Day 13: Professional Development and PLCs

The Ravenel teachers had the opportunity to meet and discuss/learn about successful STEAM projects in the classrooms here within the school. I decided to attend one of these groups as the STEAM initiative is a central part of the ONE Seneca ideal. Let me unpack that. ONE Seneca is the high school district within the school district of Oconee County. There are two other high school districts that each have their own feeder elementary/middle schools. STEAM, which is the rarer form of STEM, represents Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics, a program that encourages student learning through discovery and application challenges. I have seen many magnet schools or other specialty schools encourage the STEM program, but increasingly I see various elementary schools incorporating the program as bonus curriculum or as growth initiatives.

I have seen various programs both during my internship and during my teaching career that are half-hearted, unpopular, or unsupported; however, the STEAM program at Ravenel seems to be gaining both momentum and enthusiasm from the teachers and students. I spoke most specifically with Mr. Quarles, a fourth-grade math teacher. He chose to create box cars with his students using the ideas of parallelism, force, and distance to base his “mathematics” lesson on. Quarles ordered a kit that came with “wheels” made from push-pops, straws, rubber bands, and balloons. The students then had to measure and build a car that could go five feet in a straight line. The fundamentals of keeping both sets of wheels aligned as well as how much to inflate the balloon and where to put the balloon were all factors to a successful car. While many teachers focus on the STEAM lesson over a single week or other compacted unit of time, Quarles “spirals” his units, teaching and re-teaching specific skills with increasing rigor and difficulty. He chose to develop this STEAM lesson over the series of a few weeks, adding different skills and curriculum-based lessons into the intermediate time. Quarles said that the students had fun as well as learned essential skills for mathematics and science based on the problems they encountered with their cars. It sounded like a fun unit both for him and for the students.

The library has not yet experimented with the STEAM curriculum, but does have a few books that have been used in other classrooms. CIndy and I have talked about the SLIS 720 Grant Writing project possibly looking into materials on STEAM lessons and resources to use in the LMC. The ideas she and I have talked about at this point mostly revolve around Technology, Arts, and Mathematics using the resources already available in the library.

I also used today to create a tech video to introduce some of Google's features. The teachers have had Google all year, but many of the teachers are still unfamiliar with its processes and options. I decided to show them how to add a picture to their profile and to create multiple login profiles via Google Chrome. The pictures were really a feature both for fun/personalization but also for use with the multiple profiles on a computer. Many of the teachers use Google as a personal account and now have the school's account. This way, the teachers can keep student information secure on the Oconee network, as the safety brief I got on Feb 6 required.

I wanted this video to be about two minutes, but when I recorded the first video it was a little over five. I decided to change up some of the order and pre-open some tabs, but the video was still about four and a half minutes. I wanted these videos to be brief so teachers would have time and be willing to spend the time on watching them; but it seems like to fully understand what is happening and explain the whys and hows required that little bit of extra time. I decided it was worth the extra three minutes and will be sending the video out on Tuesday for Tuesday Tech Tips! Hopefully these are received well by the staff!

Day 12: Book Fair Delivery

Today, the Book Fair arrived from Scholastic. While Cindy taught classes in the reading center, Toni and I prepared the rest of the library for the incoming cases of shelved books. Typically, the library has many volunteers that come especially for this day to un-box and set up the displays, books, and other fun. This year, for varied reasons (mostly sickness), only two volunteers were available and in attendance. Thankfully, the janitors of the school and a few teachers on planning offered their help, even if it could only be 20 minutes or so. There is no incentive for volunteers at this point for Ravenel's LMC, but Cindy said most parents just enjoy doing this event. Several years ago, Scholastic allowed librarians to assign some discount percentages for volunteers/teachers, but Cindy said that any "discounts" would now come out of profits.

Thankfully, the delivery men from Scholastic and the janitors wheeled in the giant cart/shelves into the library. Each cart was also laden with boxes filled with more materials to be set in the Book Fair shop. Once the shelves were in about the right place, the Scholastic employees required a signature and were off, leaving us to move the sometimes heavy boxes off of the highly stacked carts. Again, we were so grateful to the custodians as they lifted the heaviest boxes and set them on the floor.

The unloading was a bit chaotic. Each box has a title of content based on pseudo-genres and grade-level appropriateness. At first, we were piling boxes just by those content, but we were also trying to place them under or near the tables they would be displayed on. This worked for the most part, until people started pulling the materials out of boxes. Then, it was like Christmas morning in a family of twelve! Books and materials starting cropping up everywhere! As we were all placing books on display, we also realized that the size of tables wasn't always appropriate for the amount of resources in the boxes. This led to shuffling of books that were already set up in display! About halfway through the process, we saw that some areas were densely crowded, while other spaces had large gaps. This then led to trouble keeping the pseudo-genres together. In addition, the Scholastic genres were not necessarily genres I would understand or categorize based on. This made collecting and redistributing texts onto the displays an extra challenge. Too, Cindy had pulled a few books off of the shelves to rearrange, which made some holes on the shelves themselves. Phew! I honestly was a little panicked at the state of the fair, but just reminded myself that I wouldn't be present for the full fair and that it needed to suit Cindy and Toni as the true leaders of the fair.

First what I noticed about content, then what I would do for my Book Fair.

