What I Learned in Grad School

It would seem that my graduate school experience is over. I say this as though this last semester wasn’t a whirlwind of student teaching, regular class work and general personal life insanity and that I hadn’t spent the 4 semesters before that working my butt off but hey, I worked REALLY hard for these rose-colored glasses.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not at all regretting my decision to go to grad school or even doubting that my experience was good, just that I have a tendency to immediately forget how hard I worked the second it’s done with. And it IS done. I graduated. I finished all of my requirements for the program and can officially call myself a librarian.

So now I’m left with the question, what did I learn, exactly? I know that I know a bunch more than when I started but it’s really hard to think back and realize exactly what it is that I know now that I didn’t know before. In order to really explain what I feel I learned, I’ll first explain that I’m going to be dividing this up into categories: personal, professional, interpersonal. You’ll understand why in a moment, I swear.

PERSONAL
On a personal level, I learned a tremendous amount about myself — what I can handle, how much I can do before I burn out, how to listen to my body and realize when I’m sick or in need of extra sleep, how to get that laundry to last much longer than it should. Okay, so some of these are more noble than others but in all seriousness, there were times that things like vacuuming and doing laundry took a backburner to sitting on the couch with my boyfriend and allowing myself to relax. I’m admittedly bad at relaxing so this, in and of itself, was a huge lesson. It was also a necessity because giving myself a break here and there rather than pushing through and getting everything done that I was “supposed” to do honestly would have killed me. The things that were essential got done and those that could be spread out ere and every now and then some questionably clean socks were worn.

PROFESSIONAL
Obviously, on a professional level, I learned a tremendous amount. Each of my classes left me walking away with (at the minimum) a piece of information I didn’t know before. As much as  I hate to be cliche and give in to what everyone has been telling me from the beginning, I’m going to have to – my field work and practicum experiences were the best part of my grad school experience. Here I was able to synthesize all that my professors and classmates taught me and could put it to work in a safe environment with an experienced librarian so that I was able get a feel for what it would really be like to be a School Media Specialist.

I feel that tie iSchool’s organization and understanding of information professions has really helped to guide me to create my own graduate experience that not only gave me the most bang for my buck, but the best possible education that will open many doors and opportunities for me. Am I petrified that I won’t find a job? Absolutely, but I’m sure that with my skill set even if the economy isn’t giving way to school librarian positions immediately, I’ll be an invaluable member of any organization. This isn’t just because of my dark sense of humor and clearly out-of-control ego, but because if I don’t know the answer, I now know sooooo many ways to find the proper resources I could make an undergraduate’s eyeballs pop before I even mentioned Google.

INTERPERSONAL
What I’ll refer to as “real-life” relationships suffered a bit during grad school. I couldn’t always go out to a party, I couldn’t always be there for my friends, and I couldn’t always go to a movie with my boyfriend. What I could do, however, was apologize and make promises to set aside time once a month for those people I cared about. My best friend could talk to me, my boyfriend got a date night, my mom got to ask me all kinds of questions about whether or not I was taking care of myself and I was able to do a little bit at a time without feeling like I was neglecting anyone important or neglecting my school work.

I can’t control others’ reactions, only my own. Yeah, this sounds a lot like a mantra for an anonymous group of some kind but after spending a good 30-40 hours online a week reading posts from classmates, I found I sometimes had to repeat this over and over again. Not all information professions are going to be librarians and not all feel the need to uphold the ALA’s Bill of Rights. That said, no librarian is truly without bias. Given these truths, I found my most frustrating class was one that dealt with information issues on a global scale and put students from all different walks of iSchool life in the same discussion, not just those of us who have had it ingrained that every patron is entitled to those rights afforded by the ALA. At it’s best it was interesting and eyeopening to see how many different points of view there could be on what rights to privacy a citizen has; at it’s worst it was hard not to start a flame war over whether or not the government should block any website deemed pornographic. I had to bear in mind that my peers couldn’t see my expressions or hear my tone (which was sometimes an advantage) but that I also couldn’t see theirs. Sometimes it was helpful to have a friend in the class read a response to see if they read the allegedly insulting classmate the same way. Other times, it was helpful to walk away and reply the next day. Still others, it was best not to reply at all because if I couldn’t say anything nice…you know the rest.

