Spring Fling with Maddie

This is what it looked like when I arrived at Maddies's middle school for Spring Fling. I almost didn't make it in the torrential rain. Spring Fling is a treat for those students who attended all three days of the EOGs. There were games, food booths, and activities in the gym. And a silent auction as a fund raiser.

When I got there, some of the outside games had come down but there were plenty of damp kids noisily waiting in line for food or having a blast in the gym. Maddie was in charge of the silent auction. The auction items were lovely baskets of goodies each around a different theme that homerooms had put together with contributions from the students. There was some intense competition in the bidding and the principal was in the middle of it. I was delighted with the originality of the contents and the display and I think the school made a little money on it. They made some off me. I couldn't resist bidding on the art basket. I felt foolish putting it in the car, thinking my kids were really too old for the contents. I decided I'd probably just donate it to the PreK at the college.

Then my kids saw the basket. My college bound daughter was the worst. I have no clue what she'll do with the playdoh but I haven't seen her this excited in awhile. So we all had a little spring fling. After all that camcorder/camtasia burnout, happy kids were the cure.

Camcorder morning, Camtasia afternoon

In addition to the podcasting class, I've been asked to work with the instructional librarian to update some tutorial videos we have posted to our web page. More technology immigration. Whew. The Luddite in me is having stress issues. I spent the morning learning to use our camcorder. I've never really used one. The goal for today was to create a video clip with the camcorder, then create another video clip using Camtasia software (for capturing computer screen videos) and see if I could edit them together in the Camtasia software and get a product. The ultimate goal being to learn to use Camtasia.

Well, it's lumpy but it's a video. PLEASE keep in mind this is a practice and NOT a product. And I learned some stuff, some of which confirms why I'm so uncomfortable with technology:

1) The .mpg files created by the Sony camcorder can't be read by the Camtasia software. I'm presuming some proprietary issues here. Theoretically, Camtasia can read .mpg files. But theoretically, computers were supposed to give us a paperless society by now.

2) Free file conversion software is iffy at best. I tried three different packages and either I could not intuit the operating instructions (no tech support for freeware) or the quality was very poor. The camcorder video of the library is lovely and smooth in the original version. My voice sounded like a zombie as the converted video jerked and dragged. Fortunately, part of updating our instructional videos includes adding recordings to the screen shots. So I got to practice that by voicing over the zombie in the converted camcorder clip.

Clearly, planning is everything. Planning the script so the screen action doesn't drag, planning commentary (or edits) in the places where the computer hangs up loading a new page, planning the camcorder motions and zooms. Right now, I'm planning to take a rest. Good thing it's a Friday.

Library Services for K12

Early College High School (ECHS)

The main campus of our college has an early college high school that serves about 400 high school students who are dually enrolled in the community college. In addition to providing a core high school curriculum, the program allows them to take their high school electives in regular community college classes and earn college credit. The presence of an ECHS program has not required many changes in the main library’s collection as the high school instructors found the resources they needed in the existing materials. The main library has, however, added a number of young adult fiction titles to support pleasure reading among the ECHS students. The main campus librarians have had some complaints about noise and behavior of the ECHS students, that they have changed the atmosphere of the library, but they also have seen an increase in their reference and circulation statistics since the ECHS started. Our campus does not have enough classroom space to have and ECHS program, but will consider it once a new classroom building is constructed. In addition to the new classroom building, we are on track to receive a new library building at the same time. Our branch library will merge with the local public library in the new building. This will represent a new client mix for us and there may also be ECHS students added to that. It will be interesting to see how the atmosphere of the library changes with a new mix of patrons.

