Monday, March 10, 2025

Parasocial Mentors

It occurred to me during this week’s exploration into social media sources for our own personal development that so many bloggers and YouTubers give me a lot of inspiration and direction. It’s an “I want to be just like them” type of fondness. Of course, this is not a true mentorship because they have no idea who I am and likely who most of their followers are. However, bloggers and vloggers mimic a lot of what we see during observation hours: they walk us through a day in their life as school librarians. We see what other librarians, libraries, and school districts are doing and can emulate what we see fit for our students.

It makes me want to pay it forward by creating another blog or YouTube channel chronicling my own journey as I transition out of higher education and into the K-12 school. I think this is a testament to how important building connections with other school librarians is. It may be a job that you’re the only one in your school doing what you do, but it’s not something that can be done in complete isolation. I’ve learned this from being on the MSLA listserv, your colleagues advice is crucial to your daily success. 

Image Source:

Open Clip Art. (n.d.). Thumbs Up Like Hand. https://openclipart.org/detail/241293/thumbs-up-like-hand.
 

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