The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Teaching Librarian The Teaching Librarian volume 14, no. 2 13 Hosting Teacher Candidates in School Libraries with my request. Waiting paid off and it happened. Yes, I, a teacher-librarian, hosted a teacher candidate for a three-week placement in the spring of 2006! Cory, in addition to being Head of the Education Library, teaches an optional course at the Faculty of Education on resource-based learning. The teacher candidates who take this course complete all the regular classroom placements and, in addition, do a three-week placement in an alternative setting related to education, such as a public library, museum, gallery, or historic site. OR--and this is the exciting part--a school library! And that's how Ewa Pawlowicz, a teacher candidate from Queen's, came to spend three weeks in the school library at Philip Pocock Catholic Secondary School. Ewa worked with me as I booked, planned for, taught, and worked with classes in the library. She also participated in a Collaborative Literature Program a colleague and I had designed for her ESL and Ontario Literacy Course classes. One of the requirements of the placement was that Ewa plan and complete a resource- based learning unit, assignment, or activity. Ewa chose to create a WebQuest for grade 9 geography and I worked with her as I would have with any interested teacher. Ewa also participated in the everyday business of running the school library-- processing books and magazines, working at the Circulation Desk, supervising students and so on. While the goal of this placement isn't to train future teacher-librarians, it certainly does serve as an eye-opening introduction to a career direction teacher candidates might not Having recently graduated from teacher's college, I wanted to share one of the most valuable placement experiences that I had during the B.Ed. program, so that future students have the same opportunity for professional growth as I did. During the final months of my studies at Queen's University, I was given the opportunity to choose an alternative placement related to teaching that might somehow benefit me in my profession. I have always been a resource fanatic, squirreling away media, Internet, and book resources that might somehow, someday, be of use to me in the classroom. As a result, it was natural for me to choose a placement in a location where I would be surrounded by resources all day long--the school library. Also, it would give me the opportunity to work with what I consider to be the most valuable resource in the school--the teacher-librarian. My alternative placement at Philip Pocock C.S.S., with teacher-librarian Brenda Dillon, was one of the most useful and practical experiences of my entire year at the Queen's B.Ed. program. Not only did I get to work one-on-one with students of varying grades and levels, but I learned how valuable the school library and the teacher- librarian are to students, who are exposed to a large variety of resources and research methods which will be of help to them throughout their entire lives. The alternative placement with a teacher- librarian has completely changed the way that I plan assignments and structure classes. I no longer centre classes on me, with myself as the source of all information and knowledge. Instead, I centre classes around the students, whom I carefully guide in seeking out knowledge on their own. This has proven to be quite beneficial in my classes, resulting in more classroom participation and a better retention of curriculum material. I sincerely thank my associate teacher, Brenda, who, with her patience and dedication, showed me how valuable the resources we already have can be to our students. z Ewa's Experience Ewa Pawlowicz