Putting out the Welcome Mat

In order to improve student learning, building influence with our peers and bosses we need to have an environment in the media center that welcomes all who walk through the door. This includes students, teachers, parents and the community in general. For years I have strived to have an atmosphere in the library that was welcoming so that students would visit on their own accord and teachers would feel comfortable bringing their classes to use the resources (information, and equipment) located n the media center. Until I went through this module I hadn’t thought much about interacting with the community and had only been actively reaching out to parents on a limited basis three years ago. The VanDusen’s article and the Anderson article highlighted the need to be visible among to these two groups. This makes total sense since they are partners in educating today’s students but are necessarily in the know of what a library media specialist does or the fact that school libraries have morphed into media centers where student are accessing information in a wide variety of formats and that school assignments are no longer limited to written or oral reports. School libraries look much different now than they did when parents and much of the community attend school.

The exchange of our thoughts of what we would like to change in our media centers was very interesting due to me due to the amount of sharing of additional ideas that occurred during this discussion. The tip of the week as a way to promote not only the media center, but also one’s self as a teacher trainer. This idea of Debbie’s is a great idea that I could easily do. I really appreciated hearing that other people use pathfinders. A couple of the teachers I work with think that I spoon feed students by developing pathfinders, while I have always viewed a pathfinder as a tool to help students and staff locate the information they need. Holding activities outside of the school day such as movie nights and poetry slams are activities that could give the program a lot of bang for the buck and are definitely ideas I will explore to promote the library.