Educational Autobiography

Charmaine Broe-MacKenzie

To put it mildly, I took my time growing up. I went to college because everybody else did, and because my 10th grade geometry teacher told me, "with your brains, you'd be stupid not to go to college". Now I wonder if that wasn't her stock response to any student mistaking her for a guidance counselor. I did go to college, and eight years and three universities later, I had my B.A. in German and a commission in the U.S. Army. I was stationed in Germany, and practiced speaking German at every opportunity, professionally and in my off-duty hours. I also traveled extensively to every country I could during my three years living there. My experience with learning and using the German language, and with living in a foreign country, will serve me well as a media specialist in a diverse school, with students from diverse cultures working to learn English.   Another one of my positions in the Army, once I was back in the U.S., will also serve me well in my role as media specialist: as the battalion training officer, I established training programs, forecasted and managed the training budget, coordinated training for personnel dispersed throughout 15 western states, and developed, wrote and published the yearly training calendar.

At first glance my short career as a Real Estate Appraiser, after I left the Army, doesn't seem related to a school media specialist position; however there was a specific aspect of my appraisal experience that will help me to work with teachers and students facing new technology. When I started out as an appraiser, we completed our appraisal form by hand, and then the form was typed by someone else.   But a software program was developed and we were quickly introduced to the computer age; I had my own laptop and produced my own appraisals. There was some resistance to change, but it did not take long for me, and most of my associates, to realize the advantages of technology.

I think I finally grew up when I became a mother. When I enrolled my daughter in kindergarten, I signed up as a volunteer in the classroom. Coming in to school weekly, it did not take me long to discover the media center, and I volunteered there too.   Once my daughter was in middle school, and my son was in elementary school, I was volunteering in two media centers on a weekly basis. I also became a substitute teacher, so that I could substitute for the media specialist and the media clerk in both schools, and thus had many opportunites to spend entire days in the media centers, continually learning new tasks and facing new situations. This frequent and continuing experience over the last 10 years has served me well, as many media center concepts and media specialist responsibilities were familiar to me when I started the UGA School Library Media graduate program. And when I enrolled at UGA, it was not because everybody else did, like so many years ago, but because this time I recognized what I wanted, which was to be a School Media Specialist, and I went after it. During my graduate program, I was able to develop many of my projects with the media specialist from the middle school, which added a real-world perspective. I was also able to collaborate with teachers there for the relevant assignments on curriculum mapping and collaboration, because they had seen me working in their media center for years.

I believe that I have built up a realistic portfolio that can be applied to a middle school media center. I also believe that I have the educational and professional background that will empower me to flourish in the four roles of the media specialist: teacher, instructional consultant, information specialist and program administrator.

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