Marian Royal <marianroyal@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
. What I am wondering, though, is how can those of us in fixed
schedule school libraries with very low budgets and no assistants make our
environments more comfortable, user-friendly, useful and welcoming to all
teachers and students? I know it can be done, I'm just not sure how.
Yes it can be done. Not easily, but if you have room enough to accommodate two
classes in the library at once you can make it possible for a teacher to bring her
class in to work on something while you teach, or even better arrange a switch of
classes with the other teacher. In one school where I used to work, I had a fixed
schedule for the K-3 classes. The 4-6 classes were supposed to be on flex
schedule. Unfortunately, I had few (8 including my 4 preps) periods without
scheduled classes. These periods didn't match with the periods that one of the men
who taught fifth grade wanted to come to the library and have me work with his
kids. So we developed a "sharing" approach to teaching all our kids in the library
at once. As this was an inner-city school we had few proficient readers in the
lower grades and a new "school reform/reading" program that had taken all the fairy
tales, nursery rhymes, and holidays out of the K-1 curriculum, giving me a ready
curriculum. The fifth grade teacher, the father of a four year old loved the
opportunity to read to my little ones, while I trained his kids on the library
skills they would need for their current projects in science or social studies.
The teacher and I would conference briefly after-school about what had been
presented in each of our classes and how well it had been learned. We could then
decide if his whole class had to have another day in the library or not. If they
were to come back as a class, which of us would be in charge of which class. Most
of the time, if I had done the initial skills teaching, he could handle the
reinforcement and supervision of the kids working more independently on their
projects.
I'll
have to admit, I don't even have the time or expertise to create a library
web page and neither does anyone else in our little bitty district.
Is there a district Tech Administrator or a Computer Teacher at the High or Middle
school who might have the expertise to do the programing. Or is there a parent
who, if asked, might me more than willing to offer some volunteer time to it. You
might be able to help with designing a site for the whole district, including the
libraries. You and your fellow librarians could draw up the design of what you
think would be practical in story book fashion and have your programmer provide the
HTML code to make it happen. I'll bet the Computer teacher would love to have a
"real-life" application for his kids to work on to prove that they had learned the
expected skills. Sometimes we get so tied up in wanting to share our skills with
our colleages we forget that they may have skills to share with us.
I'm
still trying to get a server for the OPAC I bought last summer!
This may be a bigger problem than the others above.
Dorothy Tissair, M.S., M.L.S.
Library Media Specialist
Old Saybrook, CT
dtissair@snet.net
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