ISCI 794 Interview with Rebecca Adams regarding Include

             Rebecca Adams is the Media Specialist at Waccamaw Middle School. She started out as an eighth grade Civics and Economics teacher but realized she wanted to shift her path in education to help with students’ literacy skills. She concluded that the students in her class who struggled the most with the content had poor reading skills. Luckily, she had a mentor in the Media Specialist at her school who recommended that she get her master’s in library and information science, so she did. Once she had that degree in hand, she became an elementary school media specialist because that is where the foundational literacy skills start. Eventually, she returned to the middle school level, and it is where she will finish her career.

            When asked about the standard to discuss, she stated that INCLUDE is a great one to think about for middle school as the students are all at such a unique stage in life where inclusion for them is important. She creates lessons and activities with all learning styles in mind and makes sure there are opportunities for student collaboration in each lesson. She also displays a variety of genres and reading levels and includes diverse books to represent all perspectives. In lessons, she also makes sure there is movement for the students by working at different stations, a mixture of sources from print and digital, and always has Hi-Lo books available. One of the biggest successes is using the Breakout EDU boxes in lessons in each content area too so they see the connections between literacy, problem solving, and teamwork in all their classes.

            Collaboration with the teachers in the school is essential in Mrs. Adams’ eyes as she sees that as how to make her lessons/activities a true enrichment for their content curriculum. To do this, Mrs. Adams attends PLC meeting when needed and works closely with the curriculum coach to implement the lessons/activities. Some of the activities have been with science to learn about research, ELA classes to understand credible resources and citations, and social studies have done Breakout EDU boxes to review the three branches of government. There are also activities that involve every student, such as book tastings that really make the students aware of all the great books that are in the collection and usually the checkouts after the lesson are high. Mrs. Adams also works with the Special Needs class so they can have library time and appropriate books for their levels.

The greatest challenge faced is time. It is hard for teachers to give up classroom time for this to work, and it is hard to cover everything in a class period for a lesson, however, it always is a success and the students benefit from it the most.  

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ISCI 794 Interview with Rebecca Adams regarding Include

ISCI 794 Interview with George Geer Regarding Collaborate

            George Geer is the Media Specialist at Waccamaw High School in Pawleys Island, SC. He started his career as an English teacher and after teaching eleven years, he transitioned into the library role. We talked about the different standards and landed on discussing Collaborate as it can look a little different at the high school level but also be very impactful.

            I asked him about the resources in his library program that he uses to implement this competency. He states that he uses NewsBank for research and writing instruction, Beanstack for reading challenges, and tutor.com, Discovery Education, and EdPuzzle for instructional support. He also has genrified the fiction section in his library to help students find books that they are interested in and updated the nonfiction section to fit current curriculum and Titlewave criteria. He also helps with the school communication systems like the website and social media. He hosts a lot of school organizations in his library space and has collaborated with Coastal Carolina University on cultural displays for the Waccamaw Indian People.

            We talked about how he collaborates with the teachers at the high school level. He has co-taught essay writing and how to research classes, helped support poetry projects, collaborated with the Spanish teachers to purchase books for their students, hosted monopoly for the Business class as well as a game design class. He also helps with the technical issues at the school for the students and the teachers.

            We then switched topics and talked about the challenges he faces with trying to implement this competency. He states that there are limited class visits and school policies that do not allow students all access to the library during the day. He had to encourage the faculty to see his role as an instructional partner as they were not used to that with their previous media specialist. He also has a high workload on non-instructional dues, especially technical issues including fixed assets, student chromebooks, and the school website that takes up a substantial portion of time each day. He also feels the teachers are overwhelmed in general with duties so sometimes it is difficult for them to add another thing to their plates such as a collaboration time with him in the media center. Overall, he states that he loves his freedom in his job, the variety of what he gets to work on each day, and that he gets to help students with their own passion projects and learning outside the classroom.

