Building Bridges

As I am writing this, I am wrapping up my first half of student librarian teaching at Hickman Elementary under the supervision of Diane Chen. Yes, I know. She is amazing. Many of you probably know her from being a former President of TASL. I still can’t believe how lucky I was to have this opportunity. She is the ultimate example of a school librarian. Anyone who knows her knows that I am speaking the truth. This being said, I would like to share with you some of the lessons I learned from my time at the library media center at Hickman Elementary.

When I was asked what I was studying in graduate school, I was often given strange looks along with ‘You have to go to graduate school to be a school librarian?’ usually followed with a raised eyebrow. Reactions have not changed much when I tell others that I am a student library teacher. As I approach my graduation date this May, I have a different perspective about how I view these people. I used to think who cares what they think. Their opinion does not matter to me. Now I have learned it is important to be concerned with these types of views. As a school librarian, it is our responsibility to get the message out about the key role we play as educators. If we do not, there will be a continuing break down of librarians in the schools.

School Librarians wear many hats. This I learned watching Diane balance all the hats she wears on a daily basis. I never figured out how she kept them on her head without one falling off. But if you ever figure out her secret, please let me know. It is imperative to be part of school committees as well as library committees. Who else better to be part of a team to improve the school than the very person who is in the hub of the school?

Another hat that could be worn by us is getting involved in writing articles for librarian journals and book reviews to help our fellow colleagues or attending professional workshops. We need to work together not only to improve each other, but to ultimately improve our profession. Also, going to the legislature to give a voice to all librarians is a hat we need to all own. We need to remind the people who make the significant decisions on education of the role we play in our students’ future. With this matter of the “65% Solution”, it will take everyone getting involved spreading the word of how our role is essential, too. While there are many other hats school librarians can wear, the best hat of all is the hat of building bridges with students and staff and the community. We provide a vital link in education and hopefully, wearing these numerous hats, we will be able to show others this very fact.

My next lesson is true for many. There is never enough time in the day. You start the day with so many things on your “to do” list. There are lessons to prepare for and lessons to teach. There are students to assist in finding books for their reports and books they are yearning to take an adventure with. The amount of technology questions that surface from the school in one day can be overwhelming at times. The numerous requests for assistance with other teachers’ lessons can flood in while with one hand you are checking in and out books and with the other hand juggling the phone as it rings constantly. I love it though. The excitement of handling the challenges that come your way keeps life from ever getting boring. But your daily tasks can sometimes get to you, so you must prioritize and make sure every moment of day is productive.

Another important lesson I learned is the value of a library aide. If you are fortunate enough to have one, then you know they are worth their weight in gold. Having an aide allows you to focus on your main priority: the students. The aide frees you up to concentrate in teaching while he or she takes care of task such as shelving books and checking in and out books. Hickman Elementary has a wonderful aide, named Dorothy Read. She keeps everything in tip top shape. I can only hope to work with someone like her again.

While I could go on for days about all the lessons I learned in my student teaching experience, none of them, including the ones I mentioned before, even compare to the lesson of why we do all that we do. I learned there is no more rewarding experience than making that connection with a student. Seeing the excitement in students’ eyes when you were able to help them find a book about something they were curious about or witnessing a student who was absolutely positive he would not like poetry and realizing that he does.

We inform all those who are ignorant of our role in education, we juggle the huge collection of hats, write the many articles about the tools of our trade, and conduct our daily tasks so students can have many of these many moments of discovery and wonderment. I am so proud that I am soon going to join the ranks among all of you.

During my time at Hickman Elementary, I had the wonderful opportunity to observe different styles of teaching and various grade levels. I was always very rewarded by what I witnessed. Whether it was something I wanted to incorporate into my style of teaching or something I wanted to stay clear from, I felt greatly benefited by this chance to view these various teachers at work.

