Reflection Paper for Internship Practicum

Lisa Scharf – Mentor High School Learning Center

MHS Advisor: Gary Stankey

For spring semester, I’ve been working at the Mentor High School Library Media Center. In the process, I’ve learned a great deal about how the library operates. After taking the School Media Center course last summer, I was excited to have an internship experience in a public high school setting. I finally felt ready to put what I’d learned so far into practice. Luckily, Gary Stankey at Mentor High School was accommodating, allowing me to accomplish my practicum hours, while still teaching. I am pleased at the progress I have made towards my initial goals. I did not achieve every goal that I had set, but now that I examine those goals, it’s obvious that I planned too many activities to accomplish within the hundred hours.

General Goals: Observe and perform everyday library operations and procedures.

Learn the roles of the library aides in the media center.

Examine the responsibilities of the media specialist within the school.

I felt these goals were the areas that I needed to focus on first. I informally interviewed both of the library’s paraprofessionals. They were able to give me a good description of what their job responsibilities were. Coletta Wiley, the upstairs library assistant, was even able to provide the job descriptions of the media specialist and of the library assistant. It was extremely helpful to see how the duties were divided. I learned the library’s policies, the checkout procedure, the cataloging practices, the system for managing audio-visual equipment, and the rules for classes that are using the library. Discussions with Gary Stankey, my advisor, and Joe Spiccia, the building principal, helped to teach me more about the role the media specialist plays in the faculty. Gary stressed that the school librarian has to be his/her own advocate to make sure the students have the best services possible. Joe shared his experiences in Hudson to give me an impression of how an active school media specialist is an important part of the learning environment of a school.

General Goal: Observe media specialists in at least one elementary & one junior high setting.

Provide instructional support and deliver instruction to students in the media center.

After working with Gary and discussing library issues with him, I was able to learn about the differences between the high school and junior high libraries. I knew the role of the elementary librarian was vastly different from that of the secondary, but it was important to experience that difference. Elementary librarians have an environment where they are the teachers for an entire class period; while in the upper grades, teachers bring their classes to use the library. There are no library classes to teach in the upper grades. At the high school level, there is less academic curiosity that inspires students to read for pleasure. Older students usually only use non-fiction resources when there is an assignment to complete.

Even without teaching a formal class, I like high school better, because I can provide one-on-one instruction on search techniques, information literacy, the MLA paper format, and on the use of Power Point or Microsoft Word. This gives me the chance to help high school students to become more media literate, while at the same time making a personal connection to a hard-to-reach group. I learned that high school students really value the help of a school librarian and are grateful for the attention.

General Goal: Examine the school website and update it for this school year.

Given the lack of other services available to students this year, updating the website became a low priority. It currently serves what the students need. Could it be more user-friendly and attractive? Sure, but it works without any observable problems, and students have become accustomed to it.

General Goal: Attend department meetings.

While I did not have the chance to attend a district-wide media specialist department meeting, I did have the chance to observe the role of the librarian within a departmental coordinators meeting. I learned that working with the heads of the academic departments ensures that the media specialist is aware of academic, disciplinary, or curricular issues. Attending these meetings also establishes the role of the school librarian as an educational partner to the faculty, rather than someone who just supports the staff and students from the sidelines.

General Goal: Learn to use the distance learning lab equipment and assist a teacher in implementing a distance learning experience in the classroom.

This was an overly ambitious goal. I was able to learn to use the distance learning equipment, but there was not enough time to plan and carry out a distance-learning lesson. Maybe there will be a workshop in the near future, where I can discover more about implementing the use of this technology for classroom instruction or enrichment. I learned that there are a lot of free or affordable ready-made distance learning opportunities that are offered by local and national organizations and museums. These would be the best places to start from to try to connect Mentor High School staff and their classes with new opportunities.

Partnerships with Classroom Teachers: Assist in team-teaching a lesson with a classroom teacher.

This part of the internship came very naturally to me. Since I’ve team-taught one of my history classes with an English teacher for over five years, it was easy for me to jump in and help students who are working on research papers. I would have liked to try partnering with a math or science teacher, but none of them signed up to use the library when I was there.

I think the one new skill I need to work on is to spend more time showing students how to find resources, rather than handing the needed items to them. My job should be to help build their skills. While it may seem like the classroom teachers want as much help for as many kids as quickly as possible, it would be better to take more time with each student to teach them a few things that will help them to be more self-sufficient and media literate in the future.

General Goal: Create and present in-service opportunities for MHS staff.

I’ve learned that handing teachers information sheets that they can copy immediately for classroom use helps to make teachers feel more satisfied with an in-service. I learned that staff behavior at an in-service has nothing to do with how well or poorly I’m presenting. The same staff members are rude or sleeping during other meetings or in training sessions. This was an important lesson to learn, because my confidence was weakened after the first session I taught. The area I need to continue to learn more about is how to deal with difficult or hesitant staff members. Hopefully, there will be sessions on this topic at a library association conference that I can attend in the future.

Preparing materials for use by teachers and students for class projects, i.e. setting aside books from the collection for teachers’ projects or finding appropriate online materials.

