C. Siebert Interview #4

 Mrs. Siebert is a former 4th grade teacher. During my second year at the school we were teaching at, she was intentional about helping me have a successful school year in my classroom. Due to the fact that I know her so well, it doesn't surprise me that she went into the library with the same mentality, to help others. I visited Ms. Siebert at her elementary school and talked with her about her schedule, it's importance, and collaborating with others. Unlike the other interviews, Mrs. Siebert and I didn't sit to have this interview about collaboration. Instead we were preparing her library, so that it would be ready for the class that was coming soon.  

Ms. Sibert's schedule is quite different from any other librarian I know. Her schedule is flexible in the morning, but fixed in the afternoon. Her mornings are spent in grade level plannings learning about what they are teaching and any upcoming learning that will be taking place. In these meetings she, as she's listening, she will come up with something she can do in the library to assist the grade, or she sends them an email of an idea later that day, if she took a while to come up with a way to assist them.

Right now, her biggest challenge is teachers willingness to take time from their lessons to come to the library. She has cultivated a library that students feel safe, enjoy coming to, and can work together, but she would like the upper grades to come more often, so they can reap the same benefits as the younger students.  Another challenge she faces is at the beginning of the year trying to get students to work together, accept feedback, and further thinking by participating. She stated that collaborating is challenging at the beginning of the year because students aren't comfortable with her or each other. 

I was able to witness her implement some of the competencies in the lessons I was able to watch. The students were learning about animal and their habitats, so she read a book that to activate their knowledge. The book was funny, informative, but didn't go into a lot of details to keep the kids engaged. Students were yelling out everything they knew about some of animals, but learning about the new ones. They then worked in groups to compare the animals, what they eat, and their habitats. 

Dr. L. Russell Interview # 2

 Dr. Russell and I discussed inquiry and its competencies. Dr. Russell is the librarian for Academic Magnet high school. Academic Magnet is one of the top school in the nation. It is imperative that she has the ability to help students ask questions and continue researching. My first question was what her thoughts were on competencies of the inquire standards and how does she incorporate them. Here is the dialogue from our conversation. 

I incorporate AASL’s inquire standards regularly throughout the school year to support the AP research standards for the different grade levels and to support of our school’s AP Capstone program. The Capstone project is a two-year course of study that begins in students’ junior year and ends with AP Research in their senior year. Every year I've been at this school, I’ve taught and co-taught lessons with our 9th grade teachers in Honors English and AP Human Geography to introduce students to the Inquiry Framework and present them with an overview of the databases.  I teach them how to use search strategies like Boolean operators for advanced searches, and the basics for the databases.

Multiple examples provided by Dr. L. Russell:

• In 9th grade English classes, the classroom teacher, and I planned a lesson that introduced students to the databases that would be most useful in helping students explore the colonial underpinnings of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. 
• With 9th grade AP Human Geography classes, I assisted students in discerning which databases they could use to conduct research on a topic of interest related to Ancient Rome and how they can find and access primary documents from the Library of Congress. 
• Assisted the students in understanding how to utilize the databases most effectively and efficiently using advanced keyword searches. 
• Introduced students to graphic organizers they can and should use to track their work throughout the inquiry process. 
• Helping them ask worthy questions for inquiry is an embedded process skill throughout all those lessons as students use their questions
• Work with 12th grade students one on one in support of their AP research thesis topics and assist them in using the databases to find relevant, credible sources. 
• In the week before spring break, I assisted three students in finding research related to their topics. 

She tries to really hone in on teaching them how to ask research questions to gather more information in the AP seminar classes and presents them with a more in-depth exploration of the databases, specifically JSTOR, Ebsco’s Academic Search Premier, and Gale’s Academic Onefile - to answer research questions they’ve created, which are of interest to them. AP Seminar is the class in which they formally learn AP’s inquiry model and the variety of lenses one can use to explore a topic or questions of interest. Though she teaches the classes about databases, she has learned this is always a focus because students tend to struggle with know which database to use. 

Final Thoughts

The inquiry foundations can be challenging and requires preplanning, but all in all, I think it really pays off specifically because the bulk of our students receive 3s,  4s, and 5s on their AP research exams and their theses and oral defenses are quite strong.;

Ms. Ferrin

Mrs. Ferrin has been a librarian for over 20 years. She started her career in Virginia and somehow ended here in South Carolina the last 15 years. I asked Mrs. Ferrin about her thoughts on inclusion because she has had the opportunity of working with a large number of diverse students but still ensures she is being inclusive. She has worked with kids in grades Kindergarten- 5 and students with differing abilities, this includes students in our low incidence classes. I regret that this meeting wasn’t longer as I know she has a lot of wisdom she can share with me. This short interview alone helped me see more possibilities than I thought prior to our meeting.