All in all, everything I learned while attending SU has helped me to excel as a student, as a professional, and as an adult in a simply chaotic world. Finding the right balance between all three types (personal, professional, interpersonal) of relationships and perspectives has helped me to realize how to best balance my life in a way that allows me to use my information literacy skills and knowledge to their fullest. What is information, really, if not for having people to share it with?

Dr. Bernstein, you are mistaken…

For anyone who may not know, Dr. Marc Bernstein, the current Superintendent for the Valley Stream Central High School District in Nassau County, NY has some suggestions for Andrew Cuomo when it comes to budgeting education. The most important of these (as far as this blog is concerned) is that it would be in the state’s best interest to consider, “in this Internet age, eliminating the antiquated requirement that all high schools have at least one full-time librarian and a minimum number of books” (Bernstein, 2010).

There has been some backlash and responses to his article, most notably Joyce Valenza’s School Library Journal published (poetic) response. I think Ms. Valenza did a fantastic job articulately expressing what it is that makes school librarians so important to the education system, especially in “this Internet age,” as Dr. Bernstein puts it.

What I find exceptionally disheartening, however, is that while researching who Dr. Bernstein is and what his background has been, I found this old (from 1996) synopsis of an address on technology for public schools. In it, Bernstein is quoted as saying that “Libraries are great places for kids to gather; they’re open in the evening and all have technology. Since kids like to talk, they should plan space to accommodate them and encourage social interaction.”

Given this information, I am left wondering the following:
1) Was Dr. Bernstein suggesting that only public libraries are great places for kids to gather?
2) If this statement was meant to include all libraries, what has happened since 1996 that Dr. Bernstein’s opinion of the library profession has changed? Or, is it that his opinion of the profession hasn’t changed – does he believe we don’t need a certified librarian in the schools but the library itself is important to student life?
3) What, exactly, does Dr. Bernstein think librarians (public, school, academic, special, etc.) do?

Yes, libraries are a great place for kids to gather. They have resources, activities, and space that allows student to work collaboratively in both an academic and non-academic capacity. Libraries can give patrons social outlets that are live and in-person which, in an incredibly digital world, can be invaluable.

What is often left out, however, is that libraries have librarians.

In the past few months it seems I have increasingly come across people who believe that the work of a librarian does not require a master’s degree or certification of any kind. It should not even much matter if you have completed an undergraduate degree so long as you know your alphabet. In theory, a kindergarten student could do all that a librarian does. Why DO we need librarians in the school?

Here is the problem – school librarians live in two worlds. We are both teachers and librarians. This sounds incredibly obvious but the implications are greater than it would seem on the surface. To the average teacher whose time is spent teaching classes, planning for classes, and directly striving to complete curriculum goals and standards, shelving books and ordering materials seems out of place in a school environment. Here is the reality:

In order to provide the best possible services to the students (and staff) of a school, the librarian sometimes has to do “librarian things” like:

* shelve books. This helps the library to stay organized and ensures that access to desired information is not compromised. If the librarian at my practicum site did not shelve books daily, there would be well over 100 books a day piling up at the circulation desk. Putting it back on the shelf means that someone else who might want it can find it.

* order materials. This means that the library is current, that the collection continues to support curriculum, and that any requested materials from students or staff members can be brought into the collection. The “collection” is not just physical books but videos, music, games, and databases. Databases, by the way, provide access to scholarly journals, yes, but they also provide access to popular magazines, eBooks, and resources that would ordinarily cost the library hundreds of thousands of dollars to subscribe to. Plus, having digital access means not having to find physical space to store it all.

*weed. Retiring outdated and/or worn items is just as important as ordering new materials. It keeps the collection current, helps to maintain physical space, and helps to support any changes in the curriculum. Assessing whether or not to renew a subscription to a database means that money isn’t wasted on unused resources.

