We are currently working on author interviews for the 3rd season of A Literary Tour of South Carolina. This week we traveled to Lexington, SC, to interview Fran Rizer. Fran is a former classroom teacher. Prior to her retirement she was teaching creating writing in a Midlands high school. Fran now writes the Callie Parrish Mystery Series with such fun titles as A Tisket, A Tasket, A Fancy Stolen Basket and Casket Case.

On Friday, we went to Charleston to interview Jonathan Miller, creator of the Sammy the Wonder Dachshund series. Jonathan illustrates his own books creating the illustrations with construction paper. No they are not just simple flat pictures but intricate designs using as many as 70 pieces of paper and taking 30-40 hours to complete. Jonathan is available for school visits. You can contact him through his web site.

More interviews to come for our third season.

I expect that I am not alone in anxiously awaiting the results of the voting on Tuesday, although probably for very different reasons. It will be a welcome relief not to be bombarded with TV ads, political discussions and commentaries at every turn, billboards, mailers, and unsolicited (and I might add, unwanted) telephone calls.

The current extended presidential campaign should have focused a spotlight on the necessity of teaching information and media literacy in every classroom from Kindergarten through twelfth grade. Helping our students understand and recognize bias and propaganda in the media is, and should be, a primary focus of all classroom teachers and library media specialists. But what do we do about the general population that has not had, and will not likely get, information/media literacy instruction? In our “flat” society we must depend on the media (newspapers, television news, news magazines, etc.) to be vigilent in maintaining impartiality and to report the news with objectivity and fairness. Unfortunately, that is not always the case which again points to the importance of helping our students learn the critical skills to become information/media literate.

Professionaly I will continue to work to facilitate infusion of information/media literacy into the curriculum. I hope that when blatant bias is discovered in the media that all informed citizens will lodge their complaints publicly as well as directly to the news outlet. Being information/media literate is critical in our “flat” society. If you are a teacher or library media specialist, what’s happening in your classroom/library media center to help your students become information/media literate? If you are a parent, what’s happening in your child’s classroom or library media center, to help him or her learn the skills to be information/media literate?

Today is the 3rd day of the LMS Institue, Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century, a graduate-level course  sponsoredby the SC Department of Education and offered through the School of Library and Information Science, U.S.C. The participants have spent time with Frank Baker (www.frankwbaker.com)  exploring media literacy; Barry Britt (www.soundzabound.com) exploring digital copyright and podcasts; Cathy Nelson, library media specialist in Horry County  (read Cathy’s blog, Techno Tuesday http://technotuesday.edublogs.org/) and seeing first-hand such Web 2.0 tools as wikis, blogs, RSS readers, ning, and Skype.

Course participants include classroom teachers, library media specialists, district library supervisors, and a district technology director. Our discussions have been interesting and eye-opening because we are seeing each other’s jobs from others’ perspectives and learning new terms, such as ICTs (Information Communication Technologies). The big question then became how do ICTs fit with our state content standards.

Exploring the content standards, the new Standards for 21st Century Learners (http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/learningstandards/standards.cfm), the revised NETS – Students (http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS), class participants discovered that our state content standards do not have a lot of ICTs embedded. The group was asked to suggest ways of integrating ICTs into the classroom curriuculum.

One outcome of this class will be a revised ICT Scope and Sequence which will scaffold student learning from Kindergarten to 12th grade. When should ICTs be introduced to our students, in what grades should the ICTs be reinforced, and when should we expect to see students demonstrate mastery of these skills. Using I for introduce, R for reinforce, and IU for independent use, this ICT Scope and Sequence can serve as a guide for teachers, media specialists, and others to ensure we are giving our students the skills to be successful in the 21st Century. The revised ICT Scope and Sequence will be published by mid-August and available online at http://martha.alewine.googlepages.com/thesimplefour.

The final project is a collaboratively planned lesson that integrates ICTs. The group will share their lessons at the final class and then we’ll make these lessons available online for other teachers and library media specialists to use. We will also use these lessons as examples for the committees working on the SC Department of Education’s curriculum development initiative.

Digital networking is becoming more and more important for professional connections and for instructional. One of the best things is the face-to-face networking that takes place during these LMS Institute courses. Connecting with colleagues across the state is a long-lasting added benefit of these courses and one that will evolve into a digital netwrork.