The first teacher that I observed was a kindergarten teacher. I had such great respect for style of teaching and was in awe of her performance. I found myself wanting to be a student in her classroom. When she said “Good morning, boys and girls,” they in return would say, “Good morning, Ms _____.” She had the student’s total attention the whole time. If they seem that they are going off track, she has the ability to gain their focus back instantly. She did this while always maintaining a loving and nurturing environment.

During carpet time, they sat in front of her to review the date, cite words, and many other daily routines. I notice that she had slightly tailored behavior control of one student. She gave an extra warning when he would lose his focus on the lesson. He was fidgety and he seemed to have difficulty paying attention. When he failed to adhere to the second warning, she asked him to stand rather making him pull a card. She then, without missing a beat when right back to teaching. This all took place in a matter of seconds. Three minutes later, she gave him permission to sit with a statement, “Try again.”

Later that day, I asked her about the incident. I wondered why she gave him more warnings and chose to have him stand rather than go to the next step of her discipline plan. Her response was thought provoking. She stated that this child in particular had more difficulty focusing than the other students. He needs more guidance and should not be punished after every warning, or she would spend most of her time correcting him rather than teaching. He could not help his lack of focus for the most part due to a condition unknown to me and needed to stand to help him with become focus. Her procedure seemed to work. He did not have any trouble after that moment during the time I was there. I loved the fact that she does not have a “one size fits all” mentality in handling behavior challenges.

The second teacher that I visited was a second grade teacher. I really loved her lesson and the way she presented it. It was a classic style of lesson right from Dr. Harry Wong, author of The First Days of School. She had an attention grabber in the beginning that was impressive. Her science lesson was on vibration. Before she mentioned what they would be learning, she laid out six film canisters in front of the class. She took one by one, shaking them and asking the class what they heard. Students gave many hypotheses to what they thought the canisters contained. After recording the statements on the board, she instructed the class to open their textbook and they read as a class what made those noise.

The whole time she was teaching, it was obvious to me and not the students that she was always setting up for the next step in the lesson. This created amazing flow to the lesson. No time was wasted.
The only aspect that I had trouble incorporating to my style of teaching is her interaction with the students. She tended to be sarcastic and spoke down to her students which created an atmosphere where certain students would no longer stay focused on the lesson and retreat within. I noticed that the students tended to be sarcastic with one another and even from time to time with her as well. I feel she would keep the entire class’s attention and command respect with such ease if she did not use sarcasm and use more praise. I felt she was unaware of her sarcasm and that it was obvious that she loved teaching and her students. While I was memorized by her remarkable lesson, and was flawed by her classroom management.

Last, I observed a third grade teacher where I left with great excitement of what was occurring in her classroom. She always gave clear instructions of what was expected academically and behavior wise. Most incredibly, was what she did not say. It was quite obvious she had instilled in her students from day one what was expected from on every aspect of her classroom. I witnessed an entire lesson with not behavior problems, full of excitement and the student encouraging each other in learning.

She started a lesson called around the world. This was used as a multiplication review. The class of 23 students quickly sat in a circle. The teacher started the game off by asking a multiplication problem. The student instantly answered. That student stood behind the next student beside him. Student after student kept getting the answer right. The class was cheering him on while encouraging the student who failed to give the answer before him. After ten students, the successful student was beat out by a fellow student. Rather than be a sore loser, which is what I expect to happen. He shook his opponent’s hand and said good job. I felt that he genuinely meant it. The whole class was this way. The student, who was successful and just lost, got up and took the teacher’s position of giving multiplication problems. She set back and observed the process. I though this was a great way of cooperative learning.

When I remarked to her how I was impressed on how the students were so encouraging to one another, she modestly stated that she was lucky to get such a good group this year. I felt that it was not luck. No one could be this lucky to have a class of student to automatically get along at the level they did and achieve this level of learning.

