Christina Crowe

Rocky Branch Elementary School

Christina Crowe and I started collaborating last school year. We both started our
media specialist career at the same time. She teaches at Rocky Branch Elementary
School where my nephew attends.
Our interview started with a discussion of memberships. Christina is a member of
PAGE and GLMA. She joined the GLMA’s mentor program where veteran school
librarians paired with school librarians who have less than three years of experience.
This has been a great benefit to her, I have also considered joining.
Next I asked, what's the best professional learning you attended this year and
why? She attended RESA @ Dove Creek regarding Dynamic Shelving. I had never
heard of Dynamic Shelving, so this was an interesting conversation. Dynamic Shelving
is a colorful,visual, and engaging shelving strategy. The goal is ideally to entice
students to leave the library with a book or two that interests them. Now I’m intrigued
and want to visit Dove Creek.
We moved on with a discussion about technology. She really doesn’t have to
deal with technology. The school has their own IT support that comes to her school
twice a week. Their IT department helps teachers with planning lessons with
technology and they provide support with issues. This is very different from how we use
our IT department, so I found it valuable to teachers and students. They also have a
technology support team that does a majority of the work in regards to tech support.
The role she has taken is to plan lessons for students that allow for coding (microbits,
ozobots, Dash and Dot). One of my goals is to become more familiar with coding for
our school.
I asked, what role do you see the school librarian and the school library playing in
the overall reading program of the school? Christina believes the media center should
be the heart of the school. She believes in supporting reading by providing students
with books that support their reading interest. Students are not going to read if they
don't like the options. Building relationships is HUGE. I completely agree.
 Further, we discussed collection needs. For development, she starts with the
teachers and the standards.She asks teachers what they need to support those
standards. She also likes to get suggestions for students. She also makes a priority to
ensure that the series is complete, which I think is a great point.
What steps can the school librarian take to encourage reluctant teachers to
utilize the library? She feels this is a struggle. Her reasoning included the fact that
teachers are getting too reliant on using getEpic or YouTube to show read alouds. She
mentioned schools where the administration has said they never want to see these
options used in classrooms. This notion really made me self reflect. Oftentimes, I will
use read alouds via the internet due to funding.
In efforts to change this movement, Christina started something that she saw
another media specalist (https://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/) implement. It’s the
program You've been Booked. It showcases new books that are in the media center.
After meeting with Christina, I left with many ideas. I also realized our population
of kids is different and our funding. Christina’s love for the job, school and kids was
evident. She gets to work at 6:30 or 6:45 to make sure the doors to the media center
open at 7:10 when our school doors open. She technically doesn't have to be at work
until 7:30. She is very busy and doing it all without a paraprofessional.

Carolyn Hutcheson
Commerce Middle School Librarian Interview

While visiting the middle school for my practicum hours, I had the opportunity to
interview the librarian Carolyn Hutcheson. We started with discussing what professional
organizations she’s a member of, Page. She also serves on the committee for the
GaETC. Carolyn has more than 20 years of experience in education. She has designed
curriculum and taught gifted students, served as an Instructional Technology Specialist,
a Quality Work Facilitator and as a Media and Educational Technology Instructor. This is
her second year at Commerce Middle School.
 Not only did she attend and enjoy the GaETC conference this year, she has also
enjoyed our Marzano Professional Learning Sessions. She has read many of Robert
Marzano’s books on topics such as instruction, assessment, writing and implementing
standards. Through our discussions, it is evident her love for continuing her professional
learning journey.

This job has been quite a shift, as far as her role as a technology specialist, since
her background is in Instructional Technology. Right now, she assists with any tech
issues or teacher/student questions. Considering her background and work with
GaETC, she is truly an asset to our instructional technology team.

When asked, what role do you see the school librarian and the school library
playing in the overall reading program of the school? She elaborated on how the school
librarian and the school library play a crucial role in the overall reading program of the
school. The librarian serves as the facilitator of reading, providing a variety of resources
and services to support and enhance the students' reading experiences.
Librarians are responsible for selecting and acquiring books and other reading materials
that are relevant and engaging to students. She works closely with teachers and
administrators to align the collection with the curriculum and educational goals of the
school. The school librarian also plays a critical role in promoting reading to students.
She also organizes and hosts library events, Spelling Bee, book fairs, bookmark
contests, book clubs, reading challenges, and other events that encourage students to
read for pleasure. Providing recommendations and guidance to students and teachers
on selecting books is a priority for Carolyn. Further, she teaches students how to use
the library and its resources effectively. She thrives on helping students develop
research and critical thinking skills.

