Elementary School Interviews

 

Add your interview to the top of the pile below and draw a horizontal line between yours and the one previously added. Previous semester Elementary Interviews

Add yours here:

Erin Oliver_Elementary School Librarian Interview_9/29/9

Due to budget cuts and restructuring (done by the previous superintendent), our small school district of one high school, one middle school, and eight elementary schools, no longer has full time librarians in any of the elementary schools.  One librarian serves over all eight of the elementary schools.  She splits her time visiting each school on a rotation.  When she is not present, untrained educational assistants help as do teachers.  One elementary school is the exception.  There, thanks to a Reading grant, a librarian works three days a week: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.  Out of my three interviews, this school is the “winner” on collaboration.  Not only does the librarian rate them at a three on the continuum, all of the teachers collaborate to plan and teach units on a regular basis.  So, as the homeroom teachers teach a unit in their classes, the music and art teachers, as well as the librarian, all focus their instruction on that same topic.  One example would be a recent unit the third grade completed on the solar system.  The music teacher had the third grade students learn and perform a short musical about the solar system, the librarian aided in research and the creation of posters displaying all the information they gathered, the art teacher had corresponding art projects, etc.  All of this was in addition to the students studying the solar system in their homeroom classes.  First grade is currently working on nursery rhymes, and the upper grades are working on story-telling.  This school does an awesome job of collaborating!  All teachers work together to plan and teach.  Also, this was due in large part to the librarian and music teacher pushing the others to try this approach.  So far, it’s a huge success.  This interview also took place on Tuesday, September 29, 2009, but I have observed at this school several times and it is an inspiration.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Tahni Holmes_Elementary School Librarian, 29SEP09

The Elementary School librarian has served in her position for over 20 years. She currently fulfills all of the duties as the school’s librarian, however the library’s size calls for 2 librarians. Her experience and familiarity with the school’s curriculum enables her to anticipate teacher’s needs of certain materials and when in the school year those materials are needed. She noted that some teachers approach her throughout the year, just as some never do for resources and materials. I had asked if she found a correlation between new teachers as oppose to older more experienced teachers and whether or not they sought her services and the services of the library. She informed me that there wasn’t a noticeable connection and that a generalization could not be made –it came down to the individual teacher. Being understaffed, for a collection of substantial size (25,000), her efforts in soliciting the library’s and her services are limited. Heather She works with a district tech support person to repair all technical and software needs –a challenging issue when the tech support person serves all of the schools in the district. The library has a computer lab that teachers sign up to use; bring their class down and go over resources and work on projects.  The librarian fits mostly in the stage 3 category, although the extent at which the teacher/librarian collaborates, varies among the teachers of the school.  The school library does have an online catalog of their library collection, however the school’s library website does not provide quality sources outside of the library’s catalog. Currently teachers are offered to use classroom websites and communicate with their students and student’s parents, and fellow teachers through virtual means, but are not required to do so. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the age of the children, being that the library is an elementary school library. In summary, the librarian is performing library services in the area of stage 3, however it varies among the teachers of the school. The librarian and teachers would benefit from using in web 2.0 technologies to better communicate and better serve their students.

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Lori Hermelin

Interview with elementary school librarian, Sept. 30, 2009

 

Elementary School

            The final interview was with an elementary school librarian working at a school where 97% of the population is on free and reduced lunch. This population provides challenges in the variety of needs they bring to school. She also cited time as an obstacle; for her teachers there is very little time allowed for collaboration except at the end of a day when the teachers have spent their energy on the children leaving little for planning meaningful projects. She also relies on leadership personnel to help her draw in grade level groups for library media center experiences saying, “You have to win everyone over…starting with those who are eager.” She gets these enthusiastic teachers to talk up her projects and then gets her message out, “I would love to plan a lesson like that with you.” She figures that she is working with about 30% of her faculty at stage three. For the rest, her current focus is on Web 2.0 technology as the pathway to energize student learning. This means that much of her time is spent one-to-one with teachers helping them learn to use and apply wikis and blogs in their classrooms.