Huskins

The Huskins program was initiated by the State of North Carolina as an alternative means of providing vocational training to North Carolina high school students. Vocational education varies among school districts depending upon the funding available. Through the Huskins program, high schools can partner with community colleges to provide this training. Like ECHS students, Huskins students have dual enrollment. Their Huskins classes qualify as both high school electives, but they also carry community college credit. In some cases, the community college provides instructors that travel to the high school campus. Other classes are offered on the community college campus and some are delivered online. On our campus, welding and criminal justice classes are held at the local high schools. We also have a World History class that alternates between the high school campus and the college campus. Early Childhood Development and Auto Mechanics are held on the college campus because we have the specialized facilities these classes require. Some business classes are offered online. On all three campuses, Huskins students are issued ID cards and have library access just like the regular college students. The Huskins instructor I interviewed noted that there were some problems offering college classes to high school students, mostly behavioral. She observed that some high school principals were more supportive of the program than others, and occasionally the program was seen as a place to “dump” problem students, but overall, her experience with the program had been really good. All campus libraries provide library instruction upon the instructor’s request. My experience giving library orientation to some of our Huskins classes has been very positive. While they may not have been familiar with the level of research expected of them in a college level class, they all seemed eager to learn and were pleased with the library resources available to them.

Adult High School (AHS)

On the main campus, AHS and GED students meet in a satellite location. The main library has provided reference books and encyclopedias for the satellite classrooms and occasional library instruction, but these students do not regularly use the main campus library. On our campus, AHS and GED students meet on campus. As the AHS classroom is just down the hall, AHS students are regular visitors in my library.

AHS was designed to serve adult individuals who were returning to pursue their high school diploma but were not prepared enough to take the GED exam, which reflects the 11th and 12th grade high school curriculum. The AHS instructor noted that over the years, the average age of her students is getting younger. She serves primarily 16-19 year olds who have dropped out, had their high school careers interrupted by pregnancy or getting into trouble, or who struggle socially or academically. Some of her students are children of families moving in from out of state who are not satisfied with area high schools. Some are home school students whose parents are not comfortable with the high school curriculum. Some students just do better in a smaller setting. Her average class size is about 12 seated students but she also currently has 20 online students. There is a maximum time limit of 2 years for students to earn the required 20 credits. Many students either need just a class or two or were unable to pass a gateway exam and need additional preparation for that. The challenge for the instructor is to provide help and support in a variety of subjects according to each student’s needs all in a single classroom setting. Her classroom has a variety of computer resources so students can work independently.

Our small library does not have the resources to support special recreational reading materials for high school students, but the main library has been generous in providing a selection of reading materials for the AHS English classes. And we can borrow a variety of items through the community college consortium. I have enjoyed providing support and library orientation to these students. For some, this is their first library experience and I hope to make it a positive one. When they need to take an exam or need more quiet than the classroom provides, the library provides that as well.

Adult Basic Skills

The community college supports adult basic skills instruction in a variety of packages. I spoke with the Basic Skills assessment and recruitment counselor on our campus about our programs. Her job is to recruit students and administer assessments that help her place them in the right program. If they need a lot of remediation for the GED test, they may go into an ABE class that helps boost their math, reading and writing skills. Then they can test into a GED class which helps them prep for the GED specifically. Or she may direct them to the AHS program if that is the appropriate setting for their goals. The college also offers ESL (English as a second language) instruction. AHS, ABE, GED, and ESL classes are all free. State and federal tax dollars support these programs and also subsidize the fees for taking the GED. Compensatory Education classes are offered at a different site. I don’t see these students often, but I’ve been offering our basic skills faculty information about our access to Career Library and the Learning Express database of practice exams. They are beginning to use them. As they refer more students to these databases, I expect to see more of them in the library.

New School Buildings

This has been a week of visiting new schools. Last night, my son and I attended a play at the newest high school in Randolph County. It is a lovely new building with an extensive parking lot. The music teacher with whom I spoke on the phone to reserve tickets advised us to arrive early as they expected a sell-out crowd. When we arrived, we were amazed to not find a parking space AT ALL. I couldn't imagine the play being that popular or where they'd seat all these folks. As it turns out, Randolph Community College doesn't have a space big enough to host their own graduation, so RCC's graduation ceremonies were going on in the gym and cafeteria while the play was next door in the auditorium. Talk about multi-purpose rooms!

