Field Experience Journal - Entry Two

My experiment with opening the library to students over the summer has been ... not so great.
I am sad to report that not a single student came to visit the library this summer. Keep in mind, the idea to open up the library during the summer was definitely a last minute one. In fact, there were only two weeks of school remaining when I we first approached the subject. The last two weeks of school. Even my most avid library visitors barley feigned interest, and I know they only did that to appease me (they're so good). Even still, who can blame them for not being excited to come back to school during the summer? This is the first time our school has done something like this (at least that I know of). For the students, summer meant vacation from school. Not more school. Oh well. So, while I was able to complete a lot of needed work around the library, and plan for the year ahead, I did not check any books out to my students.
However, I am taking this to be a learning experience. I would like to try to do this again next summer - with, hopefully, different results.

So, this and subsequent posts are dedicated to takeaways from this little experiment and suggestions on how to do it better in the future.

Plan Ahead! This might be the most important lesson from this experience. I neglected to plan ahead. Here are points I should have planned ahead for:

* What are my goals and how can I achieve them?
* Who can help me? Put together a team of people that are willing to support the plan.
* How does this fit into the school curriculum? Because, it should! Work with ELA teachers to find out what is on their summer reading lists. I'll touch on collaboration further in my next post, but definitely start thinking about how the library's summer reading plan will fit in to teachers' plans.
*Start early! The earlier, the better. Even if it is just an idea floating in your head, start writing out plans as they come to you and have something concrete in mind by at least October or November that you can use as your pitch when finding support.

In my next post, I will discuss how to find support.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Field Experience Journal - Observation One

For my first observation, I visited a small, public elementary school library. I knew I was going to assist the librarian in developing curriculum for her gifted students. As I have been working with the gifted teacher in my own school, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions specific to working with gifted students. 1. How does teaching gifted students in the library differ from other students? 2. What are some ways in which the library can best support gifted students? 3. Does the library host resources especially for the gifted students? The librarian had answers for all three questions, but I did do a little research on my own after the visit to follow-up on my own professional curiosity. Much of my research backed up the actions and beliefs of the librarian. For instance, when addressing differences between gifted students and other students, the library pointed to the seemingly endless curiosity of the child. She also said that they typically like to read muc...
Read more

LIBS 6120 March

Since I started taking this course, I've been checking out professional catalogers' blogs. It's been new to me as I've never really paid attention to the cataloging world and really didn't know much about catalogers - except that they love mahjong. Anyway, I recently started reading this blog written by a Canadian cataloger. It's clever and interesting and actually makes cataloging interesting - but, that's not why I'm bringing it up. I read one of her older posts about what makes a good cataloger and within the discussion a British colleague wrote something about job candidates shooting themselves in the foot by mentioning that they catalog with Dewey. So, I've been thinking about that. What gives? I get that larger libraries use LOC, but this librarian is British, so that can't be it. Maybe England uses a different cataloging standard? I could look it up, but I'm too exhausted (more on that later). Or, is Dewey just an antiquated system ...
Read more

Field Experience Entry Three

Image
In my last post, I brought up some lessons I learned from my failed attempt at a summer reading program. For this post, I bring to you lesson number two - Programming and Promotion. Programming In relation to last week's post on planning, programming will take a lot of time and, hopefully, collaboration. You will need to think about themes, topics, classes, outreach and more. I would have liked to have my summer reading program based on a theme with a book selection that promoted the theme. From that, it would have been cool to offer special programs on open library days. Say the theme was graphic novels - I could have held a session on design, animation, or character development. Again, this all goes back to planning ...and starting early. At least I have a start for next year! ALA has many great ideas on Summer Reading Programs Promotion I feel I really dropped the ball, too, when it came to promoting my summer library hours. I did make a really neat poster which I wi...
Read more