The media center will serve as the hub of the school learning community while collaboratively planning with faculty for curriculum enhancement and actively fostering a love of reading and life-long learning throughout the school.
This graduate program has greatly broadened my knowledge and understanding of the full potential of the media center. I have learned that through collaboration with teachers, administrators, and the community, the school library media center has the capability to greatly enhance the learning and information literacy of the students it serves. Students will be provided with the knowledge and skills necessary to become ethical and effective users of information further enabling them to become successful throughout their education, their careers and their lives.
My vision of an effective school library media center includes:
One goal of the media center is to provide students, faculty, parents and administration with the resources necessary to support student education. These resources include print, audio-visual, electronic and online resources. The media center strives to provide equal access to all materials and to maintain a collection that will meet the diverse needs of the student and community population.
Furthermore, the media center will work to not only facilitate access to these resources, but desires to serve as an instructional partner in collaboration with faculty and administration to teach information literacy. This includes the teaching of ethical and effective use of the materials that will not only enhance student education but will also create successful, lifelong learners.
Lastly, the school library media center is merely a small part of the community as a whole. The school library media center will strive to work together with the community and public libraries to support the education of students and their families.
Realizing that each student is an individual with unique personalities, abilities, talents, learning styles, culture and backgrounds, I strive to assist teachers in reaching these students through a variety of teaching styles and activities. These include but are not limited to: providing access to technology and virtual demonstrations of topics when it supports learning and providing opportunities to complete projects that encompass the standards to be taught, making sure that technology and different forms of media are available for teachers and students.
My belief is that all children have the ability to be successful learners in the environment that is most conducive to their learning styles. As a media specialist, I handle each student as the individual that they are. Having experience teaching in the regular classroom, online, and in classes for remediation, I realize that each student may excel in different environments and under different conditions. As a media specialist, I am to remain open to changing conditions in the media center as a response to these alternative avenues of education.
My goals have changed somewhat since I first started this program. Initially, my goals were to focus on increasing collaboration between the media specialist and the teachers with regards to technology and information literacy. However, upon the completion of this program, I realize the many other important aspects of the job such as maintaining a complete and diverse collection, and having an extensive knowledge of the curriculum. Information literacy involves more than merely teaching research methods. When taught without a connection to the curriculum, the benefits are minimal.
This is where I believe my science background can serve as a great benefit. As virtual labs and activities are becoming more and more popular, my knowledge will better enable me to collaborate with science and math teachers regarding this technology. Also, through my experience with virtual classrooms, I am really interested in the role that a virtual library can/will play in online education at the high school level. For the moment, the online academy that I teach through does not have such a library.
In addition, at the school I currently work for, the student population enrolled in online courses is increasing. So much so, that in the media center there is an area of eight computers set aside specifically for the online learners that are taking courses during the school day as part of their schedule. It will be interesting to follow this trend and its effects on the media center.
Another goal that I have to increase collaboration between the teachers and the media specialist with regards to units and lessons. The media center houses a wealth of resources that can enhance both the teaching of the teacher and the learning of the students.