I graduated from high school in 1972 (my daughter affectionately refers to it as "Pangea High", Pangea referring to the supercontinent that existed before the continents separated). It has been at least that long since I attended a high school musical. Despite the remarkably contemporary architecture and considerable change in the audience's attire (I was not allowed out of the house back in those days without a girdle, make up, and hose), little else had changed. The high school actors all looked like kids I'd gone to school with--no kidding, I swear they are all in my yearbook. The actors were exuberant and did a really good job. The audience was supportive and enthused to see their family members/friends on stage. The props were clearly student made, but clever and well done. And the sound was abysmal. How all this time has passed and engineers still haven't figured out how to make a student's voice intelligible in a school auditorium is beyond me. The play was about the cartoon strip, "Peanuts", which is pretty timeless, so it was not hard to feel pulled back in time to my own high school musicals.

We had a really good time seeing the play but it was also great to see the new school we'd heard and read so much about. This morning, we went to a fund raising yard sale at Woods Charter School which also has a brand new building. My children attended a charter school in Siler City. My son has friends who transferred to Woods Charter when their parents moved further east so we'd heard a lot about the move to new digs. Charter schools are not provided building funds by the state so finding a place to hold classes can be a challenge. And raising money for a school building is an even bigger one. Woods had been holding classes in empty retail space in a strip mall. My kids' school had been a private school before they went charter. They already had a school building. But when they decided to add a gym, the fundraising effort was enormous and it has taken them several years to get the building up and the nice flooring in. I couldn't imagine what the Woods parents had gone through to get this gorgeous school building up, though the size and organization of the yard sale was evidence they could handle a fund raising project.

Which brings me round to the issue of parents. I know the students in both schools are enjoying their lovely buildings. But both activities, the play and the yard sale, could not have happened, much less happened successfully, without a huge input of parental volunteer time. All the time my kids have been in school, I've either been running a small business at home, or working and in school. And these last three years I've been a single parent on top of it all. One of my big regrets is that I have not been able to volunteer at their schools. I've tried to make up for it by writing checks, which I know does help, but checks don't get kids to rehersals or unpack boxes of donations. And my kids have still not forgiven me for never chaperoning a field trip. The other side of this equation, however, is that the more people there are involved in a project, the more opportunites there are for conflict to arise. I've yet to meet a teacher without a collection of parental horror stories. It's only human nature that when someone has put a great deal of effort into a project, they develop a sense of ownership. I can see from here that, like classroom management, I'm going to need some mentoring to negotiate this turf. Sonja? Maddie? Do you carry your cellphones at work?

A trip back to Maddie's

On March 31, I was back in Maddie's realm to assist her with her book fair. It was an evening event. The original plan was to serve a dinner in the cafeteria and there was a sporting event that evening. Folks had ordered food from a local (excellent) restaurant as a fund raiser for the school. Maddie's library has an outside entrance. Parents coming for supper were to be directed through the library, past the book fair, and to the cafeteria for the plates they had ordered.

In my grade school in Indianapolis, the book fair was always accompanied by a pancake supper. Both events were held together in the gym. Tired mothers loved it. It was an excuse not to cook, a great way to support the school, and we were each allowed to pick out a book we'd like to receive for Christmas. Dare I reveal my age and say they also sold records, too? I was never able to convince my children's school to do this kind of combination event so I was delighted to see that Maddie's school was using this strategy to draw a bigger crowd for their book sale and sporting event.

Typically Maddie does two book fairs a year as a fundraiser for the library. She does a large one in the fall and a small one in the spring. For most of her families, money is a little tighter in the spring as they plan for camps, summer childcare, and vacations, which is why the spring fair is a smaller event. But she still had a great display. She works with Scholastic (my children's grade and middle school regularly had Scholastic fairs so it was all really familiar). She is clearly in touch with the students' reading interests. She also carefully avoids having lots of the little plastic chachkas that generally permeate the book fairs and take attention away from the reading materials.

Unfortunately, the evening plans had changed. Instead of bringing parents through the building to the cafeteria, the food was set up outside so folks just picked up their plates and went home or to the sporting event. Few even got out of their cars. Some interested parents did come in. Those that did were warm and enthusiastic. The kids, of course, loved the set up, knew which books they wanted, and dragged parents over to see. Having done this routine with my kids for years, it was fun to relive. I found myself parousing the shelves in hopes of finding something my (much older) kids hadn't already read.

But I didn't and interested parents were few and far between. So Maddie and I talked about the perils of moving her inventory to a 14 digit barcode and how much she liked the Follette Destiny system. She even had a moment to demonstrate it for me.