Poster available that states y'all = all

To kick off this interview, the first question I asked Mrs. Ferrin was what her thoughts were on inclusion in the library?  

She believes that inclusion is one of the most important parts of the framework because if students are not at ease they cannot learn, and if the library is the heart of the school, it needs to be a place for all students. She differs from AASL in what should be included in the idea of inclusion. She would like the idea of inclusion to include materials within the library space not just the library collection, instruction, and space but also with the materials that are in that library's overall space. Ensuring that the library space is inclusive regarding accessible materials means that the library needs tables that can easily be wheeled, stored, moved or connected to allow for individual work, group work, or centers. It means that students with visible disabilities can have a place in the library. A great example of this was having students that are autistic and not wanting to be with their classmates having materials available for them.  For Peggy inclusion meant showing the student comic books and  providing them with materials to create and make their own comic book.

Making sure all students have a place and feels safe and seen means thinking about their needs. This also means ensuring that the shelves are appropriate for students, their ages, and their sizes. This could potentially mean labeling shelves for younger students with photos so that they know what it is that they are looking for or seeing or having manipulatives for students who are not able or want to participate with the group. 

Inclusion also means that students that do not speak the language need to have something in that library that they can relate to. Mrs. Ferrin had a student that didn't want to participated. After speaking with the homeroom teacher, she learned that the student spoke and read Arabic. Unfortunately she did not have a book with characters that look like that student or spoke that student language. After collaborating with the teacher, she got that student a book that showed him how to draw and he spent time during that Library session creating pencil sketches.  The next time he came to the library he used his Google translate on his iPad and asked for those books again. 

Mrs. Ferrin also believes that being aware of the need for inclusion will allow for inclusion to happen throughout all library learning activities and therefore a librarian will offer a range of activities and choices that students can learn every week.  Her model stems from Christy James poster (shown above) that says “In this library Y'all equals All.   

Interview 1: Ms. J. Gomez

Ms. Gomez and I talked about the core Shared foundation Engage.

After having seen Ms. Gomez engage with students and teachers

in multiple capacities. I wanted to learn how she implements the

engage core standards within her library. We discussed the competencies

without stating the exact competency as we felt it was more important to

think of how they all integrated within Engage foundation.

AASL's symbol for the engage

competency

1. What are some examples of the ways in which you are implementing the competency in the Engage foundation in your library program? 

SOA's is intentional about ensuring all of their students are engaged or at least have access to resources by sharing the resources on their website. Ms. Gomez has also gone as far as creating a website for a specific project a teacher was doing on documentaries. To do this she used music to engage the students but also modeled ethical use of sources. Ms. Gomez enjoys creating book talk video segments, but she includes a works cited screen at the end to help all students. Here's an example of a booktalk

2. What are some of the resources in your library program that you are using to implement these competencies? 

Though the website is their main resource, but they have computers that are ready and kiosk to Destiny. This is good because it helps students get to MackinVia so it's much easier to teach them about the databases because they have access to it. While she's taught a lot of students about the databases, she plans on teaching more students through collaboration with teachers

3. Do any of the competencies that you are implementing include collaboration with classroom teachers? If so, please provide examples. 

As mentioned in before, you will see Ms. Gomez trying to collaborate with as many teachers that are available. Since she's moved to the new school, collaboration hasn't happened as much as she'd like, but she is working up to more collaboration every year. However, through collaboration she has delivered lessons to 6th grade science students, 8th grade ELA students, and high school students in their English course, at the requests of their teachers. She also did a singular lesson on evaluating sources and identifying bias in the past when a teacher was seeing a lot of students improperly using sources for a science assignment.

4. What are some of the challenges that you face when trying to implement the competency? 

Two challenges she has faced when trying to implement the competencies within engage are the teachers’ not viewing the ethical use of information as a priority at a young age (or prior, for that matter), which leads to students being allowed to develop some bad habits.  She states that she has seen improvements in that over the years, but she's noticed that teachers themselves also have a hard time modeling information literacy with consistency. It may be because they are already overwhelmed. However, interestingly this was seen a lot more at her previous school than here at SOA. The students need constant practice and the consistent expectation to attribute sources. In addition to all of that, it is now very easy to find information on the internet, and students have a hard time evaluating sources as well as attributing sources.

5. Are there any other comments that you would like to make regarding the competencies within the engage foundation that we have discussed today?

Although Mrs. Gomez feels like Engage foundation is one of the most important foundations, it's proved to be one of the most challenging to implement within her previous school to this date. It is her hope that she can continue to work with teachers in the near future within their content areas to start to build that all important foundation.

She believes it was challenging because the Engage foundation is one that requires constant vigilance but resources are always changing. As librarians, as long as we are vocal models of responsible research and are sure to include its tenets at every opportunity, we can help to raise responsible, engaged, learners.