Library Adventures: School Library

4/26/11
On Thursday (4/20/11)of last week I managed two interviews/visits. I made it to Greco Middle School Library and to the Science Library at MOSI. This post addresses the Middle School Library visit.

I spoke with the congenial librarian, Mrs. Griner. Mrs. Griner received her MLIS from FSU and has been a school librarian for 4 years. She had to do two years o formal classroom teaching as well as a requirement by the district before she was allowed to take the school librarianship position becuase the FSU program has no practicum meaning she had no school experience.

Greco Middle School uses the Springboard curriculum for language arts and math mandated by the county school district. Mrs. Griner tracks checkouts of each title and class visits. This is one of the means to proof what they do under the new evaluation systems and the Gates grant.

Mrs. Griner has been trying to keep the school library strictly academic; it used to be like a playground because teachers sent them when they were tired of certain student's in class behaviors. Now if a student comes in they must have a pass and cannot be wandering around aimlessly. Once they are done with their "purpose" at the library, then she sends them back to class. The school library and Mrs. Griner have been active in the Battle of the Books. The mission of the library has been to keep an academic focus. She provides about two weeks of orientation at the beginning of the school year especially to the sixth grader and how to use online catalog (Cybercat. She will not do their homework for them. Another library activity that she is very active in is a reader program for middle/high school “Reading Counts”, in which she gives trophies to top readers. This year's theme for this year: read like a rock star (pictures on website/posters).The goal is to keep the kids interested and bring them in Poetry contest, Did march madness with classes competed (had 26 teams)- reading counts quizzes (different than AR because it is pass fail) got five rounds from Language arts/reading classes
and clientele of the library or information center? 6th grade checks out more than both 7th and 8th, more internet use and monitors use; Not only STEM academy or more advanced readers are using but more Lower SES Title I. Not advanced only, but some of the advanced kids do not

The collections at the middle school was comprised of books that Lexile did not match what was needed for advanced reader such as those in the magnet program for STEM. She had to applied for and received three grants to get books at 900 lexile counts to accommodate the higher level readers. I asked why the shelves had so mcuh room on them and she told me that she the books are weeded constantly; she checks how often checked out, and copyright for currency. The most recent ones weeded medical and other reference from 1980-90s that were out of date, and the next focus is on non-fiction weeding. Fiction is most checked out type of materials and the director for school libraries at the count county district has gotten many full-text online versions of ebooks. Science needs up to date books becuase of the STEM program at the school and they hope to have more expansion of ebooks collections. Budget of state and county money, internal fund from book fair, started about 5k now about 4k. newsletter faculty , workshops like on plagiarism.
Scheduled circulation for 15 minutes at a time for a whole class every two weeks, get to take reading counts (6th grade are religious, 7th grade awful, 8th is hit and miss) some buy-in, guarantees books get back and get to take tests for reading counts Kids demand library day, other teachers can schedule time and leave a few days to make accommodations.

The most common of your questions as a librarian at this location are directional according to the dewey decimal system and most common fiction. In this community the kids are really into the Blueford series. She has had kids return books they found offensive becuase of language or plot. The other is how to find the book (by author’s last name) and whether they can I print. Printing is allowed for academic purposes.

Unfortunately, she does have to monitor the computer use of the students with a software that allows her to watch screen views of their activity (Italc.com). She is also able to view the research process that the students use, which is scary becuase it revealed that the students were "googling" the question and coming up with non-reputable sources, things like answers.com. Her reaction to this was she sent message to faculty about the way these students are researching. She has been offering advice and guidance about what is good source, how to do citations, and the differences between paraphrasing and plagiarism.

There is a public service staff of fourteen for the school library. Mrs. Griner considers her students as staff, calling them media assistants. This is the hardest on campus assistantship. The media assistant are really running the show: it allows her time to continue planning and programming. Recently there was a cut to the secretary position. Really there was not a problem in this because there was not enough work for her and the students. Mrs. Griner some parental involvement but only found it to be very useful at book fairs.

For a public school library in SDHC the level of public access electronic resources is fair: Worldbook, Britannica, and a virtual library at: http://lms.mysdhc.org/6-12media/virlib. This is also accessible from Mrs. Griner’s webpage. The Cybercat catalog is similar to public library catalog and available online; a new catalog coming in the fall.

The Greco Middle School Library has no social media presence on facebook/twitter because of district mandates and because of the levels of approval it would take to even be allowed to communicate that way. However, Mrs. Griner does upkeep a wonderful website laid out with information and links relevant to the Greco Middle School community.

I visited the school library on the day prior to spring break, which meant the were few students coming in, especially since the STEM program students were also on a field trip away from the school that day. I saw the assistant check out two or three kids, and direct them to the right section of the shelves for their request. The interaction was not overly intensive. It seems more energy of the librarian is put into the programming and collection than anything else.