I'm sorry the book fair that evening was not a big financial success, though hopefully the other days were better. She obviously had put a tremendous amount of work into the selection, set up and sales effort. I don't know who changed the evening's plans, but they really messed up a great marketing opportunity.

Early College High School

I've got two children in early/middle college high school programs. One is off to college this fall. She entered a middle college program the middle of her sophomore year in high school. This program allowed her to take community college classes for her high school electives during her junior and senior years. She's basically completed her freshman year in college while in high school. My son is a freshman in an early college high school program that has enrolled him in college classes while just a high school freshman. His program is part of the governor's initiative to help high school students complete an associates degree with a fifth year of high school. Both my kids love their programs, feel their school is better than the sibling's, and think they are college prepared and more mature than their standard high school peers.

I am now working at a branch campus of a community college that has an early college program like my son's on their main campus. Some of our faculty teach on both campuses and have a lot to say about it. There is a real frustration expressed by many of them that their high school freshman and sophomore students are not mature enough for college work. They feel they either have to fail a large number of them or water down their requirements with the end result that the students are getting college credit without doing college work. I also hear frustration from my library co-workers on the main campus about the behavior of the high school students while in the library.

It has been interesting observing this from both sides. I recently wrote a paper for this class on early college high school programs. The programs are new enough that there isn't a lot of hard data, but the early college graduates, so far, do seem to be holding their own when they get to a university setting. And the confidence my own kids feel from being in the program has been really good for them. And I do think their programs are an excellent preparation for college level work on a univeristy campus when they get there, even if my colleagues are frustrated with having to deal with younger students. As I said, it's been interesting to hear from both sides.

After Mary and I presented our lunch and learn on my branch campus, we were asked to present the program on the main campus. We used a computer lab in the main library. I came early that day for two purposes. One, of course, was to be sure Mary and I were comfortably prepared for our program. But I also asked for permission to observe the early college students at a time when they were working in the library between classes. Having heard my co-workers complaints, I was expecting the library to be a real zoo. I'm not a SShhhhh! kind of librarian so maybe I'm not such a good judge, but the day I was there, the high school kids were indistinguishable from the rest of the students and everybody was quiet and focused as Mary and I set up for our program. All h__ may have broken out after I left, but while I was there, they were good as gold.

This got me thinking. Like all parents, I have had the situation where I've fussed to friends about my kids' behavior but the feedback I get from those adults is incredulity. Apparently when I'm NOT looking, the kids' behavior is great. When I interviewed for my present position, there were a number of questions about how I would handle patrons who were rude or uncooperative--as if this were a regular issue in the library. The evening person in my library has implied that trouble is to be expected, that difficult patrons are part of the job. But in the almost year that I've been here, I've been treated with nothing but courtesy and respect. Maybe I've been lucky. But maybe it also has to do with our expectations. I've read that students tend to live up to whatever you expect of them. It may also be that they respond to what you model. If you are defensive, if you expect trouble, you may be more likely to get it. If you are positive, maybe you get positive back. In any event, until things change, I'm going to be naively positive and enjoy my students for the good kids I perceive them to be. I guess that's what my friends do with my kids. If they only knew . . .

Techno-frustration

I can NOT get the checklist from my visit with Maddie on the 11th of March to load into this blog. I have tried to load it as a cut and paste from Word, I've saved it as a bitmap, jpeg, web page and anything else I could think of to try. If ya really want to see it, here is the link: http://portfolio.coe.ecu.edu/students/jav0629/6989checksheet1.pdf. Humph.

March 11--A visit with Maddie

No, this is not Maddie. Maddie is on the right. Maddie rescued this former art project from a trip to the dumpster. She is now the library mascot. Maddie will have to tell the rest of that story.

My MLS has been earned completely online so there hasn't been much opportunity to make friends--with the exceptions of Maddie and Sonja--two school librarians who came to ECU for their MLS and who are now mentoring me through my education classes. I think they figured out early on I needed the mentoring.

