Jessica Brown

Media Specialist Interview: Middle

1. Name of media specialist being interviewed.
 Mary Peacock
2. Name of School where the media specialist is employed.
 STEM Academy at Bartlett
3. How long have you been a media specialist?
 Since 2006 (14 years)
4. How long were you a classroom teacher before becoming a media
specialist?
 I taught high school for one year.
5. How have your past job experiences prepared you, directly or indirectly, for
this position?
 In general, just having a good work ethic will benefit you in whatever
position you have. Of course, with every job you get you always find
a way to be a good employee to understand more fully what you can
do for your individual supervisor, admin, school. Just knowing how
to serve a school population is helpful too. Experience in the schools
period helps get a perspective of how can I do this in a way that will
benefit people around me the best.
6. Why did you choose to pursue a degree to become a school library media
specialist?
 I always knew that I wanted to be a media specialist. It took be going
through grad school.
7. What educational preparation have you had for being a school librarian?
What was your experience with that? What didn’t you learn in school that
you wish you had?
 My Masters is in instructional technology with an emphasis in school
library media from UGA.
 Everything. School is just a hoop you have to jump through. It’s just a
piece of paper you hang on your wall. I feel like a lot of times
professors have no real connection to what really happens in school.
And so, they are in their own professor bubble in colleges and they
all talk to each other, but they don’t really talk to the schools. The
people who are really doing the jobs. Not to fault anybody. That’s
just the way it is. There’s a few things that I did in school that helped
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Media Specialist Interview: Middle
me, but as far as your day to day, it doesn’t really prepare you. Every
school uses a different set of technology. Like my other school, every
classroom had a smartboard in in and I had to know about that. Here
at this school I’m at, there are no smartboards.
8. What experience have you had with cooperative program planning? with
cooperative teaching?
 This year is a little different. This year, I’m just making a lot of videos
and emailing them out. And saying If you want to show this to your
classroom, that’d be great. I’m constantly offering different things:
support. In years past, I have always done research lessons with an
emphasis on GALILEO and that kind of thing. And also, just like
orientation lessons and knowing about your cyber footprint and
digital citizenship and things like that.
 I always have classes that teachers, especially ones that have been
her, they just know. They’re like, “okay it’s the beginning of the
year, so I’m going to sign up with Mrs. Peacock and we’re going to
get the research lesson, the orientation lesson. We’re going to do
that.” Some of the classes it’s just understood that you come for it. I
can always tailor it for what the teacher wants me to emphasize or
what topic she wants me to hit, but usually I have prepackaged
lessons that they will sign up for. What I started to do last year is I
did a monthly newsletter that I would send out to all the teachers. In
the newsletter I would have a collaboration every month. I would
say, “this month, sign up for this collaboration. It would be
makerspace or research or literacy.” Every month I had a different
theme, and I would try to do a collaboration based on the theme.
9. How would you go about developing a strong team approach with other
teachers? How would you get reluctant teachers to utilize the library?
 We don’t have the copy machine in the library anymore. When the
copy machine was in the back room of the library, I saw the teachers
every day. I would hear them talk about what they did in class, and
would insert myself and say, “hey I overheard that you’re doing such
and such in class. Let me help you.” We don’t have the copy
machine in here anymore, so I have to take that extra step and so our
teachers have grade level meetings with our admin once a month. I’ll
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Media Specialist Interview: Middle
come to those and I’ll fit myself in and I’ll say, “let me help with
that.” If someone is a little reluctant, I’ll try to pursue them and say,
“hey, how can I help you? How can I make things easy for you
because you have to meet these expectations for your standards?”
There’s always going to be those teachers that love to collaborate
and those teachers that say no that’s not for me. That’s just the way
it is. That’s alright. I never force anybody.
10.How do you see the role of the library in the overall reading program of the
school?
 I would say that it’s definitely a support. Teachers do come and they
do use class sets out of the library every year. We have class sets of
eBooks that they use for their reading classes. And of course, last
year was a big push on independent reading and independent choice.
So, we did a lot of that last year, helping students with their
independent choice. We’re not a part of the planning. I’m not
brought into a lot of the planning conversations. They think of me
kind of like an after though almost.
