September 25th-29th (12 hours)

Monday (6 hours)

Today was my first day at off-site elementary school Simonton in Lawrenceville, GA. It's an amazing school where the administration has put a major focus on making the library the places that students want to go. Today was a relatively slow day. I mainly tighten up the books on the shelves while the clerk worked on checking out books and checking in returned books. The media specialist has focused on making sure that he helps build a staff community. One way that he has started this is by having potlucks once a month which I got to witness and indulge in today. One other thing that I admired was the fact that the principal fews the media center a vital part of the school to the point that they are included in the week staff leadership meetings on Mondays that I also goto witness.

Tuesday (6 hours)

Today was a slow day at the media center. What I did observe was the amazing way in which the Media Specialist, Media and the Instructional Technology Coordinator worked effortlessly together.  The that the was dealt with today was the fact the AmazonAlexa (which is used so that the students can ask questions). The two work together with the county to get the device back running on the county internet servers. Outside of a few checkouts the media center was relatively quiet.

September 18-22 (8 hours)

Parent-Teacher Conferences = Laminating

Monday (4 Hours)

The more I spend time with the media specialist the more I realize how hampered she is by not having a clerk. Instead of continuing to work on helping teachers find resources with instruction. Parents-Teacher Conferences are next week and every teacher in the school has been sending student samples to put outside their walls for next week.




Wednesday (4 Hours)

Administrators have now got in on the mix in regards to lamination. Along with the student samples, administration, and school groups are requesting posters to be laminated in lew of the upcoming parent-teacher conferences as this tend to be on of the few times that our school gets parents to the school outside of the open house. Typically we do not walk lamination to the teachers classrooms. However, because of the amount that we had, we made exceptions.

September 11-15 (6 hours)

After being stifled by pre-testing, meetings, and training the first few weeks of the school year I had finally gotten days off to complete hours at my off-campus sites. Then Irma happened closing school for the first three days of the week. I was, however, able to spend some hours working with my own media specialist.

Friday, September 15th (6 hours) 

Book Checkout and reshelving:

Because of the days missed being out for Irma, the library saw an extreme amount of traffic during the first half of the day. We typically experience one or two classes an hour coming into the library to check out books. However, on Friday we had a new class come in every 15 minutes causing for there to be upwards of three classes (90+ students) in the library at a time. While having students actively reading is great, our media specialist does not have a clerk. So when things like this happen it makes it extremely difficult for them to do anything else. Anytime time that I had in between was used for reshelving and organizing the books that were checked in, as well as the ones that were picked up then left the library. 

Weeding the books used for 8th Grade Georgia Studies

As discussed in readings during our program, one of the jobs of the media specialist is to ensure that their our books that are aligned to the standards of the different contents across the grade levels. As an 8th-grade social studies teacher for the past four years, I focused on Georgia Studies. As I was looking through the materials, it was obvious that for most of the books, they were bought strictly because they were "books about Georgia". Many of the books were merely random facts such as; state birds, state motto, and the largest cities in the state. As part of the weeding process, I had to explain why the book was not worthy of being left on the shelf, and next week will give suggestions for books that can be purchased in its place. While most books we had are going to be weeded it out, I did find a few gems. Two books by the name of "Vanishing Georgia" and "Vanishing Gwinnett" which are giant books of pictures from around the state dating back to the mid-1800's, while another called "It happened in Atlanta" which is a collection of different stories and events in the state's history that happened in the Atlanta area. Many of the stories in the book were subjects that are actually taught during the school year. I found this to be a fun and exciting task. I was, however, alarmed when my librarian informed me that she typically does not have the time to weed books and find standard aligned books because of the lack of a clerk.