Jesse Braun, a UCI School of Humanities alumnus, received the 2024-25 Los Angeles County Teachers of the Year award for his work as a teacher librarian. As one parent describes Braun: “Mr. Braun is an amazing role model and multi-tasking educational rock star who lives to inspire and encourage.”
We talked with Braun about his time at UCI, and what receiving this honor means to him. For more information about Braun and his award, please check out the short YouTube video of Braun discussing his award.
Can you share some memories/experiences from your time at UCI that you feel contributed to your professional journey?
I came to UC Irvine in 1993 along with a number of other students from my high school in Huntington Beach. For the most part we quickly went our separate ways, but a handful of us found our way to KUCI, the student-run radio station. As a freshman I became pretty deeply invested in the music and social scene that I discovered there, and I decided that I would apply for a position on the management team. That was how, when I was a sophomore, I became KUCI’s training director. It was my first experience of teaching, and I had an absolute blast introducing students and community volunteers to radio broadcast standards, the station’s philosophy and purpose and the use of the broadcast equipment.
Later that year I was invited to join the Humanities Honors Program. Through that program, I became an undergraduate T.A. supporting two sections of Humanities Core. It felt like a much more serious job, for which I believe I received a whopping $100 stipend, which made it my first paid teaching gig.
The following year, after completing my B.A. in English, I decided to build on those experiences, and I enrolled in the Intern Teaching Program through the UCI Graduate School of Education.
What inspired you to pursue teaching as a profession? And what do you most enjoy about your work?
My mother was a teacher, so teaching was always on my radar. But over my first few years in the classroom, I struggled desperately. Even today, when I mentor new teachers, I try to make it very clear that I understand how overwhelming classroom management can feel, and how kids – especially middle school kids – can feed off a sense that the adult in the room is rattled.
It was only over the course of many years that I developed the confidence that I needed to feel at home in a classroom. It was then that I started looking for new challenges. At that time, my wife had recently completed her Master’s of Library and Information Science (MLIS). Observing her success, I began to consider that I might want to become a Teacher Librarian. Following in her footsteps, I completed my MLIS at San Jose State University in 2012.
As a Teacher Librarian I really feel I’ve finally found my ideal place in education. Instead of working with a single class over the course of a semester or school year, I now get to work with more than 700 students over all three years of their middle school education, building their information literacy, digital citizenship and research skills.
What does winning this award mean to you?
Teacher Librarians are a dying breed in California. There are only a few hundred left in the state. In fact, at last count there was only one Teacher Librarian for every 10,000 students. It’s a depressing situation, as the California Model Library Standards contain the state’s curriculum guidelines for information literacy, which feels like an essential skill in our increasingly fragmented media environment.
Being a Los Angeles Teacher of the Year, and the first Teacher Librarian to compete for California State Teacher of the Year, has given me the opportunity to advocate for the benefits that a robust library education program can provide. I’m incredibly lucky to work in a well resourced school district that invests in its library services, but there are countless school libraries that go unused, and countless students who don’t receive the benefits conferred by access to a credentialed Teacher Librarian.
What’s a favorite moment or anecdote from your teaching experiences?
My campus has an extraordinarily diverse student body, and I want them all to feel welcome in my library. In order to signal that my library is an inclusive environment, I strive to provide diverse books and resources that reflect my students’ religious, cultural, gender and sexual identities.
Earlier this year, I took a quick count during lunch and realized we had more than 100 students using the library at once. It was just an average day, but more than a seventh of the students on my campus were there reading, playing board games, studying and just hanging out. We only have 75 chairs, so they leaned against shelves, sat on the floor and curled up in corners. It made me really appreciate how much my library has become a central hub on my campus. It’s a really vibrant and active place.
Do you have advice or encouragement for students who want to become teachers/librarians one day?
When I was at UCI, I once had the opportunity to hear Kurt Vonnegut speak on the topic of “How to Get a Job Like Mine.” He spent an hour touching on a wide variety of topics, but when he circled back to the ostensible theme of his speech, he admitted that in that day and age, the mid-1990s, he actually had no constructive advice as to how someone would go about getting a job like his.
Education is a vital and rewarding field, and I can unreservedly say that Teacher Librarians have the best jobs in education! I love what I do, and I feel lucky every day that I get to do it. I fear, however, that the era of the certificated Teacher Librarian who provides instruction in information literacy, digital citizenship and research skills could sadly be coming to an end – at least here in the state of California.
I sincerely hope that we change course and begin to invest more deeply in school libraries as essential educational spaces. This year, in my role as Los Angeles County Teacher of the Year, I’m advocating for Teacher Librarians and the formal instruction we provide. I sincerely believe school libraries build a foundation in information literacy that imparts a broad societal benefit. I only hope that we can continue to offer that to the students of the next generation and beyond.