I was able to reach out to another middle school librarian in my district to interview about the Engage competency and how she uses her library and programming to meet this competency. Jen Mandrell is the librarian at Dubose Middle School, and she was nice enough to speak with me during Thanksgiving break.
Dr. Mandrell said that when it comes to the Engage competency, she tries to meet this with students in a few different ways. One way is through lessons on evaluating digital resources including websites and database entries. She works with classroom teachers during their research assignments to deliver lessons to students on these important skills. Dr. Mandrell also works with her teachers to help them carefully decide on what tools students are using to create products based on their research. There has been a shift away from just PowerPoint presentations or reports to student-created products which are more real-world in nature.
When Dr. Mandrell is working with her students and teachers on research and creating their products, she uses SC DISCUS as her main source of information. She tries to steer teachers and students to DISCUS because of its reliability and the accuracy of the information housed within its databases. She appreciates the ability to find primary sources including audio and visual sources which students can easily access. She also uses sources found via DISCUS to show students the difference between high and low quality sources. Dr. Mandrell will also use eBooks which are part of her library collection to help students as well.
She often collaborates with teachers by helping them curate appropriate sources, creating library lessons for them, and most often co-teaching whenever a research unit is taking place. Dr. Mandrell says spending time with classes so that students hear about best practices from both her and the classroom teacher has been very effective. There are challenges within this competency as breaking students of the habit of "Googling" everything can prove difficult. Students also can become frustrated when searching for very specific information, and it can be hard to convince them to not give up on finding reliable information.
Dr. Mandrell urged me and other school librarians to make sure there is buy-in from teachers before trying to enforce guidelines when it comes to research best practices. She has conversations at the beginning of any research collaboration with her teachers about follow-through when it comes to expectations from students.