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ISCI 794 Interview with George Geer Regarding Collaborate

ISCI 794 Interview with Caroline Danysh Regarding Inquiry

            Caroline Danysh is the Media Specialist at Waccamaw Elementary School which is only 4k-third grades. She started her career as a first grade teacher and after 10 years of teaching stayed home to raise her children. Once her children got older, she decided to go back to work in the school library, getting her MLIS through USC while working her current job.

Having such young students in her school, I asked her which competency would be best to discuss. At first, we talked about EXPLORE but she did not feel that fits her exact goals. Her number one priority with this age group is teaching them to read and therefore, she states that her lessons all involve literacy. She stated that in the spring she does venture into more inquiry-based learning, so we decided to focus on INQUIRY.

            I asked her to describe some of the lessons that really exemplify the inquiry standard and she gave the following examples for her library. She collaborates with the third-grade teachers when they start their unit on biographies. She teaches information literacy and then supports the students as they research and write about their chosen famous person. She shows them both print and digital resources and teaches them different presentation tools they can use to share their work.

            She also does a graphic novel unit with second grade where they create their own comic strips using a website called Pixton. She then has a robotics lesson that she teaches to first-third grades, and it really emphasizes problem solving but having them learn to program a robot to do specific tasks while working with a partner. And finally at the end of the year, she shares makerspace stations with the students, and she states that they love it! She uses this opportunity to let them be creative and build and solve problems while working as a team.

            When asked about challenges she faces in her library program regarding these standards, she states time is the biggest hurdle. She is on a fixed schedule and is part of the specials rotation each day. She also has a lunch duty each day too. So, to find time to do all she wants to do with the students is her biggest challenge, but she states that she loves her job in every way!

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ISCI 794 Interview with Caroline Danysh Regarding Inquiry

ISCI 794 Interview with Stephania Burton regarding CURATE

    Stephania Burton is the current Media Specialist at Socastee Middle School and her path to her current role started in North Carolina where she was a teacher, a Media Specialist, and worked as the digital tech to the teachers at 42 sites for over 10 years. Once she moved to South Carolina, she was hired for her current job. Her technology experience is something she loves, and she has integrated it into her daily duties as a media specialist. When asked which standard she wanted to discuss, she selected Curate as she feels it can be more complex for her district.

I asked her how she is implementing Curate in her library. She discussed how she is fairly new at this school, so she is now started to weed the library after being able to assess it, purchase books to finish series that are missing books, and focus on getting the collection to be Lexile focused. She stated that Horry County has moved to the Lexile rating system and they want the library collection to reflect that for the 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades that are in the school.

We then discussed what resources she uses for Curate in her library. She stated that Titlewave is a big piece of what she uses to not only see the status of her collection, but to find reviews and keep wish lists of books she may purchase. She also uses her Professional Learning Network of other Media Specialists when she is finding out about books that her library lacks or a genre need. She also uses her School Library Journals for information about the latest releases or other commentary on current books that she finds relevant. One source that she does not use currently, but is on her list of goals, is social media. She knows that there is so much information out there regarding other libraries and their collections on social media and she needs to take advantage of that resource. Also, one of the ways the students can help her with curating her collection is completing the students’ input form on what they hope to find in the library. She keeps a student suggestion form in the Schoology system in the media center folder that they can complete at any time.

Finally, we discussed her collaboration with teachers and challenges she faces with curating her collection. She stated that each year she tries to understand what the teacher’s curriculum includes so that she can stay current on their needs regarding materials and lessons she could teach. She also likes to do fun activities with the classes such as book tastings or breakout games. For her to add any books to her collection, she must have them approved via a committee that consists of herself, administration, teachers, and parents. It is a lengthy process and requires a great deal of research and presentation skills to get it ready. Since this is more complicated, she only adds to her collection 2 or 3 times a year.

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ISCI 794 Interview with Stephania Burton regarding CURATE