To determine her collection needs, she reads, researches and compares book
lists from many sources such as the School Library Journal, Mackin lists, Follett lists,
Ga Book Awards, many other award winners, student selection, teacher selection. I, of
course, jotted these down for my own research.

We also discussed steps the school librarian can take to encourage reluctant
teachers to utilize the library. We both acknowledged how encouraging reluctant
teachers to utilize the library can be challenging. She tries to take steps to increase their
engagement and participation. She focuses on taking time with teachers to understand
their needs and assist with any requests. Building trust and rapport with teachers,
students and the community is critical to building a library with active patrons. She
collaborates with teachers on locating resources, planning lessons and teaching library
lessons. She strives to make it easy for teachers to use the library. Keeping up with the
grade level curriculums and offering resources and lessons based on what teachers are
teaching is essential. We discussed how these steps help teachers and students, which
is our optimal goal. She mentioned several times wanting students to view her as a
great resource and to make their lives easier. She offers many programs for students in
the library, which in turn helps teachers see the library as a collaborative space.

Terri Massey
Commerce High School

I also interviewed the Commerce High School librarian, Terri Massey. Terri is also
a member of PAGE, Georgia Library Media Association (GLMA) and American
Association of School Libraries (AASL). Contrary to Christina, Terri has found the
Association of School LIbraries more valuable than GLMA.

Next we discussed the best professional learning Terri attended this year. This
was her first year attending the GaETC conference. She liked that the conference
wasn’t grade/age specific and offered so many different sessions. She mentioned really
enjoying the Canva breakout session. In the past she attended the Children’s
Literature Conference and mentioned leaving before the conference was over. She
suggested I attend both and see what works for my population of students. She only
has one year until retirement and was disappointed she did not attend GaETC sooner.

Terri has a unique role at Commerce High. She’s in charge of all of the
chromebooks, organizing, troubleshooting, etc. She manages the gmail accounts, helps
with Edgenuity accounts, IC accounts, troubleshoots teacher technology issues in the
classrooms, assists with Google Classroom questions, Microsoft questions, and gmail
issues, etc. She mentioned pretty much anything that comes up with teachers and
students, is sent to me. She also coordinates Social Media, Website, and scrolling
announcement boards. Further, Terri keeps up with sports calendars, master calendar
for school, and the web calendar. I realized Terri acts more as an administrative role
than librarian, which is really what she was hired to do 12 years ago.
 This is evident when asked, what role do you see the school librarian and the
school library playing in the overall reading program of the school? At the high school
level, she emphasized this isn’t as significant as it should be. However, in the last
couple of years, she has been able to try and change some of the teachers' attitudes on
coming to the library for research lessons. Literature classes bring students in to have
some quiet classroom reading time. She always makes sure the ELA department has
the class books that they need to support their curriculum. Needs Assessments are
sent out to all departments, but the ELA dept. is usually the only one that takes
advantage of it.
To identify the collection needs of your library Terri conducts a Needs
Assessments survey and sends it to each dept. every other year. She tries to follow the
AASL guidelines on the newest books that are out to make sure that students have
something new coming in the library.

To help reluctant readers, Terri has taken on the task of Generifying the media
center to promote student literacy. She discussed being a little nervous about doing this
in her final two years as the librarian. She has already started this process and already
a positive change has transpired. Terri also tries to make sure she is somewhat
knowledgeable in the standards being taught. She started a “book tasting” in the ELA
dept this year. She invited other teachers to come in to check it out and that sparked
interest for several.

All in all each librarian had similar suggestions when asked, What advice would
you give someone just entering the field of the school library media? These suggestions
included, get to know the office staff well, make sure that you keep an open-door policy
with all of the staff and students, create a positive, welcoming atmosphere (safe place
for students), create boundaries for yourself – don’t have the “I can’t say no” mentality,
get to know your collection and find out your budget and any other specifics that will
affect your ordering, etc.