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.