenging process, which they needed, since there was so much that they felt they didn’t know. As one of the students said, in a dry tone with a straight face, “The struggle is real.” It was, but we were all in it together.
As the fall semester got underway, we were all connected to one another, and students were cognizant of one another’s project topics. While I have not had much opportunity to give assignments in other classes, I did in this one. I would give the assignments and grade them as well. I have never met a student who enjoyed doing an annotated bibliography, but that was the first assignment, but with a twist. Most librarians are aware of the fact that most students will simply choose the first required number of sources for a bibliography whether or not they are good sources to be able to use specifically in their paper. I decided that there would be three stages to this assignment so that students would not be settling for whichever sources they found (because there would be no pressure to do so), but instead would be free to “play the field.”
The first annotated bibliography would occur on their “reconnaissance mission.” My appeal to them to “just go out there and get the lay of the land” was thought, by the majority of them, to be “busywork.” They did not see the point. All I was asking was for them to do some searching in the ballpark of their topic/issue to see what was out there. The purpose of this was to avoid so much of the pointless searching that many students do at this point (searching that is hit or miss) without real evaluation and aiming to use, because they think anything rather than nothing is useful. I emphasized that they were simply beginning the process and that they should spread the wealth among sources, using a variety such as print and databases. As expected, their sources were very much all over the place, and predominantly digital, which I knew would change as they got further into their research. They were instructed to place their text, topic, and issue at the beginning of their bibliography. I assured them that not only might their issues change as they proceeded further into the research process, but that they should change. This was not the backward momentum they perceived it to be, but rather the natural progression of the process. As a freestanding assignment, the sources they listed would have been underwhelming, but I did not consider them so for the first of three bibliographies.
The professor and I were pleased with the first stage of delving into sources. After I had graded and evaluated the assignments, I handed them back and partnered the students up to talk to one another about the assignment. A few students began to panic when they were not satisfied with what they found and thought they might have to change their text, particularly if it was a newer novel they wanted to focus on and there was a lack of critical writing to be found on it. The professor did not have a problem with them changing their texts or topics if they felt strongly about it, but I pointed out to him that they might be doing it for the wrong reasons. Again, the urge to stockpile journal articles like an arsenal during war is a strong one. And while the students needed a certain number of sources for their thesis, their focus needed to be on the right sources. I know that students can lose weeks’ worth of valuable time when they change their text. They need to start the process over entirely, while others have worked through those issues and are entering into a deeper phase of research.
While week after week theory was at the forefront of the class, I worked with the students to keep the research/writing phase of the class moving forward. They were beginning to develop a conceptual structure to their papers, and I saw them leaning in, becoming truly interested in what they could accomplish. At this time, I started scheduling a fair amount of one-on-one appointments in my office, where the student and I would pick up where we left off in class. And many times, one of two things would happen: I would be able to assure a student that he or she was heading in the right direction (keep doing what you are doing!), or we grappled and worked things out, sometimes taking a direction realized through conversation and talking it out. This is an amazing process, because I gently ask leading questions, and after the first few I don’t knows, they are working things out, out loud. They will often answer their own questions. I leave space for their own questioning, their own inquiry. Robert Kegan has noted that learning institutions do a good job of challenging students, but don’t do as well in supporting them. He states, “people grow best where they continuously experience an ingenious blend of challenge and support.”1 And so we grappled, we communicated, we shared experiences, we sometimes took three steps forward and two steps back, but this was the research process in all of its glory. I wanted students to be cognizant of the process while they were going through it.
Because a predominant worry in the class was how divorced the theory portion seemed to be from the actual end game—the actual written thesis, I decided that part of what I would discuss in one of my sessions with the class, about midway through the semester, was how to actually use theory—that is, how to write with a “critical lens.” The need to address this concern as part of the process was important because I felt that it was holding them back. As they began what I call the most pleasurable part of the process—finding academic articles on a topic and reading through them—they would express concern that they thought they could write the paper, but they still could not figure out how to make theory fit.
The critical lens exercise would help them to apply that theory. Since they had all read their texts and were quite familiar with them, I told them to choose a chapter or two to tightly focus on. They would locate and highlight specific passages that would seem to support a particular lens. I tried to give simple examples. For instance, one student in the class was working on Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. I asked the student, to, as explicitly as possible, give us the premise of the book. As she was talking, I could see it dawn on her. “So, I could, like, use a feminist lens, right?” I nodded. “Right,” I said. In essence, I told the class, this student would aim to look for particular passages in her chosen chapters that might specifically deal with, for example, the subjugation of a woman’s rights, or instances in which a woman was able to triumph over deliberate obstacles placed in her way. I know this sounds as though I was simplifying things, but the students needed a clear and unambiguous example at the outset, because I knew (and they knew) things would get more complicated as they moved along in the process.
Moving along, they would then craft a thesis statement, creating a specific argument about an aspect of the critical lens they would be using and supported by direct quotes from their text. They were told to write an introductory paragraph, which should flow directly from the thesis statement. This paragraph would include concepts that they felt they would need to go into detail that would “set up” the reader for what would follow. An extended version of this assignment would be to then have the students write the body of the essay in paragraphs that would take them deep into the text, analyzing their text from the viewpoint of the critical lens, but in essence, that is exactly what they would be doing when writing their thesis. This exercise served to demystify the act of writing from and through a critical lens.