Holy bobble pens and kooky highlighters, Batman! It felt like more than half of the fair's goods were cheap novelties like funky erasers, giant pens, and character-topped highlighters. Cindy and Toni cover this table up when the students come for a wish list walk-through to focus on the books available to them. Secondly, almost all of the novels were paperback: I'm sure to make the texts affordable to the general child shopper. There was a fair range of texts and topics, though empires like Marvel, Lego, and Disney dominated many tables and shelves. I am sure this ties back to Scholastic's corporate deals and maybe even ownership. Despite this, there were many books that were excellent choices that I had both heard of and seen good reviews for. All of the books were new or recently new titles with the exception of Harry Potter. Even still, the Harry Potter texts were the new artistic covers and were matched with movie books and Fantastic Beasts materials, a recent film. The picture books were a little more diverse, with a specific requested selection of SCASL Children's Book Award nominees present for sale. My last big notice were some larger, higher level texts available for sale, but not in the "adult" section of cooking books and biographies. These books were mostly about presidential history, science industries, and compendiums of sports facts. Not only did these books seem not appealing, they also were greater than $40. I was a little confused as to why they are present at a elementary book fair, but imagine Scholastic is both trying to make money and potentially appeal to parents who come through the shop.

One great thing Scholastic did this year is create a box for students who had no money at the book fair. Cindy said that she had always gathered some books that they purchased through donations (donation can included in the setup kit) to give to students without money or with little money. There was also an overflowing table of "discount" books as the spring book fairs are headed towards selling off all inventory to buy new inventory for the following year. Both of these options made the book fair more accessible to all students, which I thought showed some recognition of reality from even a business like Scholastic.

Content-wise, I am sure that I would not have made all of the novelties available to the students. There were so many character iterations on the tops of pens that my own head was spinning! I know as a child, these attracted me, too. And why wouldn't they? Colorful, characters, useful! But as an adult, I can see that the prices are rather excessive for something you could get for a quarter or may never use at all. I would want to both protect my students from those buys and encourage them to buy texts or project kits that would develop learning and experiences from the book fair. Additionally, I think I might have to take the first delivery day by myself or just have volunteers move the boxes down. At least for my first year, I think I will want to know what is going where to keep my own head straight during the sales process. Perhaps the Scholastic genres will be sufficient; I just want to understand them first!

I am so grateful to have been present at the setup of the Book Fair. This is one of the things that I think may be most practical to help me, especially if I end up as a middle or elementary LMS. As one of the biggest events within the library and one of the most complex (especially financially), this day has been extremely helpful in my LMS formation.

Day 11: Experimenting with Lessons and Discipline

Today ran so smoothly! I was really impressed with some of the students that had to come today for library due to the shortened schedule for tomorrow to set up the Book Fair. This is out of their routine, which I have learned is a BIG part of elementary school, especially in the younger grades. During the first week, I did not do much behavioral correcting as I was still observing and getting a "feel" for how the students acted at each age. Now, I have seen teachers, Mrs. Edgerton, and even the principal chastise students for certain behaviors like not sitting quietly, running to line up or complete tasks, or talking out of turn. I have a little bit of a challenge balancing my eagerness to support their excitement for learning and exploring with the understanding of the need for rules, expectations, and protocol. Especially at this younger age, the students are prone to blurt out irrelevant stories, continue talking through instructions, or other disruptive behaviors they just have not had to learn yet. I have been starting to ask students to sit on their bottoms and face the front and other sort of respectful behaviors during the instructional reading time; yet, they also need some reminders about how not to play with materials (books, shelf markers, alternative seating, etc.) when they are in the library. I told Mrs. Owens I was already tired of a few reminders: "Walk, not run!", "Sit on your bottom", "Scan the Ravenel barcode, not the store's", just to name a few.

4K was fun to teach both classes back-to-back. The students really like to incorporate more knowledge than just reading the stories themselves. Love is a Handful of Honey has three little mice on each spread of pages. Once I noticed this trend, I decided to have them look at the pages for the occurrence of mice. This also got the students to speak with clearer descriptions of locations on the page: at first, the students would answer, "Right there!" I would point to a random spot on the page and say, "Right here!" a few times until they realized they needed a more specific answer. Finally, students would start using identifying markers on the pages: "In the log!", "Next to the bear!", "On top of the tree!" A week ago, this would have felt much too easy to even discuss with the students. Now I know that this is exactly the kind of interaction to give to the youngest grades during story time.

I also experimented with Love is a Handful of Honey to one of the first grade classes, to use this opportunity to gauge if books that appeal to the youngest audience could also be used with slightly older students. At first, one of the students said she saw me reading this to kindergarten, but I reminded her that books can be enjoyed on many different levels if we looked at different things. She seemed to accept that answer. Instead of just witnessing the book and being focused on the characters of the story like the K4s, the first graders also started predicting what would happen on the next page or in the next scene. They, too, liked finding the mice on each page (which I suppose we really are never too old for a treasure hunt), but were also more interested in how the characters on the page were interacting in accordance with the story. The experiment seemed fruitful! I do think that the predicting and following the story was too basic for a few of the students, as they were trying to talk or play or roll their eyes during parts of the story; however, these same students had to be chastised when in the reading center for playing or using the furniture inappropriately. I do not think I would always choose a book like this that appeals to the younger crowd, but I also think that the lesson was well spent simply enjoying the book and enjoying the characters and illustrations.

Between classes, we began some furniture rearranging for the Book Fair delivery that comes tomorrow. There will still be children participating in regular circulation, but our main goals are to set up and decorate for Book Fair. Mrs. Edgerton and I also updated patron cards, printed Accelerated Reader reports, discussed the mid-term evaluation, and completed other "odd jobs" around the library. It is clear that a rhythm (if a chaotic, ever-changing rhythm) does exist with more comfort and time within the library. I'm looking forward to the set up and experience of the Scholastic Book Fair tomorrow!