Maddie presides over the Randleman Middle School Library, a cheery and spacious place. On March 11, I spent the day with Maddie to complete as much of my internship checklist as possible, the details of which I will try to paste into the following post. I had a great time with Maddie and her student assistants and was given the grand tour of the school by a retired teacher who now volunteers there, knows everybody, and clearly loves and is loved by students and faculty. It was great to have her energy shepherding me around while Maddie held down the fort.

And it was equally great seeing Maddie in action. Maddie is a teacher with many years of classroom experience before pursuing her MLS. We've taken a number of classes together, and ultimately, most of our classes have been the same. So our library conversation was all very familiar--the technology, the policies, the nuts and bolts details of running the shop. But the real gap in my education is in classroom management. I've spent 25 years teaching adults, and I do that well, but children are another species all together. Parent that I am, they are still not my natural environment. Maddie, on the other hand, is in her element teaching children. And she has a gift for it. The highlight of my day was watching Maddie guide four wiggly 6th grade English classes through the aspects of a novel. I've since been reading some on classroom management, specifically Shouting Won't Grow Dendrites. Not only has my reading been enhanced by what I saw, but so has my appreciation of all that Maddie did. Just as natural as walking, she incorporated a variety of learning strategies--auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. She related her material to familiar experiences, she promoted the books in her library, and she kept it fun while keeping it to the point.

I learned a lot about middle school that day, about the collegiality among staff members, about the way time flows, and about the sense of caring that was all around the place. And I heard some about the frustrations that can be found in any workplace. But most of all, I learned that I have a lot to learn. I hope Maddie doesn't mind another student.

Smooth Operators is an educational powerpoint I created during my last internship to help faculty members in the corporate library better use our databases. I've edited it some for the community college and used it in the podcasting class to create my first "enhanced podcast". Not professional quality yet, but a beginning! Actually, I've just been in correspondence with the instructional librarian who was concerned that students were not familiar with Boolean operators and how to use them and was frustrated with a decreasing amount of class time to teach them. Soooooo, maybe we can use this new technique with some eye-catching graphics and some quick quizzes embedded and make it fun for all of us AND get the job done. Once we master the technoglitches . . .


Uploaded on authorSTREAM by weavery

Yodio - Bookgroup's (not really) Podcast

Ok. I'm taking an Ed2Go class on podcasting. The instructional librarian and I came up with a lunch and learn to introduce instructors to some of the Web 2.0 technologies they can use in the classroom. Our Distance Ed department has just added a podcasting feature to our DE portal and we included that in the lunch program. So now somebody needs to learn how to make podcasts. I grew up with the rule that if you pack the bag you tote it. It would logically follow that I'm now taking this Ed2Go podcasting class. As part of the class assignment, I need to post the results of my efforts. This is my first audio podcast created through my phone using Yodio.com. Rather than read the scripted podcast for the class (an imaginary book report for an imaginary sick-at-home student named Nathan), she-who-rarely-follows-instructions decided to read my favorite poem by Edgar Guest instead. I'm sure my library patrons thought I'd really lost it reading poetry to my cell phone in the back room. But podcasting engages several learning styles and can create a welcome break in a print online lecture. And having the library offer technical support to faculty underlines our connection to information and technology and hopefully opens the door to other types of collaboration.

We'll see. Brace yourself for more of this. I'm only a third of the way through the class . . .

The technology native in her environment versus the technology immigrant receiving cell phone instruction from the native. Photo courtesy of Marie Tretiakova, another accomplished digital native.

Helping Teachers Teach

Many of the instructors on our campus are similar to me in age, which means that like me, computers are an add-on. Technology Immigrants my daughter calls us, as opposed to the Technology Natives that are my children. Fortunately, between my recent online education and the prevalence of Web 2.0 discussion in the professional literature (and some great experiences at my previous place of employment) I have at least a cursory understanding of how technology is being used in the classroom and workplace.

I had just had a discussion with my boss, the dean of libraries, about possibly providing instructors with a class on RSS when the college's new president announced an initiative to increase student's exposure to technology in the classroom. At the same time, the Distance Education department was announcing new Web 2.0 features they were adding to our Blackboard portal.