* check materials in and out. This is pretty self-explanatory but just in case someone needs clarification, the library can only operate well if materials are accounted for. So yes, when anyone in the school borrows something, we need to know. When that item comes back, again we need to know. Since the technology doesn’t yet exist for computers to be psychic, someone has to physically enter the information in the system.

* catalog and complete an inventory. When new materials come in, they have to be put in the system or else there is no record of their existence and no way to track there whereabouts. Completing an inventory helps to ensure that the library catalog accurately represents what is actually in the collection and doesn’t include lost items.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why do you have to be certified to do these things? Well, it’s a matter of education and experience. I’m certainly not saying that library aides or clerks should be discounted, especially because they help tremendously with the day-to-day operations, but they simply haven’t had the experience of being trained by library professionals. There is a reason the community can’t agree on what to call ourselves – we are school media specialists, teacher librarians, school librarians, library specialists, and information specialists. How would you allocate your budget to best fit the needs of your patrons? What happens if the MARC record of an item is incorrect and it’s necessary to manually input it? How do you assess the success of the library program? How do you weed or order materials while remaining unbiased? How do you uphold the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights in an elementary school? All of these things (and much more) are an important part of a library education and training. We are highly trained and skilled professionals who have chosen to make it our life’s work to help people get the information they need.

On the other hand, school librarians are teachers. We plan lessons. We collaborate with teachers. We support the curriculum and goals of every class in the school. We teach information skills which, in the information age, is really a life skill that all students need in order to become productive and successful members of society. Teaching research skills for term papers is a mere fraction of what we do for our students.

During my practicum (student teaching) hours alone, I wrote lessons on Internet safety and privacy, cyber-bullying, evaluating websites, finding information Google won’t show you, organizing notes, using web 2.0 tools, using social networking sites, how to avoid plagiarism, and respecting copyright laws. I’ve read numerous books to students of all ages (which, sadly, some children don’t get at home even in early elementary school). I’ve helped students find that perfect book for them that not only encourages them to read but helps them gain confidence in their academic skills as a whole. I’ve booktalked titles that students never looked at before that suddenly flew off the shelves. I’ve helped students find the answers to hundreds of questions from “What time is it in London?” to “What do I do if I think my friend is gay?” to “How does a text message get sent?” I’ve tied shoes. I’ve shown students how to reset passwords. I’ve encouraged students to read, to think, to be curious, to be creative, to be outside of their comfort zone, to share, to work together, to make connections, to be original.

These information literacy skills – being able to find information and then having the ability to distinguish the “good” from the “bad” – these are not fluff. These are essential skills in a world where information is flying at students faster than they can send a text message. This knowledge is not innate and using Google to find every answer is not always going to lead to the right information. Someone has to teach students how to do these things and support them as they wade through the process of becoming successful information users.

Someone has to show students the right way to use the Internet because, while Dr. Bernstein implies that everything that used to be in a library can be found on the Internet, not everything is given public access. Not every student can afford to buy an e-book. Even if students have access to free e-books, outside of the confines of the school we can’t be sure that they have the proper technology available to view the material. We can’t even be sure that they have Internet access outside of school.We can’t be sure that every student learns the same way when reading on a screen versus reading on a page. How can we say that we no longer need physical books in the library?

So, while Dr. Bernstein is right in saying that this is “the Internet age,” librarians are far from an antiquated profession. The skills students needed in 1990 in order to find information have evolved into a much larger animal, full of digital pitfalls, virtual dead-ends, and strangers with candy who promise that they will save the tree octopus with your donation. What hasn’t changed is that the public school system serves the public as a whole and provides an education to those who want it. Why would you want anyone except a trained information professional teaching your children when we have no idea what the world will look like in another 20 years? Shouldn’t they, at the very least, have been given the building blocks that tomorrow’s skills are built on?

Sources:

Mepham Alumni Association (1996). Technology at Mepham. Retrieved from http://www.mepham.org/technol.html

Bernstein, M. (2010, November 24). Opinion: What Cuomo can do to improve schools. Retrieved from http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/opinion-what-cuomo-can-do-to-improve-schools-1.2492599

The Blueberry Story

Someone forwarded this to me in an email and I thought it was both entertaining and relevant to the many things going on with NY schools at the moment. Enjoy!

