Librarian Interview: Dubose Middle School

 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. 

Librarian Interview: Fort Dorchester High School

One of the librarians at Fort Dorchester High School is a former science teacher from my middle school. I was able to sit down with her over Thanksgiving break to speak with her about the Curate competency. Anna Musselman first started by explaining a bit more about her high school community. Fort Dorchester is the most diverse high school in our district. Ms. Musselman said they have a very large Spanish-speaking population, as well as sizeable Vietnamese and Filipino student populations, as well as some Arabic-speaking students. Ms. Musselman wanted to focus on curating her collection and adding books for her students who speak languages other English as their first language.

Ms. Musselman began by reaching out to her ESOL teacher in order to find out what the needs were in terms of languages and reading levels. She asked the ESOL teacher if she would be willing to bring her classes to the library so she could meet with the students about their wants and needs for the library. Students mentioned some books in popular series they would like to have in Spanish. Ms. Musselman has so far expanded her selection of fiction in Spanish from 68 books to 95 this school year. She has also added to her nonfiction section - i.e. a student requested a brief history of the United States in Vietnamese, and she was able to find one to add to her collection.

She has also worked to model curation and the search process to students, involving them in the process of looking at books in Titlewave and searching for reviews. Ms. Musselman and her students use Titlewave and Mackin to find the majority of titles to add to the collection. She has also used some translation software to help make sure she is ordering the right texts and to make sure she understands exactly what a student is asking to be added to the collection.

While she feels she has found some success so far, Ms. Musselman has also run into a few challenges. She said many of the popular series students want to read take a while to release their translations. She is also worried some community members or even teachers may not understand why time and money is necessary in this area in order to curate a collection which serves all students and school community members. Finding appropriate nonfiction is also trickier since Ms. Musselman does not speak a language other than English, but she has had help from students and the ESOL teacher.

Ms. Musselman feels her curation so far has been challenging but a huge learning experience. She hopes people remember librarians are buying and curating for their entire student population, not just one group or one specific student. She is working to curate a collection for the entire population.

Librarian Interview: Ashley Ridge High School

 I was able to spend a day with the librarians at Ashley Ridge High School at the beginning of November. The librarians, Jen Traeger and Lauren Spivey, work together to create a high school library program     which supports all of their students and teachers. I interviewed them about the Collaboration competency because I felt they were the perfect team to speak to this competency.

The level of collaboration visible in their library made the interview exciting and interesting. Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey have been working together for several years, and one of the ways they have collaborated with each other and their teachers that they are most proud of is their breakouts built for different content areas. They gained ideas about breakout boxes from attending a session at a SCASL conference one year and have not looked back. Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey have worked with history teachers, English teachers, and a culinary arts teacher to create breakout boxes on a variety of topics.

Ms. Traeger has also collaborated with one of the special education teachers at ARHS to do story time every few weeks for her students. Ms. Traeger works with the teacher to select picture books which connect to the content the special education teacher has been covering in class. I was able to visit on a day when story time was taking place, and it was a positive and successful experience!

Both Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey have also worked with the teacher cadet program at ARHS to provide materials and books, and Ms. Spivey helps collaborate with students to run a student-led book club during their lunch break. They have also begun collaborating with students and teachers to create student written book reviews to share with the school community.

While they work well together, Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey feel it can be challenging getting teachers to embrace using the library as another space to challenge students. Teachers often feel overwhelmed and like they lack the time to deviate from their long range plans. They are continually trying to get more teachers to collaborate with them other than the ones who already do.

They both feel collaboration is fun and worth the effort it takes to make it successful. They are glad they've been able to build positive relationships with some of their teachers in order to make these collaborations possible.

Librarian Interview: Beech Hill Elementary School

 This is the first in a series of four posts about interviews I've done with some local school librarians. Each of the librarians spoke with me about one of the six AASL competencies from the national school library standards. I am so lucky to have been able to interview these five librarians. 

My first post is highlighting the work of Jeni Nix at Beech Hill Elementary School in Summerville, SC. Ms. Nix taught 4th grade before becoming a librarian and has served as an officer for SCASL. Ms. Nix was South Carolina's School Librarian of the Year in 2020 and served as my cooperating librarian for my internship this fall. She is a wealth of experience and knowledge!

After spending time with Ms. Nix in her library over the course of 5 school days, I chose to interview her on the Include competency from the AASL standards.

When she spoke on the competency in broad terms, it was clear Ms. Nix still approaches her library planning with the mindset of a teacher. She works to include all students by using a variety of modalities within all of her library lessons. She is extremely cognizant of the differences between a 1st grader and a 4th grader, while also remembering that they are both still children. She uses movement, group discussion, music, and a variety of text genres to support student literacy. 

Ms. Nix also works to include all staff members in library planning and programming. She has strong relationships with teachers across the building. As a member of the leadership team, she is inclusive in her support of school initiatives and thinking about how the library can support these with its unique position. She also works with her teachers to be inclusive of their curriculum and to find new ways to better support the skills and standards they are teaching in their classrooms. All of this is evident when spending time in Ms. Nix's library.

Another way Ms. Nix focuses on the Include competency is by using Titlewise Analyses to analyze the library's collection in terms of diversity. She does a diversity audit at the beginning of each school year to compare the needs of her student population with the materials in her library's collection. She works to be inclusive of all languages, social needs, developmental needs, and cultural needs of her students. This is also where she sees the most challenges in meeting this competency. Ms. Nix noted that with so many challenges to materials and the uptick in talks of book banning, it is challenging as an elementary librarian to meet the needs of her students while also vetting age appropriate resources.