I had asked the dean about the RSS instruction as a way of promoting our databases as many of them offer Table of Content alerts and content updates via RSS feeds. I was hoping this might up our database useage stats by getting our faculty more familiar with the databases and endouraging more classroom assignments using them. A few days later, she came back with the idea of creating a lunch and learn introducing five Web 2.0 technologies that were relevant to the classroom and in line with the new president's technology initiative. If there was sufficient interest, we could develop more in-depth instruction as we had requests. She assigned the instructional librarian from the main campus and myself to come up with an hour long presentation that included a brief description and educational uses for Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, RSS and Social Networking (the college had JUST launched it's first Facebook page).

Before the freeze on travel money, the instructional librarian (another Mary) and I presented the program on two of our three campuses. We've had really good feedback from it. Not only were we able to help the DE department promote their new Blackboard features, we were able to put the library before the eyes of the faculty as the resource that we are. Since then, I've had two instructors approach me about helping them add new features to their classes, which I am in the process of doing. One of them wants to add podcasts to a DE class. I am allowed a free class myself each term and I'm taking an Ed2Go class in podcasting to help her do this. Another wants to embed some information literacy and copyright info into her class.

Another instructor invited me and several others to each present a class on an aspect of technology to an Early Childhood class. I chose the PowerPoint unit as Mary and I had just created the Web 2.0 presentation and I'd learned a few new tricks doing it (thank you, Mary). This same instructor had asked me to help her develop a list of subject specific library resources that her Huskins students could choose from for an essay assignment.

One of the ongoing themes in LIBS 6142 has been teacher/librarian collaboration to enhance student learning. Helping teachers teach is the major library goal that parallels helping students learn. These teaching opportunities have also been another wonderful opportunity to promote the library and its resources. I am hoping this is just a beginning.

The collaboration with Mary has been a great experience for me. She has great skill in preparing presentations that are visually interesting (she is a painter in her secret life) and she is an excellent editor. We have been asked to work together again updating some tutorials on the library web page. It will mean a couple of technology immigrants learning some new territory this summer, but I'm looking forward to it.

Art in the Library

Part of promoting the library means partnering

with other departments to create programs and displays that draw people into the library, and also promote the other department while promoting the library. Our college has a pottery and sculpture program in a satellite location. Early on, I requested student work to display in the library. We now have a lovely selection of pieces atop the book cases that surround the library walls. But the bonanza came when the Early Childhood director asked me to help her promote April, the Month of the Child by displaying preschool artwork in the library.

Institutional colors can be hard to work with. And I have no clue what they paint our cinderblock walls with that make it impossible to post things on them. But the children's paper sunflowers and blossoms made from paper muffin cups were the perfect cheery addition. And some high tech bubblegum like stuff has mostly kept them on the walls. Best of all, they provided an excellent theme for a book display and a great new question for the InfoQuiz (Who is ERIC?). Any suggestions for May?!

Promoting the Library

Libraries are under assault everywhere. Funding cuts and budgetary crises affect all libraries whether they are in schools, universities, communities or corporations. But corporate librarians probably struggle harder than anyone because corporations view their libraries as overhead, a business cost always under intense scrutiny. If a library cannot prove its benefit to the bottom line, it is eliminated. And yet we all know that the benefits of knowledge and learning often cannot be quantified.

My previous job was in a corporate library and no one could have taught me more about promoting the value of the library than my supervisor, Mary. The company was an internationally recognized research and training organization whose faculty and research department kept us hopping. But we were always under pressure to prove our worth to the organization. A lot of image-making was involved in addition to the detailed statistics we kept. We created displays of our resources, we offered short instructional pieces during staff meetings, we partnered with other groups in the organization to host programs. And we demonstrated our capabilities by providing proactive service--service before it was requested--directing our staff to articles and resources as we discovered them. It must have paid off. In this last economic downturn, the company underwent subtantial staff reductions across its five campuses. But the library was spared. The organization focused on leadership training, and Mary's leadership in promoting the library as a research partner and valuable resource left and indellible impression on me.

When I came into my current position, the library was substantially underutilized. For a variety of reasons, the library's image among faculty and staff was suffering, and statistics were correspondingly down. In addition, as the only day time staff person, I was lonely! I had plenty of time to think about what Mary had taught me even as some of these same issues were being raised in LIBS 6142--issues of professional leadership and promotion of library resources. The first part of developing a collaborative atmosphere for information literacy instruction is to let people know what you have and that you are there to help them use it!

