ENGAGE Interview

 My last interview took place at a suburban high school outside of Columbia. It is an International Baccalaureate and arts magnet school and serves approximately 1300 students in grades 9-12. The librarian has been in the profession for 14 years, beginning as a public librarian. Ms. P has been serving at this school for the past five years—yes, she started during the pandemic. 

The following questions guided our discussion:  

1. What are some of the ways that you implement the “engage” foundation into your library program? (Strategies for gathering and using information; evaluating information; ethical information use) 

a. Do you feel that your schedule is more beneficial or detrimental for promoting these concepts? Why?  

2. What are some of the resources you use to help implement the competencies for this foundation? (Can be with students or for yourself) 

3. Do you ever collaborate with teachers to implement these competencies? Can you give me some examples?  

4. What are some of the challenges you face when trying to implement the competencies of this foundation?  

5. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about your experience or general thoughts about the “engage” foundation and its competencies? 

 

Ms. P teaches implements the engage foundation both with teachers and without. Like many of the other librarians I have worked with and talked to this semester, teachers are not as willing to collaborate due to time constraints of what they are required to teach in the classroom. Therefore, she has found herself working more often with small groups and individual students. She uses the resources found on SC Discus to help them through the research process. She noted that in her first year at this school, there was an additional database the school paid for, but since it was rarely used, she recommended they stop the subscription. She was able to use all the money they saved to increase her collection budget. I think that was a great example of auditing resources. It will be important for me to look at any subscriptions that are coming out of my library budget to make sure they are actually needed.  

One of the resources she uses to help teach classes is Breakout EDU, which is a gamification platform. She has used it to teach about “fake news,” as well as programs for Black History and Women’s History Month. The kids enjoy it until they begin to get frustrated because they cannot figure something out. She also said the lock itself is challenging for the kids. Students no longer have lockers because their textbooks are all online. She spends a great deal of time having to teach them how to correctly work the combination locks. This is something I would not have even thought of! I will need to make sure that I thoroughly examine any new programs and tools to ensure that every aspect of the teaching is addressed. In this case, I would need to make time at the beginning of each session to do a minilesson on how to properly disengage the lock.  

One of the biggest challenges Ms. P has with this foundation is that she feels like she has to start at the beginning of the research process every time she works with students on these concepts. It does not appear that they have the foundational skills for her to build upon and she worries about what will happen when they go off to college. She lamented that elementary and middle school librarians and teachers did not get to spend enough time on these strategies because they are being told to focus so much on what is being tested. As someone with an elementary teaching background, I tend to agree with her.  

Although I do not know where I will be working next year, I hope it will be in an elementary school. I have already been thinking about what types of lessons and content I would like to make sure my students know. This conversation with Ms. P has cemented for me that starting that research foundation in the lower grades is important. If I can build on the skills each year for each grade level, by the time they move on to middle and high school, they should have a firmer grasp than they may have had in the past. I think it will also be important to help teachers see that research skills can translate to some of the question students will see on a standardized test, especially when it comes to informational text. Making connections is a key part of learning!