Off and running.

Yesterday fieldwork at my secondary site began in earnest.  After some more orientation and introductions I spent some time working on the collection development policy I'd already outlined at home.  It was helpful to get my supervisor's feedback.   I also spent some time with the library paraprofessional asking questions about circulation policies and library operations in general.

As part of my supervisor's role in planning professional development, she had a lunch meeting with another teacher who is a co-coordinator of professional development.  There are two strands of professional development--the "tech menu" days my supervisor has started, where staff members choose from several sessions focused on educational technology (this week included blogging, flipping classrooms, creating and uploading simple videos, and an open session where teachers and guests took part in a panel discussion regarding technology trends in education) and the more traditional days where the entire staff meets and are focused on school-wide topics (this year, homework & assessment and creating SMART goals).  Because these two types of days are very different, my supervisor and her co-coordinator have split the job, and she is focused on the tech menu days.  However, she wants there to be some connection between those days and the other days, so she is working to include options aligned with the different departmental SMART goals and with homework/assessment.  For them, working together to plan the same day proved difficult, but dividing the days and meeting from time to time to discuss crossover works.

Then I attended a district Library Media Teacher meeting at another school, which was highly interesting in regards to how the different school libraries in this district are operated.  Since I am working on a CDP for my site, I asked how many of the had written collection development policies.  One teacher librarian just kind of chuckled, and the consensus was they had all created them for coursework but hadn't revisited their CDPs.  There was also discussion about teaching digital citizenship, possibly purchasing e-books, and issues with different technology used at all sites.  Following the meeting I talked to my supervisor about her reasons for wanting a written CDP and how she planned to use it, which was helpful in letting me know how to proceed from here.

I am looking forward to learning more about how she divides her time during the day and how everything gets accomplished.  I am also excited about how my CDP and weeding/cd projects at this school could literally transform the collection in the library and, hopefully, the way the library gets used.  I know I won't be able to see the plan to completion, but if just getting it started is pretty exciting.  I think I mentioned before that the collection is extremely outdated and the space in the library is not being used as well as it should.  For example, supplemental novels used for English classes currently take up shelf space in the library.  Because of some upcoming construction, the entire fiction section will have to be moved, so this is an opportunity to make better use of the space and potentially open up the current fiction area for other uses after construction is complete.