No one had taught me to do any of this, and I did not know if it was best practice or what my students—most of them Hispanic, Latino, Black, and Asian—needed. No part of any teaching training had prepared me for how much my students needed, so I relied on what I knew from my own experiences. I began to build my pedagogy around caring for the child first and the learning second. I was able to do this, in part, because my role in the school community as a librarian was not tied to standardized test scores. They could “fail” at using the library, and it didn’t impact a grade or my paycheck.