So, I investigated more into this matter. I asked my supervising librarian teacher how this teacher had such a great class. She said that she was that great of a teacher. She established her expectations early on and she herself was very encouraging. The students were modeling her behavior. This made total since to me. All the classes that I observed seem to model their teachers’ behavior. Teachers set the tone of their classroom environment by their own actions. I felt this was a valuable lesson and it is going to make me a more effective teacher.

I had a great opportunity to attend a library media meeting in the district that I am student teaching in. I was full of excitement being in a room of people who were already in the profession I am proud to be part of soon. It was very interesting to see so many kinds of views on various topics. I do want to state that I respected all of their opinions. They have been in this profession longer than me.

With that being said, I was a bit discouraged by some of the Library Media Specialists’ views on how to handle students who have lost or damaged books. There were some who were of the opinion that you should just block their account preventing the student to ever check out a book again. This block can follow them through out their whole academic career. If I am understanding this correctly, a second grader can lose a book and have their account blocked all the way to his senior year of high school. Does anyone else think this is really unfortunate?

I know children books are very expensive and there is never enough money in the budget to pay for them. But are we not missing the whole point of why we are in this profession? Our number one priority is not putting the books first, but the children first. We are not a glorified keeper of the books, but we are here to make sure the kids are reading, learning, thinking and growing as individuals. How are we doing that by saying to them, “Sorry, you have failed to keep up with the book or you have failed to convince your parents to pay for this book, so you may never ever touch another book until you resolve this issue. Why would a kid ever come back to the library or ever think of picking up another book again. The last time they did, they had a really negative experience. I could not blame them. When this happens we might as well lock the library doors and go home.

This might seem a bit harsh, but I feel when librarians adopt this philosophy of librarianship, they are missing their whole purpose of the profession. Are we security guards of the books or are we teachers? Yes, there are going to be kids who are not going to get it right. That is why they are called kids. But this is a valuable teaching opportunity to show them how to be responsible and be good citizens. I know what you’re thinking, “Well Amanda, how many books are we going to lose to teach them this very important lesson? Three, six, twenty-four?” I don’t know. But do we really have the right to stop them from learning or to give up on them? Maybe we need to educate the parents on what we are trying to accomplish or spend more time with that child, so they understand to take better care of the book. Isn’t that our goal? Isn’t that our responsibility? When my life is through on this earth, I don’t want people to say, “Well, as a librarian she had 0% of lost books, but no child ever learned the love of reading.”

In the elementary library that I am currently student teaching at, there is a constant controversial book. But it is not the parents that are challenging it, it is ironically the teachers. Now, I can understand the “uncomfortabliness” of the book. It is a very graphic book about where babies come from in cartoon form. There is even a drawing of mommy and daddy doing the “deed”. But I have a hard time saying it should be out of the library. If I was a parent, I am really not sure how I would react if my child came home with this book, but as a librarian….Well, I can’t really argue it should be banned. With the ever rising rate of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, this is a great opportunity to open the dialogue with kids before they fall in that trap that our society is constantly luring them in. But what I find interesting about the whole situation is how the teachers are handling their views. Instead of taking the proper and professional steps of challenging a book, they will either hide it in the library or just take it from the library and hide in their classroom to prevent any student from checking it out! The librarian that I am working under is very good at doing some investigation work at figuring out who has it and sneaks the book back. I have even witnessed first hand a teacher take the library book out of a student’s hands after they have checked it out. But this all seems very silly to me. I would expect more from other educators. I am just curious what other may think.

I am constantly amazed over the many kinds of classroom management. Some are positive and then, there are some that are very negative. This is a weak area for me. I was a substitute teacher for about two years and I quickly learned to be very firm with my classroom management. You almost had to. Everyone knows that students quickly figures out how much they can get away with and push it as far as they can. The regular teacher is not around and they may never see the substitute again.

However, when establishing a long term classroom relationship you have to find a healthy balance. From what I have read from very various articles on library classroom management, you want to do everything possible make the library a very appealing place to visit. I could not tell you how many times in my middle and high school days as a student the school librarian made my visits very unappealing whether it was my interaction with them or other students. They would just always have a very unhappy look on their face and whether they realized it or not they gave the impression that they had not interest in helping you at all.