THE BLUEBERRY STORY : A Businessman Learns a Lesson
by Jamie Robert Vollmer

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!” I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.

They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced — equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant — she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.” I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie. “I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis, English as their second language, etc. We take them all! Everyone!

“And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a postindustrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

The Possibilities Are Endless…

This week’s discussion in IST613 (Survey of Telecommunication and Information Policy) was a pretty standard discussion concerning government regulation of information markets, how the information market has changed the economy, and a general follow-up of the class readings.

That is, except for this one question:
You have been placed in charge of ICT implementation for the brand new Mars space colony. There are a lot of people, but unfortunately your budget, infrastructure, and knowledge capital are extremely limited since all the colonists came from debtors prisons back on Earth. What sort of ICTs are of immediate and practical economic use to your constituents? Give some examples of old tech, new tech, and fictional tech you want to have on hand. Which ones do you throw out as space junk? Oh–and defend your decisions to the colony members, who wanted a big-screen plasma TV.

I couldn’t not let the creative writer in me out for this one. I didn’t necessarily follow all of the rules but I would love for this to be a reality someday:

Okay, since I’ve answered two questions seriously, I’m going to take a much more fun approach to this one.

Before I begin, I’m making the following assumptions:

1. A president in the future has rejuvenated the NASA Space Program so that we are not reliant on 1990’s technology to neither travel through space nor to communicate.

2. NASA scientists have been able to come up with new, exciting, and more efficient ways of doing nearly everything, let alone breathe in a new atmosphere.

3. We have finally been able to create those “meal pills” from 1960’s television that gives us all of our nutritional needs and makes us feel satisfactorily full upon ingesting and provide us with the correct amount of water to prevent thirst, so all of our basic physical needs are met. We have a supply that will last 10 years and the formula to create more.

4. We all get to wear those awesome, uniform, silver space suits with matching boots.

5. We have evolved some and use more of our brain than we currently do.

6. The phone/computer/camera hybrid that we have been moving towards for the past few years has taken off completely and we all have our own personal devices that are all-inclusive.

These personal devices will be the key to all major communication and information retrieval. Powered by electricity from brain waves, this device will fit comfortably in your ear (like one of those spy ear pieces that you can’t see from the outside) and will be removable for sleeping (which I will further explain below).

All devices will be able to connect to one another, using brain wave frequencies, for basic communication. If you simply think the phrase “Connect to Mom,” the device will send a signal to that of your mother’s and send her brain a mellow tone, indicating an “incoming call,” followed by a visual representation of your face, however she prefers to remember you.

These devices will not rely on satellites and can function properly, regardless of the distance between people. Connecting brain waves will be the most efficient way to communicate person-to-person.

To get information, as one would on the internet today, you would simply think another command, “Find information on topic: Space Suit Repair” and your device will connect to a service provider that runs on artificial brain waves and acts as a super computer (it’s amazing how far technology has come) to perform searches. The information will be transmitted to your brain as though you are “seeing” it in a memory. You can then proceed as you would normally do with any internet search engine, selecting to try different words, adding other key phrases, or selecting a link.

Everything we normally do throughout our day to communicate or gather information will be done in our heads. Even the storage of pictures in photo albums will be accessible with the help of this device and our memories. Since the device will essentially turn our own brains into computes, we can even organize information in folders and directories.

We would remove these when we sleep so that our brains do not accidentally send signals to the devices, literally making our worst dreams a reality.

Now, given our limited budget and knowledge capital, we can expend all financial resources on shelter.

The New Industrial Revolution?

This summer, instead of giving myself a break like a sane person, I am taking a class on Information Policy. I have to say that when I saw the name and description of the class, I cringed a bit because, quite frankly, I’ve never really been a huge fan of policy and diving into the ridiculous semantics of how laws are written. So far, I’ve been surprised at what we are covering versus what I thought we’d be covering. This has, of course, brought me to have thoughts about the class even when not doing homework.

