Out of town

I have accomplished no work this week. I have thought about my courses and stressed about what I am unable to do but other than that productivity has been a nil. As lovely as work has been the stress I am feeling about school is making it almost not worth it. I have had limited internet. I have started doubting my original convictions in collaborating with Ms. Bozorth. It is intimidating to think of writing a unit using 8th grade Spanish as the subject when I do not speak Spanish. A media coordinator is going to need to be able to work with all teachers at a school, not just the ones who teach familiar subjects.

Collaboration buddy

Working with my classmate Melanie is a real treat. She is such a strong person, I have looked to her as a mentor during this class. She has developed an impressive time management philosophy that allow her to balance all of her responsibilities with her family, her full time job, as well as course work. She taught me how important it is to discuss expectations at the start of any collaboration. We struggled with the expectations of this project because we both are much better at following guidelines than creating them ourselves. We stumbled a good bit at the start of the assignment. We had trouble with the open ended nature of the assignment. After collaborating with the other members of the class we shed our self doubt and decided to take the assignment step-by-step. We made it through and I feel really positive with our collaboration, though I know future collaborations away from the class will be quite different. I hope I can model some of what I have learned to the school-based educator.

Teacher Interview

Having gone to Lake Norman High School, I am familiar with many of the teachers at the school. For this assignment I wanted to interview a teacher that I knew would have an interesting teaching philosophy. I have been in many different classrooms because of submitting and student teaching. One class I had the pleasure of substituting for is an English class, belonging to a first year teacher, Mr. Walton. He had a guitar in the corner and video game posters mixed among Shakespeare quotes. The sub in me cringed assuming this teacher had no classroom management plan and that this was going to be a long week. How wrong I had been. His classes were respectful and self-motivated. The students work hard. I was eager to meet this teacher. So when I chose him for my interview, I was looking forward to seeing him in action. He has the philosophy that his students are responsible for their progress and grades. He will not repairman them for not paying attention but mark down for his own records so if the student scores poorly the will know why. He has never given a worksheet to his students and his lessons are individualized and relate to the students lives. We need more teachers like this one. His students respect him and he actively collaborates with other teachers and isn't afraid to ask help.

Planning successfully with a partner

Collaboration with others is one of the most important parts of being a media specialist. Working with partners during our class projects has been practice collaborating with peers. On a small scale the importance of keeping logs and records of communication with teachers is important. It helps to keep record of which teachers have used the media specialist as a resource so that the media specialist can approach those who haven't before. It was very interesting to see how Sue Kimmel divided cooperative planning into different segments. The categories: Drifting, orienting, coordinating, making connections, and making sense are ways to walk through coordinating with a teacher. Using the data Kimmel collected on how teachers plan, a media coordinator can react effectively to fill in the needs of the primary instructor.

I liked the way Patricia Montiel-Overal understood that the roles in schools have been changing and making collaborating even more important. She believes that the two key elements of collaboration are coordination and cooperation. From my experience these are necessary in effective collaboration. When I have collaborated with partners in the past we are only effective and efficient when we are able to communicate openly about what we are expecting from one another and the outcome of the assignment.

Stereotypes and differentiation

When I would learn about differentiation in the classroom, it seemed like a daunting yet necessary task. A classroom without differentiation is a class that is ignoring the individual needs of the students. As daunting as the task of differentiating for one class may be, differentiating an entire library to suit the needs of an entire campus of students is much more intimidating. It will also be that much more rewarding. By assisting teachers in adding differentiation to their lessons, I will be making sure that students are given resources to help each of them learn and succeed individually. The quick check for differentiation in the article "Everyone Wins", was extremely helpful and it will be useful in making sure that students are receiving the appropriate assistance in every aspect of their learning.  Adding in another challenge is making sure that we, as librarians, honor our duty to provide resources and literature for all of our patrons equally. It is also important that we show children that they are equal to one another and the stories we provide should reflect that. In the article "Questioning My Collection" I was amazed to see how somethings can be put into a book that can completely mar a student's self-esteem and self image.

Where teaching and media specialists meet...

It is interesting for me too look at a media specialist's role as a teacher. I have always looked at myself as a teacher and now that have devoted myself into becoming a media specialist I am still going to be able to label myself as a teacher. It is going to be an adjustment going from being a primary teacher to being a collaborator. The thing I am most looking forward to is being able to work with a variety of classes on a regular basis. In Buffy Hamilton's article, it was informative to read about the importance of collaboration between the librarian and the teacher. The thing that stuck out the most to me was the idea of collaborative assessment. From experience now with recent assignments, I realized how beneficial it is to not only assess your progress but have a peer assess you as well.

Collaboration, Assessment and Pathfinders... Oh my!

Many things have happened in the past week that have opened my eyes more to the complexities of the responsibilities of a media specialist. During my service learning, I saw how "Media Specialist" is translated to filling what ever technology or media base need arises in the school. I enjoyed one of the points the article "Inquiry-based learning is Equal Parts Process and Partnering". Many teachers say that they do not have time to meet and coordinate with the Media specialist when in all reality a Media Specialist makes a teacher's job easier. The purpose of the Media Specialist is to use all of their available resources to work within the teacher's time frame. One thing that I read in the same article is about Path-finders. This is one resources I have noticed teachers often using when they are in the media lab or doing internet based research products! It is very convenient to have a list of sites and resources for the students to use. This also a way for the Media Specialist to be in two places at once. The article on assessment was a good refresher. From my experience Assessment is the big bad terrible bane to the education system. It was refreshing to have an article simply say "Hey Assessment is here to stay, so make the best of it". Under the different circles surrounding Learning to Technology, one says "Deep Understanding". This is one thing in this article that I have trouble putting a lot of stock in. The use of technology as a resources is extremely beneficial for providing information but deeper understanding needs to be from hands on learning, not from an instant gratification resource.