Besides just falling over myself to let people know I was here to help, I began with the basics--library displays of new books or themed selections, dragging book carts of relevant materials to staff meetings, circulating a new books list to everyone on campus, sending out proactive emails with resources attached, and then I was offerd a bulletin board to decorate. Now I have a confession to make. I was an undergraduate science major with 8 o'clock classes every morning and afternoon labs every day. I busted myself to graduate cum laude and was always resentful of the elementary education majors that seemed to breeze through to their Phi Beta Kappa keys doing cut outs and bulletin boards. But when confronted with the blank cork board across the hall, I panicked. I truly was not prepared to create a visually engaging, instructional display using paper and scissors. Fortunately, Hobby Lobby has great bulletin board accoutremonts and a friend suggested the catchy first question for my InfoQuiz--"Why Should You Never Google Alone?" (if you don't know, you'll have to come to the library to find out!). In any event, the effort was traumatic enough that I set the thing up so all I have to do is come up with a new question and answer each month. I figure it should be good for school year, anyway. Maybe after another education course, I'll figure out another bulletin board display :-)

Where I work/Who I serve

Where I work . . .

In addition to our regular college students, Continuing Education and Basic Skills Education are a priority.

Some of the programs our library serves include:

ABE--Adult Basic Education

"Adult Basic Education (ABE) is a program of instruction designed for adults who need to improve their reading, writing, speaking, problem-solving, or computation necessary to function effectively in society, on a job, or in the family.
Adult Basic Education (ABE) includes coursework designed to improve the employability of the state's workforce through instruction in mathematics, reading, language, and workforce readiness skills. It is designed to provide adults with sufficient basic education to enable them to benefit from job training and retraining programs and obtain and retain productive employment so that they might more fully enjoy the benefits and responsibilities of being citizens." (NC Community Colleges: Creating Success: Adult Basic Education http://www.ncccs.cc.nc.us/basic_skills/adultbasiceducation.htm)

AHS--Adult High School

"Adult High School is offered by 41 of the 58 community colleges in North Carolina. The program consists of core courses required by the Department of Public Instruction along with electives required by the public school system and the community college. The number of credits (20-28) varies depending upon the specific affiliation agreement between a particular community college and the local public school system." (NC Community Colleges: Creating Success: Adult High School http://www.ncccs.cc.nc.us/basic_skills/adultHighSchool.htm)

CED--Compensatory Education

"Compensatory Education is a community college program designed to compensate adults with intellectual disabilities (formerly called mental retardation) who have not had an education or have received an inadequate one. The focus of the Compensatory Education Program is on helping the individual become as independent as possible through acquiring basic and life skills needed to function successfully in daily living. (NC Community Colleges: Creating Success: Compensatory Education http://www.ncccs.cc.nc.us/basic_skills/compensatoryEducationCed.htm)

GED--General Education Development

"The GED (General Educational Development) Program is a program that provides instruction to prepare for the official GED tests. The GED is offered by all 58 community colleges in the North Carolina system. Each college is an official GED testing site. To obtain a GED diploma, students must take a battery of five tests: Language Arts- Writing, Social Studies, Science, Language Arts – Reading, and Mathematics. Each student is required to pay a test fee of $7.50. A General Educational Development Diploma is awarded to students by the State Board of the North Carolina Community College System. Those students scoring 2,250 or higher are eligible for the diploma. (NC Community Colleges: Creating Success: General Educational Development http://www.nccommunitycolleges.edu/Basic_Skills/ged.htm)

Huskins

"The Huskins Bill authorizes programs for “qualified high school students.” For the purpose of developing cooperative program agreements between high schools and community colleges, the wording “qualified high school students” is defined as students in grades nine through twelve who have achieved a level of academic and social maturity necessary to perform successfully in college credit courses and who have also been recommended by their principal for enrollment. There must also be mutual agreement between the two systems to define the criteria for student selection." (High School Student Programs: Huskins Bill Classes: Beaufort Community College Web site http://www.beaufortccc.edu/admisson/high.htm)

AHS, ABS, Huskins and GED students are located on our campus and use the library, especially the AHS and Huskins students whose classrooms are just up the hall. The CED students work at another location but the Basic Skills person on our campus has invited the library to partner with her in a training exercise for them. Oh! and I forgot the PreK. We have a Child Development curriculum at the college and a year-round preschool. We have a large collection of children's books and every now and then I invite them up for story time!