Having just finished watching a documentary on the History Channel (because I am a huge enough nerd that I like to learn even when relaxing) I just spent about an hour mentally likening the information industry to the American Industrial Revolution.

In the case of the Industrial Revolution, goods that were previously quite expensive because each component had to be hand-made and custom-built to fit that particular piece, became suddenly much cheaper because products were now mass-produced, each piece standardized. This had both a positive and negative effect on the economy as well as the quality of the products sold. For example, while it allowed for guns to be much more accurate and the production of weapons much more cost-effective, the mass production of goods like clocks, clothing, shoes, and even brooms put a number of tradesmen out of business. Things that had previously only been handmade were now considered pieces of art when they were homemade. These days, handmade items like quilts or custom-made clocks are much more expensive than their mass-produced components but people are willing to pay for the craftsmanship of the pieces as well as the piece itself.

The Industrial Revolution paved the way for the changing of fast mass information distribution. What the Gutenberg Press did for books, the Industrial Revolution did for paper and suddenly the newspaper business was booming because it was possible to produce daily, sometimes twice daily, editions of the paper rather than a weekly or monthly gazette. The question of how accurate and unbiased these newspapers were is a different issue in itself (see any article on Yellow Journalism), but the fact that men like Joseph Pulitzer had the ability to send out mass information quickly was quite extraordinary.

The information-based economy now has further revolutionized how we receive information in that what used to be a once-daily paper has become a constant stream of never-ending headlines, up-to-the-minute financial reports, and instantaneous information retrieval. Like the Industrial Revolution, this information age is arguably putting some older technologies out of business, or at least forcing them to change their business models. Whether or not the information markets will change the way America does business completely or if this change is simply more of the ever ongoing evolution the economy trucks through has yet to be seen.

IST611 Discussion Questions

In the article Diary of a Blog: Listening to Kids in an Elementary School Library by Janie Cowan (located in our class resources for the week), the author touches on the topic of site moderation and censorship. Discuss your thoughts on how you would run a blog through your own school library–specifically as it relates to the task of moderating and possibly censoring student responses.

First of all, I think I would begin by making it clear to students that a blog is public (much like any social networking sites that I am sure they are familiar with) but this particular blog was associated with the school. Comments or entries posted on the blog was the same as commenting in class or turning in a paper – don’t say anything you don’t want the administration to hear.

That said, using a blog site like wordpress.com will allow me to preview any comments before they are made public. While I don’t like the idea of censoring student comments, it might be necessary to do just this to ensure that students are using the technology appropriately. It would also give me the opportunity to privately speak to a student who might be doing just this and rectify the situation before it becomes an administrative nightmare. Students might not realize how their words come across and might otherwise be punished for an honest misunderstanding. I don’t think that silencing student voices is the driving force behind the censorship and I personally would have a difficult time not allowing a student to post their honest feelings if it does in fact relate to what is being discussed on the blog.

I think that the easiest way to avoid a major mess is to post some ground rules that all contributors (comments or bloggers alike) must follow. These would include the school’s policy on cyber-bullying, harassment, and appropriate handling of school materials. It would be made clear that the blog, while hosted on the Internet, is considered school property and should be treated as such.

In the article Learning With Blogs and Wikis, Bill Ferriter talks about how at times schools can be “hostile to the learning of adults”. Explain how a school librarian can incorporate blogs, RSS feeds, and wikis into professional development offerings. What potential do these tools hold for educators?

The potential for web 2.0 tools to be useful for school staff members is truly limitless. I believe that subscribing to RSS feeds from professional blogs, newspapers, or educational resources could greatly improve the access most teachers and administrative staff would have to such sites, especially with the help of an RSS reader what would put all of these feeds in one place.  As far as wikis, these would make collaboration with other teachers much easier, allowing both teachers to edit and add to their assignments and work collaboratively in an asynchronous manner. Not only does use of these tools enrich student learning, but it can help to make teachers’ lives easier (and who wouldn’t want that?). Perhaps allowing the librarian to prepare how-to seminars for the staff that would count towards some of their professional development hours would also entice teachers to learn more and to try to use some of the technology on their own.