 

 

 

South Carolina is definitely in the minority when it comes to school library media specialists. We are one of the rare states that still requires a certified library media specialist in every school serving grades 1 through 12. So what? What difference does it make to have a school library? What difference does it make for our students that every faculty has a certified library media speciaist? Beyond the state mandate, what is the ultimate reason or purpose for having a school library media specialist in every school?

South Carolina has professional standards for school library media specialists. These standards address and explain what the role of the library media specialist is. So what? I wonder how often South Carolina library media specialists refer to these professional standards and attempt to explain their role and responsibilities to their stakeholders. What difference have these standards made in the careers of the state’s school library media specialists and in the school library profession in South Carolina?

South Carolina has school library program recommendations and standards. So what? Has Achieving Exemplary School Libraries (available online at http://martha.alewine.googlepages.com) made a difference in our state’s library programs? Objective 1 in these program standards says that at least 50 percent of the classroom teachers actively collaborate with the library media center professional staff to plan and deliver instruction that integrates information literacy [including media literacy] and technology literacy with the content and to jointly evaluate student learning. So what? What difference do school library media specialists make in student learning and student achievement? Can we prove it? How?

Objective 4 of Achieving Exemplary School Libraries states: “The library media program supports the school-wide reading initiatives and emphasis by encouraging reading throughout the school, offering a variety of reading materials, and participating in various state and national reading programs (e.g., S.C. Book Award Program, Children’s Book Week, Teen Read Week, National Library Week).” So what? What difference do school library media specialsits make in students learning to read for recreation and enjoyment? What difference do media specialists make in students learning to love reading and developing an appreciation for good literature? What difference do SC media specialists make in their school when it comes to the creation and implementation of school-wide reading programs that are not dependent on any computerized reading program?

We have standards for a school library core collection ((available online at http://martha.alewine.googlepages.com)? So what? I have talked a great deal lately about curriculum-collection maps and conducted many district staff development sessions for library media specialists on what these maps look like and what needs to happen to create these maps. A curriculum map to show what is being taught in the individual schools and when. A collection map to show (a) how the school library collection can or cannot support what is being taught and (b) how the collection is aligned with the school’s curriculum. So what?We are fast approaching the final days of this school year. As media specialists prepare their libraries for the summer break, I hope they will think about these two little, yet very important, words–so what. I hope media specialists will spend the next few months contemplating the question and its relationship to everything they do. If they cannot answer so what?, then perhaps more work is needed to finish the task at hand, whatever that may be.

I am a library information professional working for South Carolina school libraries. So what?

Ten years ago I became the State Consultant for School Library Media Services with the South Carolina Department of Education after working for many years as a South Carolina school library media specialist. From my experience of being evaluated based on a teacher evaluation model, I knew the first order of business had to be beginning the process of writing state standards for school library media specialists. The timing was perfect because the state had just implemented the first teacher evaluation standards as part of a new evaluation initiative, ADEPT–Assisting, Development, and Evaluating Professional Teaching. After issuing invitations and asking for volunteers, we had a very respectable group of  library media specialists and district library supervisors who worked VERY hard to write the South Carolina ADEPT Performance Standards (PSs) for School Library Media Specialists. I must say it is very gratifying to finally have their work validated beyond the boundaries of South Carolina. I am truly grateful for their foresight, their vision, their dedication, and their commitment to that project. They did an amazing job of writing standards that are truly reflective of what the building-level library media specialist should be about on a daily basis. I might add that these standards were written BEFORE the LMS standards for National Board Certification.

In planning and presenting staff development sessions for school administrators, I often use the 7 ADEPT Performance Standards for School Library Media Specialists as the basis for the presentation. Seeing the light come on and watching some of these administrators have an “Ah-ha” moment during the presentation is a wonderful sight to behold.

ALL South Carolina library media specialists are to be evaluated based these state professional Performance Standards. Only those induction LMSs, those LMSs working on annual or provisional contracts, and those LMSs who have transferred from other states are formally evaluated on all 7 of the PSs. For the other library media specialists (those being informally evaluated through Goals-Based Evaluation or whatever it’s called in your district) who have continuing contracts, their goals must be written to reflect these state professional standards for school library media specialists. As these experienced LMSs are contemplating their evaluation goals for upcoming years, their goals should reflect PSs 2-7 and how what they do in their library media center improves student learning and achievement.

The recent revisions to the GBE evaluation process will be very beneficial for LMSs. So stay tuned for future developments on South Carolina’s professional standards for library media specialists and the next phase of evaluation.