In addition to these K12 level students and the Pre K, many of our regular college students come from rural areas with no broadband access and may not have even dial-up at home. Many are students retraining after layoffs, and like me, predate computers and information literacy training in their previous school settings. I am also enrolled in LIBS 6142, Instructional Foundations of the School Library Media Program, in which we discuss instructional standards and information literacy education. Everything that I have learned in 6142 and in the readings in this class have found applications in every population we serve.

Introduction

"The purpose of the Early Internship is to expose the candidate to the school environment and introduce the school culture in the selected environment." (Syllabus LIBS 6989)

"What a long, strange trip it's been." (Grateful Dead)

I'm a Luddite. And an "older" American. I come to new technologies slowly and with great reluctance. But in 2000, home with children and a growing mail order business, it was time to get an "internet" ready computer. (Does anyone out there remember when a modem was an external device you purchased as an accessory?!) So I needed to learn to use it. And I needed some adult contact beyond just customers placing orders. At the local library, I picked up a flyer about the first completely online program being offered at the local community college. It was for an associates degree in library science. The classes were inexpensive, flexible, and they sounded like a great way to give my aging brain a stretch and give context to learning the new machine. That's where it started.

I took a class a term alongside business and parenting. I loved it. But before I could finish my degree, my husband was killed in a workplace accident in November 2005. The mail order business was good, but not good enough to support us and the LTA (library technical assistant) degree I was earning would not, either. So in January 2006, I enrolled in the online MLS program at East Carolina University and took a part time job in a corporate library in Greensboro. My contract there ended as I earned my degree in May 2008. The economy was tanking long before the Wall Street crash of October 2008, and full time employment for a new gray-haired grad was nearly impossible to find. August 1 I began working as an LTA in a branch of the community college where I'd begun my journey and re-enrolled at ECU and directed the journey towards school media certification, hence this class. The class requires 110 contact hours in a K12 setting in addition to reading, discussion and reflection on education theory and the internship experience.

I am currently the only day-shift library staff in our branch library. My job encompases the full range of daily library operations except for acquisitions which is handled by the evening staff, ILL which is handled on the main campus, and formal library instruction which is handled by the instructional librarian from the main campus. But library orientation, reference, circulation, copy cataloging, promotion, display, intra-consortium borrowing, and anything else that needs to be done falls to me. I love it. I love the students, I love the co-workers. I love the practical stuff I'm learning. And I love helping people, especially with information, which is what librarianship is all about.

So, about the people. We are a small branch campus with a focus on green innovation. We have a sustainable agriculture program that is widely recognized, and a biofuels program that receives requests for graduates from across the country. We plan to offer a natural chef's program when our new LEED certified buildings are completed which includes a new library we will share with the town library. But the core population consists of more typical community college students looking for career training and university preparation. And true to the community college mission, we have a huge continuing education program that ranges from medical training and certification to craft and cake decorating classes. And another large basic skills component that serves adult high school students (AHS), GED students and Huskins students from local high schools getting career training. The main campus has an early college high school and our campus periodically explores the logistics of adding such a program.

Our faculty are typically masters degree or higher with "industry" experience--the kind of boots on the ground experience that helps them prepare students for the workplace well beyond the academic credentials. And they are in the community college system because they love their subject and they love to teach. Because of its small size, there is a real sense of community and collegiality among all the staff members which has made it a really great place to work.
Because the library serves AHS, GED and Huskins students, I have been allowed to earn a third of my contact hours here on campus. The remaining hours have and will be earned visiting K12 settings of various kinds including a year-round school in Apex this summer. I completed most of my checklist for this course in a visit to Randleman Middle School earlier this year and I will use this blog to record more in-depth observations and reflections as required by this course. So we begin.