Reference Desk Observation – Summary

I found that working with Ms. Smith was invaluable to me as a future school librarian. Not only was I able to really see how her day was spent, but being able to pick her brain about every day activities was fantastic. Also, as an enthusiastic teacher, she gave me a lot of wonderful ideas and ways to implement information literacy into nearly any curriculum plans.

I found that while there was a huge emphasis on teaching (rather than answering more reference questions as there would be in a public library) Ms. Smith found many ways to incorporate different information skills into each lesson. Some of what she taught her students to look for were the same things we studied in class – evaluating websites, properly using references resources, and becoming familiar with databases all became major themes in the media center.

It was incredibly refreshing to see a teacher so enthusiastic about teaching and making the environment kid-friendly without being condescending to her students. It was obvious that she was truly loved by the student body and that most teachers valued her opinion and respected her ability to help them with their curriculum.

Reference Desk Observation – Part 5

In the 8^th grade schedule this year, there is an extra period that most students may take an elective like art, music, or shop class. This year, the principal approached Ms. Smith and asked if she’d like to teach an elective on information literacy. Ms. Smith not only jumped at the chance but she decided to change the name to Marketing Strategies and incorporate traditional marketing information to help hold student interest. This week, I had the opportunity to watch the class in action.

Ms. Smith divided the 20 student class into groups of 4 and had them act as marketing agencies, each promoting a different imaginary product that they brainstormed. The first marking period focused solely on print ads, techniques used to pull in audiences, and ways to get buyers to purchase the products. Students used these lessons to create their own print ads and pitch them to the class. The second marking period focuses on both television ads and web ads. Students use Flip recorders to tape and upload their own videos. They use fee online animation sites to animate their print ads for Internet-ready marketing.

While the focus seems to be on advertising, Ms. Smith makes a point of teaching the students that this is how people market products to consumers. These are also techniques that websites use to get more traffic to come to their sites which is why Google is not always the best way to search for information. She teaches media ethics, advertising versus marketing, and why it is important to be smart information consumers – people who don’t take information at face value.

She even follows this through to plagiarism. She explains that quoting anything that isn’t yours is fine so long as credit is given but even quoting a movie without properly citing it is wrong. Ms. Smith says that some students don’t know that any work needs to be given credit, not just books. She equates directors to authors and explains that their work should be given credit.

The fact that this class exists at all is quite amazing, in my opinion. It does not take place in the media center but a classroom, which gives the class some privacy and cuts down on distractions. The class meets once a day for half the school year and then she’ll get a new set of students for the second half. Both she and the principal think that adding this class is helping to strengthen the students’ ability to identify good sources and accurate information.

Reference Desk Observation – Librarian Interview

In speaking with Ms. Smith, the media specialist at X Middle School, she gave me a lot of valuable insight into the life of the school librarian. For her, reference is not the same as it would be in a public library. Most students simply want information on authors or titles whereas teachers’ needs generally require a reference interview. Some teachers prefer to save time by having all the necessary resources already pulled, negating the students’ ability to perform searches within the stacks or on databases Ms. Smith fights this adamantly and is determined to ensure that each student has basic research skills.

Many teachers ask for help with specific databases and Ms. Smith finds that most seem to be afraid of them because they do not have the skills to properly use them. She would like to implement staff training sessions but so far has been met with much resistance; most of the staff would like her to do the work for them and most of the time she is glad to help but some teachers think that her job is to be their research assistant and she simply doesn’t have enough time to do that for each teacher. Instead, she began to book appointments with individual teachers, asking for 2-3 weeks so that she can properly prepare to help them. This has helped to cut down on her stress and has helped teachers to feel she is doing more to support their curriculum.