11.How would you go about: (a) promoting appreciation and interest in the
use of resource center materials? (b) promoting storytelling, story reading,
book talks, and other resource center programs?
 I just make it available. In the newsletter, I say it’s available. I’m
100% positive that the staff is sick of getting emails from me because
I email all the time about stuff. I just make it available. I am
constantly there. Constantly reminding them.
 That’s through emails and the newsletter. We have guest authors
once of twice a year. Because of limited space, I’ll usually rotate
what grade level I’ll offer that to. I email all the teachers on that
team and say we’re having this author come this day. Let me know
what I can do for you. So there pretty used to that happening at
least once or twice a year. I have a twitter account for the library
too, and I put it on there.
12.What is your experience in leading professional development? Especially in
leading technology-related professional development?
 That’s a big part of this role is to help teachers and other media
specialists too. We have media center collaborative. They meet
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Media Specialist Interview: Middle
once in the fall and once in the spring, and you can go, and you can
sign up to teach a class. I always do that because I get free admission
and free lunch. This position definitely requires you to be a jack of all
trades and to know everything and to be able to show others how to
use everything. So, I just emailed out my staff Microsoft Teams
videos, tutorial videos that will help them. I didn’t create them, I just
found them on YouTube. Our school has edcamp sessions in the
school. It’s almost like a rapid-fire day where you learn and teach at
the same time. You have one big session with everybody. Then you
can break out and you can go into other sessions where one of the
people is talking about a topic. So, you’re leading a group, and then
20 minutes later we go to the next one. That person might turn into
an attendee at someone else’s seminar. I would always sign up to do
a class. That was almost monthly.
13.How do you ensure your own continued professional growth? In what areas
do you feel you would like to develop your professional skills and
knowledge further?
 There is the School Library Journal which is great. I don’t get it
anymore because it’s so freaking expensive. I enjoy being a part of
twitter. There’s a bazillion libraries that are on twitter. There’s also
Facebook groups. I love the Facebook group called Learning
Librarians. They are so inspirational, and they give you so many good
ideas. The district has 51 schools. We meet, well we did meet, every
quarter and that’s super helpful too just to hear what other people
are doing at other schools.
 That Exemplary Library Rubric is the gold standard, and there’s one
on there that gets me every time. Where you not only collaborate
with teachers and you help take the class through the lessons, but
you’re definitely involved in the assessment that happens. It gets me
every time. How is that going to happen? The teacher does the
grading, not me. The teacher has the grade book. I don’t have
access to PowerSchool like that. I guess it just means working so side
by side with the teacher to take it all the way through not only the
lesson and not only the presentation, and not only the application
having the kids do it but also through the assessment at the end. I
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Media Specialist Interview: Middle
don’t know of many teachers who would give that much control
away.
14.Describe how you will create an inclusive space where diversity and
equality are valued by all learners in the school community.
 I have completely changed the media center. Before when you came
in the double doors it used to be a bookcase right in your face. Now I
took all of those bookcases out, and it’s all open. It has a reading
area. We have a makerspace. We have a Lego wall. We have a
collaboration table. We’re before school and after school.
15.How do you ensure that you have appropriate resources for all learners in
your school? How do you include reading and instructional materials in
both print and digital formats that represent multiple perspectives and
varying points of view?
 Just spend the money that the district gives you in a responsible
way. You just look at you student population. What do they want?
My school, they want fiction titles. We have one to one iPads, so we
don’t need a large nonfiction section. They Google it. If they want to
know something, they’ll Google it. I’m going to spend the majority of
my funds on the fiction which they love. They can’t get enough of.
And they want series; lots of series on a higher reading level. Lots of
fantasy. Lots of dystopian. Knowing your population will dictate how
you spend your funds. What are your needs here at your school
cause every school is a little different?
 The district has purchased this new online eBook platform called
Sora. It’s awesome. It’s like the Netflix version of library books, and
it’s in eBook format. That helps us get a whole bunch of different
titles. The same with our library, I get award winning titles. And the
multicultural ones and Hispanic. Just looking for those different
voices that may not be heard in traditional classic fiction. I also like
the website, good reads. It’ll always keep you up to date on new
books and what’s popular and what’s not popular. We also do book
clubs pretty frequently too.