            It is no surprise that time was a theme throughout the interviews. It was also no surprise that most success comes from gaining a few willing teachers and then sharing out successes to gain additional recruits. Largely, there is a strong PR element in our work. Once a teacher walks through the door with a proposal, though it may only be a stage one request, the library media teacher should capitalize on the opportunity to demonstrate the enhanced level of service and collaboration we are promoting.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I interviewed 3 librarians for this project, one middle school librarian from my hometown in Pennsylvania, one elementary school librarian also from Pennsylvania and one more elementary school librarian from Tuolumne in Northern California.

 

Interview #2 by Benjamin Wingard, September 2009

     My second interview was with an elementary school librarian working at a smaller rural elementary school in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.  This school serves approximately 350 students in kindergarten through 5th grade and has a collection of around 5,000 volumes and 3 computers.  In contrast to my first interview which was with a middle school librarian in the same district who felt like an integral part of the process, the elementary librarian did not feel as if her skills were being utilized quite as well.  She noted a general lack of interest on the part of the school district to teach the children any information skills beyond how to use the library to check out books.  According to this librarian the feeling of the principal was that those information skills were taught in the middle and high school.  Because the children were only sent to the library to browse the books, this librarian did very little collaboration with teachers, although they would often ask for help with locating appropriate materials for specific teaching units.  Consequently, this librarian rated herself a stage one.

Interview #3 by Benjamin Wingard, September 2009

     My third interview was with a librarian in another small rural school, although this one is located in Tuolomne, California.  Hers is the only elementary school in the school district and has 380 students in kindergarten through 8th grade.  The library has around 12,000 books and over 300 videos.  This librarian is the only library staff and works part time (20 hours a week), when she is not working, the library is closed.  The younger children in 5th grade and below are given time once every week for a story or checkout time, while the older children can come in on their recess or lunch or when they have a class project.  Because of state budget problems, the library cannot get any new materials this year.  Because of the limited time this librarian has to work with the children and teachers, she does not do much collaboration on educational units beyond a brief lesson on how to find materials in the library.  Instead, most of her time is spent working at stage one, helping students and teachers to find the material they want to use.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I interviewed librarians at the lower, middle and upper school level at a private nursery-12 college preparatory school.

Interview #1 by Joanne Bradley, September 2009

The lower school librarian said that she is at Stage 2 and that “rarely does Stage 3 happen because there simply are not enough hours in the day.”  This is her 25th year doing the job, and she said when she first started, she sat down and met with teachers to see what they wanted, but she has been in the job so long and has been working with the same people so that over time she has learned to anticipate what they want.  The example she used is that one of the teachers she works with does a lesson incorporating trolls every year; when the librarian first presented it she met with the teacher; now the teacher contacts the librarian and tells her when the class will be studying trolls, and the librarian knows what the teacher wants.  The bulk of her time is spent with classes (27 per week) doing story times, book talks or activities that are either driven by her (Banned Books Week) or driven by what the class is studying.  Sometimes a teacher wants to do a project on a topic for which there are no materials that are age-appropriate in which case she helps the teacher to adjust to a similar topic for which there is material available.  The end of the year previous to the election she met with second grade teachers who were planning to study the historic event with their classes so she ordered material to support the unit.  She also said she makes sure that throughout the course of the year she exposes kids to a wide variety of genres and themes with the hope that she can inspire every child by showing them there is something for everyone.  She incorporates technology by doing slide shows and Power Points.

           

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Interview #2 by Lisa Katz/ September 2009

 

This school librarian has been at her job for 9 years for a private K-8 Jewish Day School. She is a credentialed elementary teacher with no library school background. The student population is about 140 students K-8^th grade. She has weekly visits from the K-5 grade students but does not see the middle school students. This is quite unfortunate. There is a school computer lab, which is next to the library. There is a media teacher and the two rooms really don’t interact with each other, although they should. This librarian basically is between stage 1 and 2. There is not a lot of collaboration between the librarian and the teachers although she is trying to change that. This is the first year that she is trying to really be proactive and asking teachers to collaborate with her about their curriculum topics for the year so that she can help them by providing books and information sites based on curriculum standards. A normal day for this librarian includes see grade level classes weekly in groups of 10 children. She reads to the classes weekly, and then allows them time to check out a book. She does a little instruction based on library skills and then as the students get older in grades 3, 4 and 5, she teaches them how to use the online catalog, pathfinders as well as World Book subscriptions and other available links. Even though she does not have any formal technology or library background she has made the best of the situation and kept herself in the loop in regards to web 2.0 tools and information made available to the students. She would like to see much more collaboration go on between the teachers and her, but it is a work in progress.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Stephanie G Larsen -September 2009

 

Interviews of 3 Elementary School Librarians -They were given the descriptions and they answered the questions as listed...

