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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