Why do I want to be a TL?

One of the main reasons I want to be a qualified TL is to facilitate and promote information literacy among students. From my 9 years teaching experience I have continuously found that many students at my all-boys school are "information illiterate" - I suppose there is such a term. Many students simply don't know how to access a variety of information sources and synthesise that information into new knowledge. Too many students think that research is Google searching, then copying and pasting what they think is relevant information.

The turning point in my education career was in Term 1 2008 with my two Year 9 photography classes. The students were required to research a digital photographer/artist. I provided them with a list of relevant website and other resources for a suggested range of photographers/artists and questions to guide their research. Out of the 45 students, 35 had copied and pasted information directly from the website I have them. There was no research of any kind, simply plagiarised material, despite continuous instructions to write in their own words. Following my initial shock at reading the same material from the Internet, I realised what I had suspected for so long - the students generally had little information literacy skills. In my 9 years at the school, the library has not offered any kind of information literacy classes/workshops for students. Even now the library with its severely limited staff (me included, but am required to teach the Year 7 and 8 reading programme) offer such information services. This experience propelled my ambition to be a TL - knowing in future I would be equipped with the knowledge, skills and expertise to make a difference to students information literacy skills (either at my current school or even at another school).

It really frustrates me to be in a school where information literacy and collaboration doesn't exist in practice. I observing a Year 8 Geography class last week while I was desk duty. The students didn't appear to know how to use the information they had found for their assignment - they simply copied the information. They didn't even know how to make a note of the book or the website they had used for their reference list/bibliography.