Recently, a particularly difficult reference transaction Ms. Smith experienced was when she tried to assist a 6^th grade student find an age-appropriate material on concentration camps. Encyclopedias were too broad and the databases yielded material that, in Ms. Smith’s opinion, was a little too mature for the student’s needs. In the end, with some serious searching, the two were able to find some information using a library catalog search for the Holocaust and found reference materials that better described information. Looking back, Ms. Smith thinks she would have started locally rather than in the databases because she finds middle school material hard to find; most is too mature for her students. Most often she uses the Internet and books to help the student body but she believes that all librarians should be familiar with search engines (including those that aren’t Google), databases, and the library’s collection. Knowing your own collection can greatly improve your ability to quickly help patrons.

Most services at the X Middle School take place in person, but teachers will email Ms. Smith questions and request. Students have the option to email her but very often choose to ask their questions live. Ms. Smith uses two major points to evaluate what materials should be kept in the library: does it have educational value and is it current? She is reluctant to throw away reference books but at the same time, anything that is more than 3 years old is more than likely already too old for a good reference. She tries to keep this as up to date as the budget allows. Sometimes when a student’s learning abilities are in question, Ms. Smith will secretly contact the student’s teachers to see if there is any further information that would be helpful when helping an individual student. If, for example, the student has clear issues with reading, Ms. Smith might suggest an Encyclopedia over a denser reference book. Ideally, Ms. Smith would like to never let a patron leave the media center without an answered question or the promise of getting more information.

The circulation desk (which doubles as the reference desk) uses numerous instructional strategies from walking a patron through the process of finding materials to letting the patron “drive” when at the computer. Because this is a school library, learning is the primary goal.  Ms. Smith tries to keep notes on what she’s done during the day and a general log of how many students were in the room each period, but it is nearly impossible to keep track of every question that has been asked.

Ms. Smith had started out as a language arts teacher in the district and decided to try out the position when the previous LMS retired. She received an emergency certification from a local college but went on to get her MLS to fulfill state criteria. At the time, she found that while she loved teaching, she was beginning to burn out and wanted to remain in the school environment. This seemed like an ideal situation for her and she has no regrets about her decision. Her days are completely different and full of surprises. Administration takes up a large portion of her time, as does instruction, but she says that the constant change is what makes it interesting for her.

Ms. Smith told me not to expect to work with teachers and pitch the services I can provide if I don’t understand the state standards that need to be met in each area of discipline. While information literacy is a wonderful skill to teach, it means nothing if teachers won’t collaborate and know that you are supporting their curriculum. One of the biggest services she would like to provide but currently cannot due to internal politics is the morning “Starbooks” café where students could come in early and buy breakfast while they worked on homework or read a book. While students can still come and use the media center before school starts, serving breakfast is no longer an option.

According to Ms. Smith, the best part of her job is having the flexibility in what she teaches, the day goes by very quickly, she can make a bigger impact with the entire school than with just one class, and the ability to support every other subject taught in the building. The worst part of her job is that she finds that she never stops, she doesn’t get a prep period like a classroom teacher would, and that the rest of the teaching staff often misunderstands her role and how her time is spent.

5 Things I Thought I Knew But Didn’t

Now that I’m about halfway through my first full-time semester, there are a couple of thoughts I had about distance learning that I hadn’t considered before jumping in. None of them are things that would have changed my mind (and certainly not things that make life unbearable) but they are things that while I thought I knew what it would entail, I now realize I had no idea.

1. Class discussions take place on a discussion board.

What I thought this meant: We would post on a discussion board.

What I now realize this means: In addition to all of the readings for class, I also have to read my classmates’ observations, thoughts, and questions.

Explanation: Some discussion posts are easy to read and understand and, therefore, easy to reply to and become involved in the discussion. Others are less so. In a live class discussion is fast-paced and people will generally talk for a few sentences before the person feels they have sufficiently made their point or the professor chimes in. This is not the case on a discussion board and some posts can be quite involved or long-winded. There are benefits to having discussions posted on a forum, however, and I do find myself going back and re-reading previous posts for reference, which obviously can’t be done in class without a recording device. Also, I can read the discussions at a time where I am alert and able to best communicate. For me, this is rarely before 9am but some campus classes can meet as early as 8.

