| School library media candidates provide leadership and establish connections with the greater library and education community to create school library media programs that focus on students learning and achievement; encourage the personal and professional growth of teachers and other educators, and model the efficient and effective use of information and ideas. |
| Project: Internship |
| Summary: The internship
program gave me a chance to write down what I have learned through my
first year as a media specialist. Without this assignment, I
would not have a chance to reflect on what has happened this
year. |
| Justification:
Internship provides aspiring
and current media
specialist the chance to take what they have learned in the program and
put it into practice in the school setting. It requires the
intern to
collaborate with the teacher and reflect on their experiences as they
work to integrate the school library media program into the school's
curriculum. As a first year media specialist, it was interesting to reflect on my successes and those areas where I still need to improve. One of the areas I was worried about was leadership. This was the first year in my educational career where I had to provide guidance to teachers about policies and pratices in the media center. I was a little overwhelmed with only one year of the school library media program completed, but as the year continued, I found myself able to rise to the occasion and give teachers more information when I saw confusion. The internship documentation was also helpful when I had my annual evaluation, and I knew what I wanted to improve for the next year. I wanted to increase my collaboration with teachers, and I also want to improve on my organization to make my work space more efficient. |
| Project: Program Development and Evaluation Plan |
| Summary: Media specialists create a program development and evaluation plan to focus their energy, time, and money on what is most important for the media center. This plan needs to correlate to the school's improvement plan and ALA and AASL standards. Goals are formed for a five year plan along with strategies to meet these goals. |
| Justification:
With a plan, media
specialists can evaluate
each activity in the media center to determine whether it meets the
goals set for the program. This plan gives media specialists a
chance to see how well they connect with their education community with
collaboration and integration of information literacy skills. The
strategies in the plan require the media specialist to lead as they
work to achieve these goals. Without leadership, the role of the
media specialist and the media center will not be used to their maximum
potential. As our group discussed goals, we focused on collaboration and reading. These goals encourage the school to use the media center to meet their educational and personal needs. In the future, I plan to use some of these strategies to enhance my media program and integrate it with the prior program development and evaluation plan from the previous media specialist. |
| Developed in collaboration with: Leigh Martin and Lummie Harris |