 

Interview #1

1. Do most of your duties fall under one of the stages?

If so which one?

It is a case of double responsibilities in the elementary library.  The first responsibility is to provide literature and lessons weekly for students to learn to use libraries for pleasure and information.  For every classroom this includes: Weekly check-out, a story time(*which includes lessons on authors, elements of story, genre), practice locating books in different sections.  Because of the increased pressure on schools to improve classroom learning experiences, the schools in our district have created a schedule in which teachers are given a weekly collaborative period 1-2 hours, in which the library, music, computer time are used for a ‘rotation’ to free the teachers for that collaboration.  That means the teachers do not participate in planning MY activities in the library, they don’t always even accompany them.  That being said, many teachers and our literacy coach ask me to support the monthly literature themes under our reading program, and we frequently talk and create ideas for activities and pull additional support literature.  This requires a process of relationship building on my part, as I have gotten acquainted with teacher styles, interests, the reading program.  In addition, I tutor a reading group myself during the day as our school is Title 1 – needing all the help we can get!   So, that part of my job is mostly in Stage 2, as there is some collaboration, but mostly self-directed.

The second responsibility is teaching information seeking strategies.  That definitely falls in stage 3.  Again, much relationship building is required to build strong activities and teaming.  Certainly it is an on-going process to continue to produce better quality.  For example, I work with 4^th grade on science – Utah animals or social studies – Peoples of Utah.  We usually build a Powerpoint presentation as a product.  It requires a lot of teacher support and teaming to begin that process.  Then 5^th grades do science – landforms, or U.S. biographies – and they create a PhotoStory (with voice-over recording) as their product.   Again, teaming and support providing a variety of resources – encyclopedia, non-fiction books, pre-determined websites and use of search engines.  The 6^th grades do Space and/or Ancient Civilizations, we sometimes do a brochure or a newsletter using Publisher.  Frequently the 6^th grade teachers will then request extra time later in the year to do other projects, in which we all plan the activities.  I feel strongly that this school needs heavy training in computer skills, because most of the students do not have access to computers at home.  It is sometimes a challenge because the students’ reading skills are not on grade level, so there are challenges to provide appropriate resources and group the students so all participate and learn content in the core, library skills and technology skills.

2. Are there duties/stages listed that you wish you could    be doing more of?

Certainly as a person grows into knowing the school needs, the teachers, the students, the programs in place, one can step into new opportunities and improve services.  As you get to know your own collection better you can match books to needs, and you acquire additional books to match the reading levels of the students and quality information you are continually providing better quality and adding learning experiences.  For example, when the students share their products with the class, I now have them do a note taking chart on each other’s subjects so they are accountable for listening and getting the facts from each other.  

There are always activities within the school that you are being asked or seeing a need to participate.  School Improvement councils, working in the after school program, technology maintenance, etc.  (I accompany a morning school choir)  You enrich your own position as you grow into being part of the community.  One thing I wish I could do more of is interaction with parents and getting parents to come in and check out books to read with their children.  This is a passion of mine and I work very closely with the kindergarten and first grade and pre-school teachers to continually encourage parents to check out books and read with their children.

3. What are you favorite duties? 

I love sharing good literature with the little kids!  I use puppets, silly hats, feathers, rocks, seashells, power point shows, art activities, anything I can to provide enrichment and connect them to the text.  Sometimes I supplement with a DVD of the book or computer activity.

I really love helping the older students to acquire skills using computer programs to create products – the brighter students love to add ‘bling’ to their products when I show them the little extras – music clips, transition tricks,  dropping a sound of a hawk screeching into a powerpoint. 