Advice I would give to someone considering distance learning: If you don’t like reading, this is not going to be pleasant but then again, if you don’t like reading, any sort of higher education is not going to be pleasant. On the plus side, that one jerk in class (you know the jerk – everyone has that one jerk) isn’t live and in-person so it’s easier to deal with frustration because that person can’t see you or hear you cursing at your computer screen as you try to decipher what it is they are saying through the piles of extra paragraphs and excessively large words.

2. Your peers are also at a distance.

What I thought this meant: Classmates would not be local.

What it actually means: Classmates are not local, available at the same time you are available, and quite often, have full or part-time jobs.

Explanation: I was expecting to feel as though I was pushing through this on my own without any real classmates to relate to and finding myself clinging to names I recognized but this isn’t so. While I do find that I have to work much harder to connect with my peers, especially if there is any sort of group work that needs to be done, there is a definite sense of community and this is multiplied when you log onto Facebook and see that everyone’s status is, “Freaking out about my paper for 605!”

Advice I would give to someone considering distance learning: Join any and all social networking groups that relate to your program. While it may seem like a cheesy thing to do and I know a lot of people aren’t comfortable putting a lot of information about themselves online, you can control who can see you and who to friend as well as what is seen on your profile. For me, I’ve found FB to be a comfort when I felt I was the only one overwhelmed with work. Don’t be afraid to talk to “strangers” because they’re in the same position you are in. Take advantage of the “boot camp” courses over the summer – I know others have said it before but even meeting people face-to-face once is enough to make a connection. Technology has just helped to keep that connection intact.

3. All of your work will be on a computer.

What I thought this meant: Since we are no longer in the 1980′s, we will be using personal computers.

What it actually means: I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk on the computer watching and reading lectures, reading discussion posts, checking links professors have posted, and doing my homework.

Explanation: Yes, my computer time has increased three-fold but this was something I expected. What I didn’t fully grasp was that I never realized how ergonomically incorrect my desk chair is. Also, while I knew assignments would be turned in electronically, it didn’t phase me that this negates the need to print out a paper or assignment, saving trees, but also, preventing you from having a hard copy backup of your work.

Advice I would give to someone considering a distance program: Get a comfy desk chair. You’ll be in it a bunch. Also, invest in a thumb drive. You never know when your technology will crap out on you and it WILL inevitably be the day a major assignment is due. It’s already happened to me – hard drive failure hours before an assignment deadline.

4. Your schedule is your own.

What I thought this meant: I would be able to continue to work and go to school.

What it actually means: It’s my responsibility to figure out where to squeeze everything in.

Explanation: Life doesn’t stop for school and school doesn’t stop for life. In fact, the constant overlap is what makes distance learning so great – nothing has to stop for the other. This does require some juggling and I find that being organized helps but does not alleviate the feeling that I’m always playing catch up at school, at work, or in my personal life. The three will never mesh easily but since school always wins out (for obvious reasons), something else has to lose to an extent. This does mean that I sometimes feel as though I’m squeezing in a discussion post in between my drive home from work and the start of a friend’s birthday party.

Advice I would give to someone considering a distance program: ORGANIZE! The more organized you are, the easier it is to find time to do (most) everything you want to do. You’re still going to have to make some concessions but the more you are aware of where your priorities need to be, the better. Your day planner will be your best friend.

5. This is going to be fun.

What I thought this meant: Claiming that graduate school will be fun is a crock. This is the sales pitch that pushes those teetering on the edge of deciding whether or not to go to school over the edge.

What it actually means: No, this is actually a lot of fun!

Explanation: Yes, it’s a lot of work and yes, I’m tired and stressed but at the same time, I have a great network of supportive friends I’ve met through the program and I really do feel like we’re in this together. While there are subjects I enjoy more than others, overall each class I’ve taken has had a great deal I’ve enjoyed learning about and I’m constantly jotting down ideas for implementing what I’ve learned in the real world. I’ve found that the mental workout really enjoyable (admittedly, I am a self-professed nerd) and I’ve never once regretted my decision to continue my education.

Advice I would give to someone considering a distance program: Go in with an upbeat attitude and allow yourself to get excited about going through your program. The hard work really does pay off when you look back and realize how much more you know and how useful it will be.