So, as an upcoming school librarian, I am on a search to find a classroom management styles that firm, very loves. I do not want them to run over me as some students have been. But I do not want them to dread the library but having to deal with me yelling at everyone.

I have been observing other teacher’s classrooms in hopes to adopt my own style. I have seen one teacher’s style that I am very eager to learn. She is a very sweet and loving kindergarten teacher. The kind you wish you had every year of your academic career. Being in her classroom made me feel cheated not having this experience as a childe and made me yearn to be a kindergarten again.

Like her students, you find yourself wanting to please her by answering each request correctly. Her students did sometimes make bad behavior choices, but this happened very little. But you would hardly notice because she handled them very quickly and never stopping her lesson. She would use slight hand gestures and a disappointing look to the wrong doer. When a student passed her three warning she quickly told them to stand and kept right on with her lesson. The student was not upset that he was caught, but more the fact that he disappointed her. About five minutes later she told him to sit and try again. Then, she went right on with her lesson without missing a beat. He did. He wanted to please her.

You can walk into her class and her students are very, very quiet and working diligently. This did not happen out of fear, but out of love for their teacher. Not only does this classroom management produce wonderful behavior out of her students, but it is very evident that it produces great academic achievement. These students made me in awe of their amount of knowledge they already have achieved. I have visited higher grades in the elementary school that are not as quick as the kindergarten class.

I have seen other teachers whose classroom management is so harsh. It may control the behavior, but it leaves the student either mentally paralyzed or an outburst of tears. They would use screaming in their student’s faces and belittling them to get their students to do what they ought to be doing. Learning cannot take place here and it is obvious in their scores.

I am starting this blog site to reflect on my student teaching experience. My elementary supervising teacher, Diane Chen and I are both reflecting on this experience. So, if you like to see the librarian teacher side, check out deepthinking.blogsome.com.

I am really excited about this experience. This placement began on January 13th and will end on March 10th. After this placement, I will begin my student teaching at the middle school level. I am a little nervous on that one because I have always viewed my style of teaching more on the lower grades. But I will see. So, far my time at Hickman Elementary has only confirmed what I already know about becoming a librarian. This is exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life! Now, it has not been a piece of cake, by no means. But that is why I like it so much. It is always a new challenge at every turn.

I have learned that a librarian’s job is basically in construction. We try to build bridges with students, faculty, parents and the community. That is pretty much everyone in our society. That is a huge responsibility. I get a lot of raised eyebrows when people ask me what I am studying in school. People are surprised that you actually need a master’s degree to be a “librarian.” There is a big misconception of what a school librarian really does. It is not just the vision of shelving books. School librarians do so much more. I will be talking about that more in my upcoming blogs.

I feel so far my weakness might be classroom management and trying to get the lesson plans on the grade level that is needed. I either shoot too high or too low. Hopefully, that will come in time. My worry is my comp test in April. This is the last major hurdle that could stop me from graduate in May. But I am immersing myself in professional articles, going over my notes from all my courses and asking as many questions as I can. But most of all is pray. I really don’t know of anything else I can do. I will keep you posted. My biggest misconception is the real meaning of collaborative teaching. What I thought was collaborative is really cooperative. This is still great. My goal is to have my portfolio completed on time. That is a huge project. Another big deal coming up is on February 14th. I will be attending a job fair for teachers. Hopefully, I will come away with a job.

Well, I need to get back to my lesson plans. I hope all is well with you and may your day be very blessed.

Amanda Murray

Welcome to buildingbridges at Blogsome. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

An email has been sent to you giving you details how to login to the administration section. From there you can change the design by clicking on the tab MANAGE and then click on the tab THEMES. If you have any questions ask them in the forum. We are only too willing to help.