4. What roadblocks do you find in your position? 

My administrator is very pro-technology and pro-literature and pro-parent support, so I have been very lucky – when I introduce Smart Boards or Elmo projectors or Emints classrooms, or English Learning programs, or GoogleEarth, she is very willing to find funding.  There are always business partners, grants and opportunities to increase both technology and literature.   Time doing the mundane things, like chase down missing books, shelf books, catalog new books are the things that take away from better teaching…

5. What do you see at the future of the School Librarian and the Library?

Again, our district has become very focused on improving technology, and we are increasingly relying on it for so much of the learning process, we have renamed ourselves to be Library Media Teachers.   I see my responsibilities going more toward using technology to improve teaching – by being informed and trained on many new equipment and software products—and to improve learning by acquiring the products and integrating them into the learning activities of the students.  As students become more connected through technology, that is becoming more and more their most motivating method of learning, and, so, if you want to reach them, you need to be the expert!

By the way – I love my job!

 

Interview #2

1. Do most of your duties fall under one of the stages?

If so which one?

Most of my duties are stage one. This is due primarily to the fact that the Librarian wears many hats. I have my own State-mandated core to teach to each class, as well as acting as the traditional librarian duties of library maintenance, checking out books, reader’s advisory, collection development, and collection maintenance. Add to these the responsibilities of Audio visual specialist for the school, Technology specialist for the school. And there are the non-traditional duties such managing book fairs, assemblies, and other activities.

2. Are there duties/stages listed that you wish you could    be doing more of?

I do wish that I could have time to talk to each teacher in advance to get an idea of what their teaching goals are and could have the opportunity to make more of the library resources available.

3. What are you favorite duties?

Of all my duties, the ones I enjoy the most are the ones that bring me in contact with the students, and which they enjoy – such as reading to the students and exploring literature.

4. What roadblocks do you find in your position?

There is always the need for more funding. The monies I receive each year in a school of 500+ students purchases ½ of a library cart of books. The reality is that keeping up with collection development is nearly impossible. Another roadblock is that  - by law – monies for library collection development are to be spent on materials for the students. Hence – though I have a great deal of material that can support classroom instruction, some teachers do not use the library because of their perception that here is nothing there for THEM. Money, time and help are always an issue.

5. What do you see at the future of the School Librarian and the Library?

Unless there is some fantastic chance in funding, I fear that the elementary school Librarian will be replaced by a para-professional for the sake of budgets.

There is a greater push for technology, such that any librarian will need to know how to use, manage, incorporate, and maintain equipment and technology of immense power as well as the older system still in use by teachers and schools.

Funding for libraries will continue to fluctuate, and collection development will always be a problem.

Teaching students to be a wise consumer of technology, media, and information will become increasingly more important – particularly as they relate to the internet and to life-style choices.

The widening gap between those with access to technology, and those with out will draw librarians to try to be the information/technology source for the disadvantaged, and their advocate in society.

 

Interview #3

1. Do most of your duties fall under one of the stages?

If so which one?

Mostly in stage 2

2. Are there duties/stages listed that you wish you could    be doing more of?

I think it would be fabulous to plan and create lessons with teachers more, but the reality is that time constraints make this very difficult.  I coordinate with teachers so that my research classes match the current classroom curriculum, but then I develop the unit on my own.  The classroom teachers stay with their classes during a 6 week research project which allows me and the classroom teacher to do some co-teaching.

3. What are you favorite duties?

I love teaching research classes and integrating technology into them.  I also love it when I can help a kid find the perfect book for them.  I really enjoy doing booktalks where I tell the plot of a story and stop at the climax.  It really leaves the kids itching for more and hopefully makes them want to read the book to see how it ends.

4. What roadblocks do you find in your position?

Scheduling is a huge challenge because every year I have less and less say over what the library schedule will be.  No Child Left Behind requirements to pass CRT’s are starting to affect the way libraries and library teachers are used.  Some library teachers in our district are now required to use part of their day teaching a reading class.  Other programs like ESL are starting to crowd out time for library research classes.

5. What do you see at the future of the School Librarian and the Library?

Our school district is really pushing for more technology in the libraries and I think it’s great.  They want library teachers to know technology and teach the kids how to use it.  I think analyzing information (especially Internet sources) will be a vital skill for kids to have in the future.  I think libraries will become places where technology and books are equally used and important.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________