Amy Rubin's Page

This is a new career for me. I worked for 10 years as a newspaper reporter before my husband and I adopted our now 10-year-old son as an infant from South Korea. When our son started kindergarten, I decided to explore my ongoing curiousity in librarianship. I took a part-time job at our public libary and, soon after, began working on my MLIS. Now, nearly fours years later, I am coming to the end of my first year as a media specialist. It has been an amazing year and I love my job! That said, I think I went into the position with some idealic, perhaps naive, attitudes that most people would understand the important role the media center plays in the school. I eagerly spent much of the past year promoting the media center and its role in supporting the curriculum and promoting reading. Many strides were made! My next hurdle, however, is what brought me to this group! The media center has operated on a fixed schedule for the last 12 years. We are going to transistion to a flexible schedule next year, with the idea of having siginificantly more collaboration between me and the teachers. I'm very excited about the change and have spent alot of time meeting with teachers to talk about why the change is being made and how it will be good for students. I've outlined examples of prjects that we can carry out under flexible scheduling. My principal is very supportive and has spoken to the staff about why we are adopting this approach. But there are still several teachers who are dragging their heals. I would love to hear any advice about how to best make this transistion from fixed to flexible and how to colllaborate with teachers who are extremely resistant! (Some won't even return e-mails!)