When tubing with her daughter for the first time, Megan Dobson ran to the front of the boat to answer the call asking her to accept the position of teacher-librarian.

“I said, ‘This is hilarious,’” Dobson recalled. “I’m in the middle of a lake on a boat and my daughter’s on an innertube. She was just tubing for the first time and I’m going to be a teacher-librarian at a high school for the first time. I was very excited.”

Dobson now works in the library alongside, Christy Bray and Angie Hammond. It’s her first year working with high school students. For the past 10 years, she’s taught language arts, social studies, and community engagement at the middle school level.

“The opportunity to come and experience high school after 10 years of middle school teaching was too exciting to pass up. I’m very curious about where middle schoolers go.”

As a teacher-librarian, her job entails working with students in the library and the classroom. At the beginning of the year, Dobson taught lessons on research inquiry in multiple classes. She talked to ninth-grade biology students  about author Simon Sinek and his theory about how starting with ‘why we are learning this’ is important.

“We want to get on a winning streak with asking great questions and trying to answer them,” Dobson said. “When were challenged appropriately, we’re building up one another’s thinking.”

Dobson works with students in other areas as well, such as reading advocacy. Making sure kids are interested in reading and helping them find books is the aspect of being a librarian Dobson says is the most important.

“Some kids don’t identify as readers yet,” Dobson said. “‘Yet’ is really important. I think that helping students just find that mindset that they can get on a winning streak with book selection is really important.”

Along with her other jobs as teacher-librarian, she wants to make sure the library is a safe environment, she hopes everyone can feel welcome and represented.

“We really believe that every single story is important, and every single person and their story matters. We should feel that in the center of our school, and then into our classrooms, and then the community.”