Becca Smoot 

Summer 2018 
 

John F. Kennedy High School 

Media Internship Journal 
Reflections 
Background 
John F. Kennedy (JFK) High School is part of Montgomery County 
Public Schools (MCPS). This summer MCPS has offered summer school 
sessions at four of the area high schools for credit recovery or credit 
advancement. JFK has a diverse population of both staff and students 
attending summer school. Teachers range from high schools and middle 
schools around the county. Students come from multiple high schools, 
some from private schools or out of the county. Most of the courses 
offered over the summer include math and ESOL. Other courses include 
social studies and language arts. The summer school Media Specialist is 
Leyla Fandey 
Wednesday June 20th, 2018 Standards 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.3 
First thing in the morning was a staff meeting getting to know who 
was working this summer, procedures for safety, map of the school, 
attendance policy, and administrative point of contacts. We were also 
given a link to a shared folder with additional information.  
Afterwards Joanna (Towson intern) and I were able to assist the 
Media Specialist, Leyla Fandey, with scanning out classroom materials 
including promethean pens, remote controls, ActivSlates, and speakers. 
These items each had their own barcode and were assigned to specific 
classrooms. Teachers lined up at the desk as we searched for their items 
in a file cabinet organizer and scanned out the materials to their name. 
This ensures these materials do not get lost and are accounted for. I was 
able to help several teachers troubleshoot computer issues in their 
classrooms such as connecting cords properly so that the promethean 
board and monitor would work.   
Once we helped the teachers with technology setup, we met with 
Leyla Fandey and she gave us tour of her media center. She explained 
that she was working the space and that it could fit 2 classes. This was her 
first year at this location and was also working on weeding out the book 
selection. She showed us where staff books were kept, the DVD collection, 
the boxes she was using to collect weeded out materials, how she was 
planning on rearranging space after making more space and her plan to 
interfile the biographies.  
Then we met in her office as she had prepared an agenda for us for 
that day and the following days on need to know items. She showed us 
how to access the Financial Management System by identifying the media 
center’s budget. She explained the databases that she had purchased 
and the use of CommonSense Media. She showed us how much each data 
base cost and explained how each of them were important to her school 
population. Some of these online resources were centrally purchased and 
some she knew her ESOL population would benefit from. She explained 
how the funding was determined by having $11 per child. 
She was able to briefly discuss the book approval system called DAE 
and how books were approved online. We also discussed what vendors 
had high quality materials. We were able to create a draft email to reach 
out to the summer school staff for collaborative opportunities.  
Monday June 25th, 2018 Standards 1.2, 1.3, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.3 
In the morning we sent out the email for staff to collaborate in the 
media center or to plug into classrooms. We then went into the step by 
step procedures for DAE. Before the bell rang for students to enter the 
building, we went around to classrooms to troubleshoot for problems that 
including restarted computers, and ensure power to promethean boards 
and pens. 
Leyla used her agenda to guide us from more information on the 
DAE system for approving books into the media center. Then she 
explained to us the State Report. This was important because it gave us a 
clear understanding of what would be expected of us when we became 
media specialists. She told us that we should fill out the paper copy first as 
the system does not save information from multiple sessions. She also 
gave approximate dates when the state report was due and the reason for 
submitting this report. After, she showed us the various Common Sense 
Media resources that we should use when collaborating with summer 
school classes. Leyla then taught us how to use a program called Maximo 
for hardware from the media center that needed to be fixed by the county 
using barcodes. She explained the software she used for creating the 
media center webpage was Libguides and recommended it as part of our 
media center budget.  
Joanna and I created a shared OneNote and Google Folder to save 
our created resources. We then looked into how to use Destiny for 
ordering books.  
Tuesday June 26th, 2018 Standards 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.3 
We were able to email back staff that were interested for 
collaborative planning. These teachers included US History, Biology and 
ESOL. Leyla showed us some content specific databases that we could 
introduce to each of the classes as research resources such as 
ScienceFlix and Culture Grams. We set up a time to give a class orientation 
on Wednesday for the ESOL level 3 class.  
