Field Experience Log

1. How many hours did you complete?  5 hours
2.  In a short paragraph or bulleted list, how did you spend your time?
1. 3 hours in the Media Center at Madison Central High School (split into two sessions)

                                                               i.      This year’s senior prank was a destructive one.  A handful of creative students thought it would be tons of fun to scamper through the Media Center, pulling books off the shelves as they went, pulling framed “READ” posters from the walls, and creating “book forts” on top of the lower shelves.  As soon as I found out about the incident, I went down to see if I could be of use helping the Media Specialists clean up the mess that the students had made the evening before.  I spent the next hour and a half reacquainting myself with the Dewey Decimal System and taking note off all the amazing resources we have in the Media Center that I had no idea were available to our students!  Eventually, the other women in our English Department came down to help as well, so we found ourselves discussing some different ideas for how to incorporate some of the print resources that we didn’t know existed in our classes.  Ideas from new literature circle novels to possible research topics to a Media Center Scavenger Hunt came up.  While the main purpose of this time was getting the room back to the way it was before the vandalism, we also used it as a productive pseudo-department meeting! 

                                                             ii.      My first task was to play around on “Titlewave” which is the company from which the Media Center orders the bulk of its inventory.  I located a few books that the AP Human Geography teacher had requested on the system and saw how it works.  My next task was to work my way through recent issues of various local newspapers, clipping articles that may be of interest to students doing research on various topics, then filing the articles in the appropriate locations.  It was very interesting to me to have a chance again to see what resources are available to my students in our media center!  Even our local newspapers have valuable attributes to which I need to make an effort to call my students’ attention.  As I was working on these tasks, the two Media Specialists and I had a chance to talk about the constant threat of censorship and book challenges that they face and how they handle them. 

2. 2 hour in collaboration with a colleague planning for next year

                                                               i.      We made many changes to the sophomore English curriculum last summer in preparation for the End of Course Assessment, but my colleague Susan and I sat down to re-assess what worked this past year and what didn’t.  In so doing, we decided that our literature circles were effective but that we needed to take another look at what types of books we would offer for the students to read.  Since we had both helped cleaning up the Media Center after the senior prank vandalism, we knew what was available to the students there.  We also discussed many of the issues that seem to come up with regards to book choices, availability and the like, so I said that, since I was taking this class in children’s and young adult literature, I would have a better idea of what types of books to include later in June, so we made a plan to meet in over the summer to finalize our plan of attack.  One problem that always seems to crop up is the issue of the summer reading assignment.  Each year, every student at Madison Central is required to read a book over the summer and write a report on it.  BORING!  So, we decided that this year’s assignment for our rising Pre-AP sophomores would be to read The Freedom Writers Diary keeping their own 20-day journal over the summer and taking a brief test (just to make sure they read it) when they returned to school.  The test would not be one of comprehension; it would need to deal with the themes that arose in the book as well as the budding writing style of the high school students who wrote the book. 

3. How did the experience help you to strengthen at least one Kentucky Teacher Standard? (be sure to name the standard)
1. My field experience helped me to strengthen both KTS 2 (Designs and plans instruction) and 8 (Collaborates with colleagues, parents and others).  While collaboration with Susan Cintra is something that I do often since she and I work very closely together throughout the school year, I had not really spent too much time with our Media Specialists.  I was thrilled to have this opportunity to have conversations with them about how to incorporate the resources available in the Media Center into my classes.  That being said, not only did I strengthen my collaborative relationships by building connections with those ladies, I was also able to consider more fully the library’s role in my instruction.  I will enter next school year armed with a number of ideas for how my students can take advantage of what the Media Center has to offer. 
4. Talk a little about one thing you learned because of this field experience.
1. I learned how hard the ladies in the Media Center work!  They’ve got their hands in EVERYTHING!  They’re required to be librarians, yes, but they’re also experts in research techniques as well as being the primary contacts for technology and the audio/visual resources at school.  These daunting tasks do not diminish their accessibility, however, and they’re always willing to lend a hand.  I also learned the amazing resources that are available there and that I will be much more excited to take advantage of them in the coming school years.  Because I’ve learned this, I now know that I can go to these ladies and work in collaboration with them in order to make my instruction more effective.