Most of the teachers that I worked with in the library were technophobes. The best materials I could prepare to help the English classes were the bookmarks on electronic sources and MLA citations. Three of the English teachers that I’ve worked with have thanked me for the information, since the students want to use electronic resources and the teachers are unsure of how to teach them about online material. Again I learned that being visible, approachable, and available when classes use the library keeps the teachers more at ease and makes it easier for them to want to learn alongside of their students. A school media specialist’s job is to not only assist and teach students, it’s also to teach staff members. A lot of my colleagues made significant progress towards becoming more computer-savvy during this semester.

Equipment Management Issues: Examine current policies for the checking-out of AV equipment. Work with current MHS library staff to revise these procedures. Learn how equipment is assessed for repair and trouble-shooting and what impact these issues may have on budget spending for AV materials.

I learned how current policies work in this area of the library. With the loss of the AV paraprofessional, the policies had to be revised at the start of the school year, so it was too late for me to have any impact in revising the procedures. I did learn a few ways to maintain equipment and trouble-shoot. There were budget issues concerning the AV department that were unresolved due to the debate over whether or not to eliminate the whole AV branch of the media center. These unsettled issues showed me that there are a lot of people involved in the spending decisions for new technology. It also reminded me that change moves slowly in school systems.

Major Project – Collection Development: Examine the selection and de-selection policies and procedures for the district.

I learned that there really aren’t any policies in these areas. The only one that anyone could ever find for me was incomplete and from the 1980’s. This forced me to look for a lot of resources that would teach me more about collection development. I learned a great deal about the benefits of and philosophies behind weeding. On my Science Collection Weeding Project page, I listed some of the valuable sources that taught me about collection policies. This helped educate me on how to choose materials to cut and what to look for in new books to best meet the needs of students.

I learned that for consistency in the district, there needs to be an up-to-date board approved library policy notebook. I was uncomfortable with making decisions without a solid goal. I modeled my choices after the policies developed by other schools and always let the curricular connections be most important consideration in my decisions. In the future, when hope I will begin my job as a media specialist, I will make sure to examine policies at the start, and my priority will be to revise, create, or update those necessary policies.

Learn how the library collection is inventoried. Weed the science collection, after determining the average age of materials.

LNOCA, our DASite, is a wonderful resource for learning how to generate reports on details like circulation, inventory, age of the collection, etc. I know that once the conversion to Sirsi takes place, I will need to attend any training sessions offered by LNOCA to keep current. Since we’re not on Sirsi, I had to look at each book individually to find out the age of the material. This was a very time-consuming process, and I hope that technology will allow for improvements in cataloging functions in the near-future. During the process, I also learned that a comprehensive inventory hasn’t been completed in our building for at least three years. This may help to explain the relatively old books in the collection.

Observe then take part in the processes of ordering materials and managing the budget.

I learned how to use Follett Tidal Wave, which makes the ordering of materials very easy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t included in the decision on how this year’s budget would be divided up. I will need to learn how to reach a balance in what to spend on books, versus computers or computer resources, versus purchasing magazines, etc. I plan to join some groups like OELMA, which hopefully will allow me to gain the advice of colleagues on message boards. The library’s philosophies and goals, along with the school board policies and priorities, should determine the process for allocating the media center’s budget. Yet without a policy handbook, media specialists at Mentor High School have essentially been setting their own priorities for spending, without working towards a common goal.

Include MHS teaching staff in weeding the science collection. Partner with teachers in the selection of new materials for the collection, especially partnering with science and health teachers to improve those areas of the collection.

The lesson that I learned here wasn’t much different than what I observed when teaching the staff in-service classes. There will always be uncooperative, outright rude or uninterested staff members who will not want to be a part of a partnership or a change process. I feel I did a good job of including members of the science department who expressed an interest in my collection development project.

To involve more teachers, I will need to have more training on how to partner with difficult faculty members for library and curricular issues. I’ve been learning a few ways to draw in the interests of the more hesitant staff members, but I still feel that I don’t know enough in this area

Write at least one grant for Collection Development.

This is one area, unfortunately, that I was unable to explore. I had signed up for the PBS workshop on grant writing. Unfortunately, it was cancelled and not rescheduled. I had included this objective in my internship goals because I knew I would receive training at that workshop.

Grant-writing is the one of the first priorities that I will need to examine if I obtain a position as a school media specialist. I have a lot to learn about the process of obtaining outside funds. Hopefully, PBS will offer the workshop again next fall. I’d still be interested; after all, every media specialist will say that there’s never enough money in the budget for big plans.

Conclusion

I feel that this internship was a very valuable experience. Kent classes do a wonderful job of explaining media center and technology issues, but I’ve learned far more through seeing those concepts in a real library. Given the severe cut-backs and overwhelming workloads, I’m very grateful to my cooperating supervisor, Gary Stankey. I also owe a lot to our two over-worked library assistants, who still found time to teach me about their jobs.

I’m very glad I was able to spend my experience in a high school setting; this is the position that I would like to be hired for in the future. My practicum experience has helped to shape my philosophies and positions on library and curricular issues. I feel like I finally understand the job well-enough to form an opinion of what I would like my role to be as a school librarian. I look forward to the challenges and rewards of the job, and through my internship experience, I was able to experience the career that’s hopefully in my near-future.