Urban school challenges for TeacherLibrarians

[Melody Nissely]

I am looking to connect with TeacherLibrarians who are working in an urban school setting; to share experiences and collaborate.  I would be interested in how you handle urban school issues that seem to disrupt much of what I plan to accomplishes. 

Maybe you could share your success and works.  One thing our school does not have is the technology needed for a satisfactory program. I look forward to hearing from you.  Melody

[Tasha Bergson-Michelson]

I don't know if this is a help or off-topic, but at AASL I heard various inner-city librarians talk about the difficulty of students being taught computer-based research skills when they essentially only have cell phone-based Internet access. This issue is something I can strive to address in my work, and I want to start thinking about what appropriate phone-based search/research skills would look like, and how they might best be taught. Love to engage with you and others around this, if you think it would be helpful to you and your students. I am happy to take on the role of collecting best practices, ideas, etc., and trying to pull it together into useful content. tbm [at] google [dot] com of the Search Education team

[Laura Gable]

Hi Melody, 

I would be happy to share with you!  Fortunately, my school does have the technology, however that doesn't make students better readers, or parents that have the time or skills to assist in their children's education at home.  I  work in a PreK - 8 building, & what really seems to help is when the teacher & I are on the same page and are teaching the same things.  I just had a teacher say the other day that it is so helpful that I teach what he teaches in the classroom, and our other support staff also tries to do the same.  The students quiz scores reflected our collaboration.  However, I don't have that with all of the teachers.  I'm not sure what urban issues you are speaking about specifically but I would love to keep the lines open and see how we can help each other!

[Claudia Palframan]

Hello -

I'm a new teacher-librarian and new to the middle school I'm at.  It is urban, and we also have similar technology issues.  I just got the laptop cart up and running - but was told I'll need power strips to plug in many of the laptops - old batteries.  I also have found that many of my students also have Internet access via cell phones, which really limits their abilities to use technology in a setting that could be very successful for them. 

 

My other issue is that many of my 6th graders are coming to MS with very limited library knowledge.  I would like to collaborate more with the teachers, but I see the students every other week (homeroom is a very busy time to exchange books - I've worked hard on that) so collaboration can be tricky, plus I have to teach them library basics first.

 

Hope thi becomes a lively discussion!

 

Claudia

[Melody Nissely]

In addition to the lack of technology, I have behavior issues to deal with, especially with the 7th and 8th grade.  While I take the job of teacher-librarian, many of the students to not believe that library time is instructional time.  Library time would carry more weight with the students if we gave grades.  We do not give out grades for library, because we do not have a curriculum.  Is it beginning to sound like a vicious cycle?

[Tasha Bergson-Michelson]

What is the cause of not having a curriculum? What would you feel it most important to teach if you had the opportunity to set up a curriculum?

[Claudia Palframan]

Some students asked me if I gave grades - they knew I didn't but wanted to make sure I knew they knew they weren't going to do anything during library because it's not graded.  I told them my grade is part of the subject teachers grade, she backed me up.  As far as a curriculum, I'm creating mine as I go!  Between snow days (already) and other missed days because of prof. development and testing, it's very hard to follow a set curriculum.  I have been fortunate to have already collaborated with 2 teachers on 2 different research projects, I really enjoy doing that, and it helps the kids to understand why searching a database instead of Google is easier (research in context vs. research as part of a set paced curriculum)!  I'm hoping more teachers will ask for extra library time for research. My best supporters - the science teachers!