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Teaching, Vol 8, No. 2 x The Teaching Librarian Volume 8/No. 2 27 Reflections of a First-Year Teacher- Librarian by Angela Di Prima, Teacher-Librarian, Father Bressani Catholic High School Iam just beginning to learn that life sometimeshas a funny way of working itself out. Sincegraduating from the Faculty of Education at the University of Toronto in 1992, I have held numer- ous teaching positions with at least 4 different school boards. I even held two teaching positions with two television production companies as the on-set teacher for a number of young and rather well known actors. Now this is not a tribute to my employment instability but rather simply a fact of having graduated at a time when all those predict- ed retirements in the teaching profession had not quite come into fruition. For many of my fellow graduates and colleagues this seemed an unbear- able reality. For me it seemed a great opportunity to further my own professional development and expand my teaching horizon. For someone who never thought she would become a teacher in the first place, I sure did my part to ensure that I was always employed in my profession throughout those years. After all, teaching, no matter what the grade or subject, is still teaching. Or so I thought. That is until I finally found that perfect teaching position for me, that of the teaching librarian. I have never quit a job. To be able to accept a teaching position with the York Catholic District School Board as a teacher-librarian and history teacher at Father Bressani Catholic High School in Woodbridge last summer, I quit two. Consider- ing I already had completed a Master of Arts in History, but I had never had the opportunity to teach history, I was thrilled at the chance to teach my favourite subject and the library component seemed to fit in so well with my own academic disposition towards research. Armed with my own love of learning, I embarked on what has become one of my most exciting and memorable years in my teaching career thus far and ironical- ly, it has been in my role as teacher-librarian that I have experienced the greatest growth and development as a professional educator. I distinctly remember how shocked many of the staff members at Father Bressani CHS were to have a new teacher-librarian. I was replacing a teacher-librarian who had been at the school for over ten years and the staff, although warm and friendly seemed to have a cohesiveness, which only happens when a group of people have worked and socialized together for a number of years. If I was to be successful in this position, I knew I needed to carve out a place for myself among the staff at large, within the School Academic Council and even among my fellow high school teacher-librarians at our Subject Council. Perhaps the greatest challenge I faced at this time was creating my own personal identity and defining my role as a teacher-librarian and then publicizing that role to staff, students, par- ents and the community. I say this was a chal- lenge at the time because I had to create this iden- tity from what I believed and from what I had perceived to be characteristics of a successful teacher-librarian. Faced with running a library for 1500 students on my own for the first time seemed an enormous task, one which required much more than what my instructors in the intro- ductory Librarianship course had indicated, but I was up to meeting this challenge head on. I had a clear vision of the kind of teacher-librarian I wanted to become and the kind of library infor- mation centre I wanted to create. What I needed now was a plan to help me make that vision a reality. PROFESSIONAL NOTES