Afterwards, we looked into the an application called TitleWave to be 
used as a way to manage collection development within the media center. 
Here Leyla showed us the average age of the entire collections and 
specific Dewey numbers or fiction books. This helped us decide 
collaboratively which sections needed to be weeded. Using this program 
will help us in the future in keeping an up to date collection within our 
libraries.  
Wednesday June 27th, 2018 Standards 2.2, 2.3, 3.3, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.3, 5.4 
Leyla, Joanna, and I led in an ESOL Orientation of where books were 
located in the library. MCPS granted us access to a summer account for 
Destiny so that we could check books out. I was able to help students 
select books for free choice reading by showing recommending some titles 
that I had already read or authors I recognized. I also showed them books 
that were in multiple languages so that they could enjoy reading in their 
first language. Then we were able to guide students to line up before lunch 
to check out books using scanners and the keypad for them to enter in 
their ID numbers. Even though students may not attend JFK during the 
school year, using their ID number they were still able to check out books. 
Leyla was able to pull up her budget and my future one at my media 
center in the fall. She showed us how to see what other media specialists 
have ordered for ideas with regards to collection development.  
After using TitleWave the previous day and discussing some of 
Leyla’s plans for the biography section, we began weeding out biographies 
with out of date publishing, quality, or relevance to current events. We 
completely weeded the biography section and Leyla said she will show us 
how to surplus the items. She also mentioned that she will allow teachers 
to add them to their classroom libraries before deleting them from the 
system on Destiny and surplussing them.  
During lunchtime, we met with Ms. Cullen who is the teacher for US 
History. She was one of the staff members that had reached out to us for a 
collaborative opportunity in a research for US History. We were able to 
analyze her outcomes for the following week’s lessons and determined a 
project based on Yellow Journalism. She mentioned that she was more 
accustomed to teaching Advanced Placement courses in US History but 
needed to differentiate the WebQuest. I was able to begin finding another 
resource on Discovery Education to help front load vocabulary. I 
embedded her WebQuest and follow up questions into a webpage that I 
created for Yellow Journalism. Here will also be the options for the 
creative writing project.  
Being in charge of the AV equipment, Leyla, Joanna and I helped set 
up the auditorium for a transportation meeting which entailed bringing 
the cart for the computer and the projector, checking that it aligned with 
the screen in the auditorium, and checking for the speakers to work as 
well as the microphone.  
Thursday June 28th, 2018 Standards 3.3, 5.1, 5.3, 5.4 
The transportation meeting was taking place in the morning and we 
were able to assist in troubleshooting the AV equipment to ensure that 
videos for the meeting worked and the cordless microphone volume.  
After weeding through the biography section, we used the 
application software Titlewave again as we were attempting to increase 
the average publishing date to be at least within the last decade or so. 
TitleWave showed that the reference section brought down the media 
center collection a lot. Not only that, these books were not getting 
checked out. We weeded the reference section based on copyright date 
after TitleWave generated a list. After we weeded through those books, we 
went through and chose additional reference material that were outdated 
and low quality. We thought about which books would be checked out and 
evaluated the collection based on the information that could also be 
found on the online databases and the newer reference materials.   
Joanna and I created a list of resources and templates for US 
History class by creating many of the types of mediums that students 
could choose from. By changing the edit code on the Google mediums to 
copy, students will be able to generate a copy and create their own 
Headline and newspaper based on Yellow Journalism. These links will be 
added to the Yellow Journalism web page. Ms. Cullen met with us briefly to 
discuss timing of the lesson.  
Friday, June 29th, 2018 Standards 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 3.3, 5.1, 5.3, 5.4 
We continued to go through and weed the Reference Section based 
on copyright date. The previous day we only weeded through two sections 
within the references.  
We met with Ms. Russ to discuss research for ESOL 3 class. I asked 
for a list of countries where her students had migrated from. We then 
began creating resources and lesson planned the databases the students 
would use to research the specified information desired by Ms. Russ 
including populations, flag, capital city, and free choice sections using the 
left bar of information on Culture Grams. We also created list of options to 
present pamphlet of information on countries and created a list of 
resources that can be used