A Vision for South East Junior High Library

Vision:

The South East Junior High Library is a busy physical and digital space for exploration, discovery, and creation by all its patrons - teachers, students, and staff. Through collaborative relationships with teachers across disciplines and subject-areas, the library program helps address all eight of the Iowa City Community School District CSIP goals by integrating information and digital literacy into the curriculum.  Specifically, the library program directly contributes to students becoming independent readers of increasingly complex texts, the use of technology to increase students’ reading, writing, math and science skills, and helping students to feel safe and connected to their school.

In addition to skill building, the South East Junior High Library program strives to get students and adults excited about reading both paper and digital texts through displays, programming, and personal relationships.  With a successful library program, students throughout the school are asking questions, looking for answers, creating knowledge, questioning their results, and asking more questions.  Students are using current, reliable information to make new contributions to our information-rich society.  Students need to continue to share their learning, their creations, and their passions with relevant audiences in our school community and beyond.  With support from administration and our colleagues, the Teacher Librarians are able to be successful in all of our roles: as Teachers, Instructional Partners, Program Administrators, Information Specialists, and Leaders.

Recent Accomplishments:

In the last two years, we are most of proud of the following four accomplishments:

1. We increased the number of collaborative units integrating information and digital literacy, either through providing resources, or co-planning, and co-teaching. Of the ten units for which we provide resources and planning support, three are new in the last two years. Of the eleven units which we co-teach, five are new. We worked with Literacy 7 classes to establish a historical fiction / informational text project.  We turned an isolated book report in Personal Development into a collaborative blog. We have also increased the time spent in the classroom for established collaborative units. Five research days in Science 7 classrooms transformed into 12+ days of exploration, research, creation, presentation, and evaluation. Due to these increases, we have to find unique ways to collaborate with multiple teachers at the same time.
2. This year we increased the number of student volunteers  in the library by forming the Danger Squad: a rotating team of students who work before, during, and/or after school to help the library run smoothly. Danger Squad jobs include transporting technology throughout the building, troubleshooting technology problems, circulation, and more. The Danger Squad has increased student ownership not only of the library, but also of their school community. Teachers and students alike have experienced the positive effect of this student team.
3. In August 2012, we began a process to make the library more inviting, a little more modern, the collection easier to access, and create space that instructional technology, supervision, and collaboration needs demanded. The facelift included red and black paint, vinyl letters, new seating, rearranging the fiction collection, and wireless cards to create flexible learning spaces.  Pictures of the library remodel are located here.
4. An effective library programs does not develop in isolation. In addition to support in the building, external collaboration can lead to increased and more robust collaborative opportunities with classroom teachers.  With the support of building administrators, the four junior high teacher librarians in our district coordinated both observation and planning times to share best practices and work towards strengthening the junior high library experience district-wide.  During meeting times, we examined district curriculum with the goal of better articulating the understandings and essential questions. This effort continues to help us reflect on our programs and how we can better our students’ learning.

Effects on Student Learning:

The effects of our library program on student learning are demonstrated with several pieces of data, including circulation statistics, library usage statistics, the number of collaborative units we plan and teach, and of course the work our students produce.

Our circulation statistics reflect not only reading which is required by curriculum, but also the personal reading efforts of our students. In the first five months of this school year, 9,681 copies have circulated to our 800 students. These statistics show that on average, each student has checked out 2.4 books from our library each month.  Of the books circulated, 53% were fiction, 12% were graphic novels, and 7% were nonfiction. Of course, we know that some students check out far more than 2 books a month, and for some, they may not check out any book that isn’t required reading. Because so many of the books circulated are fiction or graphic novels, we can assume that most of these books were selected for personal enjoyment or for literature class, rather than for research.

Our digital sign-in sheet yields a great amount of data on when, how, and why our library space is used by individual students.  These statistics, in addition the physical calendar we use to schedule library space and technology resources, show clearly how vital our space, programming, and resources are to our students and school community. We impact student learning not only by making our space and resources accessible, but also by having professional staff and qualified Teacher Librarians available to teach, co-teach, plan, and provide guidance.

One of the things we are most proud of in our library program is the increasing number of collaborative units we have been able to work on with teachers. These numbers demonstrate that our school not only cultivates a culture of collaboration, but also that our colleagues trust our ability to enhance their curriculum and therefore our students’ learning.

Finally, the most obvious pieces of data that demonstrate the library program’s effects on student learning are student products. By looking at the work our students create, we can see the impact of our lessons on our students' information and digital literacy skills - and the areas we need to continue to work on.