Reflection

In LIBS 6991, I created an online portfolio that demonstrates the various tasks that I performed at Cedar Grove Elementary School (CGES) where I am employed as well as where I completed the majority of my internship hours. I also spent time at Southern Nash Middle School as part of my internship hours at another level school. My portfolio begins by describing the CGES environment and provides the mission statements for both the school and the media center as well as my personal philosophy statement. The portfolio includes documents that provide a glimpse of my experiences as teacher-librarian during my internship. My experiences at CGES include teaching classes daily and completing all the administrative responsibilities for the Media Center where I serve as the only staff member in the Media Center.
 * Final Reflection **

Each kindergarten through fifth grade class comes to the Media Center once a week for a 45 minutes class where I provide lessons ranging from the care of books to teaching them informational skills. Beginning with kindergarten, it is important to teach students how to use books and how to take care of them as well as exploring books for pleasure and information. In 1st grade, I begin to establish the foundation for the informational literacy skills that are so important to their ability to find and use information throughout their school years and lifetime. For each grade, I build on the information they have already been taught and continue to develop these important skills through the 5th grade where they are required to complete a final research project using their informational literacy skills including citing all resources appropriately.

Administrative duties in the Media Center include checking in and out hundreds of books weekly and checking them for necessary repairs before they are put back on the shelves. The Media Center opens in the morning from 8:00 to 9:00 for all students to visit and is also open any time during the day when a class is not being taught. The average number of books we check out on a weekly basis is 600 books which would mean that most of our students average checking out 3 or more books per week. The Accelerated Reader program is strongly used at CGES and the Media Center supports the students in helping them to find appropriate level books so they can earn the required number of points to meet their personal reading goal.

Another part of the administrative duties of the Media Center is the management of the collections. It is important to manage the resources that are available to the students and teachers. I collaborate with teachers on materials that they need to supplement their lesson plans. Teachers contact me about topics that they would like additional materials to use in the classroom and I research and pull these materials from the collections so they can use to supplement their lessons. If there are materials that they request but we do not have, I add these to an ongoing list of materials that need to be added to the collection when funding is made available and I am able to order these materials to have in the collection for future use. Also, part of the collections development includes the removal of outdated materials. This is an important piece of the collections development so that students and teachers are not having to search through old and outdated books to find the materials they want or need.

As the teacher-librarian at the school, it is my responsibility to be the point person for all technology issues in the school. When teachers have any type of technology issue, they contact the Media Center to let me know of the issue. I troubleshoot and correct what I can and if I cannot resolve the issue, I enter a work request for the technology technician to address when he visits our school once a week. It is critical that teachers get resolution to their problems as quickly as possible so their instructional time is not interrupted and I try to be as responsive as possible and resolve issues as they occur. This may require me to email the technician when he is not scheduled to be at the school to see what I might can do to resolve the issue instead of waiting several days until he is on campus.

There are some additional responsibilities that I fulfill as the teacher-librarian of the school that demonstrates leadership skills. For the school’s website, I share responsibility with another staff member as webmasters for maintaining the website, such as updating the website with important dates and events. I am also a member of the Curriculum Committee and secretary of the Leadership Team Committee. These duties require my attendance at each meeting, working with teachers and other staff members to address issues and make decisions important to the administration of the school. As secretary of the Leadership Team Committee, I also summarize the meeting into minutes, submit these to the principal for approval and maintain the minutes of each meeting for the committee.

This internship has afforded me an opportunity to reflect on the various skills necessary to be a teacher-librarian at a school media center. It has been through the many graduate courses taken for my masters degree that I have been able to obtain the skills needed to be proficient as a teacher-librarian. Without these skills, I would not be able to effectively serve the patrons of the school’s media center and support the school’s staff and administration. Each and every course that I have completed has given me practical knowledge necessary to carry out the various roles of the teacher-librarian and this internship has served as a final assessment of my training. By having the skills necessary to be an effective teacher-librarian, I am able to help students become life-long readers as well as help them to develop the informational literacy skills that they need to be successful students as well as adults that are life-long learners making knowledgeable decisions throughtout their lives.