Reflection

The internship is over. How do I feel? Fantastic. Even though I have been working in Southern Nash Middle School’s media center for three years, this internship allowed me to really look at what I do everyday. I like and dislike some of the things I found. I feel this way because the second part of the internship was completed at Cedar Grove Elementary School in my school system. Going to the elementary school level allowed me to see some of the differences in responsibilities and expectations. I will start with my visit to Cedar Grove Elementary. The media specialist, Cindy Wood, is a friend and fellow library science student. We met when we first started the program in one of the first classes. We realized we have so much in common working in a media position and for the same county we decided to team up and tackle Library Science together. I am glad we did. I have learned so much from her just not in our classes but in her media center. Elementary is very different than middle school. I knew this but the specifics are what I like most. The scheduled time to see each class in the school gave each student access to the Media Specialist. Each grade was taught lessons that correlated with the standards. When the students were in the media center, they knew the expectations. Ms. Wood shared with me that she has had some trial and error experiences to come up with the current program she runs. The media center has an open and welcoming feeling. The school is small in size and student body. The media center is in two parts. She organized the front room to organize all the books into levels so her readers can pin point specifically where they need to choose books. Each student has a color specific Accelerated Reader folder made by Ms. Wood. This folder has the student’s barcode on the front along with their name. Inside in the front pocket, the AR log sheet is attached. It records the date, book title, book level, score earned, and signature columns. Each book tested is placed inside. Once the student’s have read and earned 100s consistently, the student is moved up to the next level. This folder is brought with the student to check out new books. The student knows what level they are to check out. The bookcases are labeled with color dots and numbers so the students can easily identify them. The books in the levels are not organized by alphabetically or by Dewey Decimal number. It is just easier and allows less time for students to find the level and come to the circulation desk to check out. I found this questionable at first. I thought organizing and limiting children to what books they can check out was not fair. I see now through spending time with her that these students have classroom expectations to read and complete reading levels in AR. The best way the media center could help was to organize the shelves in this fashion. In our middle school media center, our shelves are organized by Dewey Decimal and Author’s last name. I wondered how these elementary students could find things on their own in other libraries. I still wonder this because the larger room at Cedar Grove’s media center has chapter books that are organized by level too. The older kids will need to have some practice finding books in the traditional format. I have read that some libraries across the country are going to organizing their books in topics. This would be difficult too. I am not sure what the answer is but each school has a need and the library must address and try to meet it. While spending time with Ms. Wood, I was able to participate in her lessons with two grade levels. I read three North Carolina Children’s Book award nominee books to one of her 1st grade and 3rd grade classes. I volunteered to read to these classes because I wanted to really be a part of the experience. I enjoyed reading the story books and interacting with the students as I did so. It is a big difference from what I do in my media center. I have to say it was refreshing. Now, what do I do in my media center? Southern Nash Middle serves over 1000 students. We work on a flex schedule for checkout. There are two full time media specialists and a part time assistant that works our media center. We do a lot of problem solving dealing with technology, telephones, and online programs. We teach classes on request. I do work with students while they are in the media center sent from their core teachers to open documents in different formats, find online research, help locate materials in our library, and listen to concerns students have about books they are or not allowed to checkout. I love helping students discover and want to read new authors or books. But often it does not help the students because of the teachers have reading requirements and sometimes the student’s interest does not fit in that box. I try to help the student meet the requirement but it does seem like a bit of censorship when students feel so compelled to only read teacher directed levels. I wish the program was more open and flexible to allow students to read more what they are interested in than what the curriculum is that grading period. I am responsible for teaching the yearbook class made up of eighth graders everyday. It was required that if I took the job that the yearbook class went with it. I have to say at first I was a bit upset. I had no idea how to or did I have the desire to do yearbooks. Now, in my third year, I have gotten the hang of it. I have help with the financial part (since I do not like numbers). I have a fear of coming up short on the final bill, but I have had help with it. The class is fun to teach and I can implement small scale technology projects. This helps me gain experience with new websites and project ideas I can suggest and help teachers implement in their classes. I am surprised with the amount of creativity some of these students have. The online program is wonderful to work with. I know yearbook creation has changed so much over the last ten years. I hope in the coming year I can get more involved with the teachers meeting in PLCs to urge more collaboration on a regular basis. I do help teachers by pulling and finding resources for them to use. Example would be finding materials for the 6th grade science teachers to promote the soil and water essay contest in their rooms. Our school has always done well with this competition. We have students who win in the top three each year. I know I helped by finding quality information for the teachers to use. I do not have a fixed schedule everyday like an elementary media specialist would. That is the only thing that makes me even consider leaving. I like the idea of knowing how I am making a difference every day. I like knowing the lessons I prepare are working toward building life long literacy skills they can use in and out of school. But there is a down side to it as well. Having a rigid daily schedule does not allow much flexibility. An example would be the ability to be able to collaborate more with teachers in daily lessons outside the library. School administration can also determine job requirements. I know at Cedar Grove the principal delegated certain responsibilities to Ms. Wood that technically do not fit into her job description. Tutoring students most of the day two days a week limits the library’s effectiveness. It closes the media center down to open checkout on a few days a week. I know that in the middle school our principal has decided when we would be open and closed on certain days of the year but she has never put more responsibilities on the two of us that made the library or us unavailable to teachers or students more than necessary. Testing is really the only time we are limited in availability. So, my internship experience was great. I was able to learn how elementary media specialists run their library. I was able to look at how we run one at the middle school in comparison. From this experience, I have really looked at what I want in my career. What age do I want to spend my future time with? I am happy where I am, but I just want to make my impact bigger and better for my school. I saw more of that type of impact at the elementary level. I don’t necessarily want to drop down to elementary to make that kind of impact though. The internship was a valuable experience.
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