As with all of the exercises and strategies in class, none of them were done in isolation. Each and every exercise became a talking point, so that everyone was discussing their approach. What I had hoped would happen (and did) was that they began helping each other. For this exercise, no in-depth research was needed, though they did need to familiarize themselves with the theories that they would be working with. Most of the students used the required theory text in the class. This might normally be an exercise that the professor in the class would do with the students, but both he and I reasoned that for me to guide the students in this would flow nicely into all other aspects of the research/writing process of the thesis. And it would be good to point out that while I was the one guiding the exercise, the professor in the class participated in the discussions.
I felt more confident in my role in this class and felt that my relationships with students were progressing in constructive ways. While things were still not as formalized as I would have liked them to be, part of the reason why I describe this practice as an odyssey is that each class will be different, not only perhaps in content or the faculty member that you will be working with, but the students will be different, and the way they react to you in the class and how receptive they are to what you will do in the class will be met with a variety of responses. So while my desire for firmer planning was something that seemed like a good idea in theory, in practice I found that I taught very much what the students needed me to teach. In other words, I responded to their needs as researchers/inquirers instead of trying to make them fit into my preconceived approaches. I offered guidelines and strategies, though a few charted their own course, which was fine.
Then, with some idea of what their theoretical lens would be, we set upon more focused research. I took them to the computer lab twice during the semester. The first time was about six weeks into class where, as I have described earlier in this book, I led the class workshop style. The professor and I would walk around the class helping students with keywords and conceptualizing ideas. I would do a few searches in class, from the podium, but otherwise it was all hands-on. I encouraged them to find at least one article during the lab time, because in my experience, when a student had something in hand, they tended to feel more positive about the search experience and would have a real sense of making progress. Again, I stressed the importance of having the right research, not necessarily a large quantity. While they were senior English majors, I reinforced all of the aspects of evaluating, reading, and synthesizing the information they were gathering, even though they balked a bit. It was not wasted time. The phenomenon of students wanting to find academic articles that spoke to their topic/issue explicitly continued and caused a lot of (in my opinion) unnecessary frustration. But I understood that it was part of the learning process and did the best that I could.
The second annotated bibliography assignment served to concretize their sources so that they were now more specific to their research. And I went a step further in this assignment. While they still had to find and evaluate sources, they had to explain, in very specific terms, why those sources would work for their paper. This would prevent the practice of simply finding any source just to list it and complete the assignment. Many of the students were successful and I was encouraged by the variety of sources as well as their relevance. The students were also mining their sources for other sources, a practice I always encourage. The students had begun to feel as though things were coming into focus, and in fact the professor and I could see evidence of it. They spoke more confidently in general and in particular were not at all afraid to share their difficulties. I encouraged study partners and allowed for time in class for them to team up to work things out with one another. I would not formally set up research buddies until the following semester, but the work that they did collaboratively, I believe, was invaluable to their process and confidence.
The final weeks of the semester were stressful for all of us. Some students had hit more than a few hitches and the usual meltdowns occurred, sometimes simultaneously with the snow and ice we were experiencing, along with colds and flu and general mental and physical fatigue. More than once the professor and I were reminded by the students that they had other classes they had to focus on, too. Students are not widgets; they cannot, nor should they be, manipulated or intimidated. My one requirement for working with them was “do your work and do it well.” The unique position of the librarian in the classroom is that while I am also responsible for student learning in the class, I am also able to be a fuller support system for them as well. I did not grade their final projects, though I would provide feedback to the professor. I was committed to seeing them through the process, right to the end, which continued into the spring semester, after the formal class had ended.
When the class presented their theses in the spring, that year, I remember feeling not only a sense of pride in their achievements, but also a sense of accomplishment at the successful collaboration that had unfolded throughout that semester. Some of that success was hard won: as the semester wore on, it was difficult to gauge what we might term as “success” because the class was not, as no class ever is, monolithic in any way. Yes, they were all senior English majors, but how they all got to be there was a circuitous route for some, and for others, more straightforward. The embedded librarian plans, but strict mandates only straitjacket a process that must be organic and tailored to the class you are with at the moment. Zoe, one of my hardest working though struggling students, thanked me publicly after presenting her thesis: “I want to thank our librarian, Michelle, for her help through the process. She was like my best friend for four months!” Less enthusiastic though no less sincere, other students expressed the same sentiments that day and it brought home the value of what I had attempted to do with a startling clarity. It was a day when more than just a few faculty became both intrigued and surprised that we, as librarians, were capable, and more importantly, it was through student testimonials that they realized this. A long road, an odyssey, but well worth it, and of course, always growing and evolving.
As clichéd as it sounds (and it does), the road to embedded librarianship is a marathon, not a sprint. A librarian’s success in the embedded classroom will depend on any number of variables, and so it is good to define what your idea of “success” will be. I was thrilled just to be in the classroom after so many fits and starts. Once there, I could unfold my plan of (collaborative) learning. Not being in the classroom left me with the frustrating one-shot instructions that were barely scratching the surface of what good instruction could be. The term odyssey is not one that I chose lightly. It accurately describes the process of becoming more of the librarian that I was meant to be.
NOTE
1. Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Metal Demands of Modern Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 42.
RESOURCES
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