BLOG POST 1

 For this Blog post I interviewed Ms. Speed whom is a librarian at a local high school. During our interview we talked about the Shared Foundation II which is Include. We talked about the domains Think, Crete, Share and Grow and how she used these daily in her library. The school librarian domains and competencies we focused on the most was under the Share domain.

“School librarians facilitate experiences in which learners exhibit empathy and tolerance for diverse ideas by:

1. Giving learners opportunities to engage in informed conversation and active debate
2. Guiding learners to contribute to discussions in which multiple viewpoints on a topic are expressed (AASL, 2018, p.76).”

 

Ms. Speed admits the Include foundation is one of her favorites and she uses this domain all of the time in her library with the students. One way she uses this domain is by holding a debate for the school library for students that are running for offices in the school election. Ms. Speed got all of the candidates together in the Media Center and live streamed a debate amongst the candidates. Using a google doc students voted on certain topics that they wanted to see addressed at the debate. They could also add questions that they wanted the candidates to answer during the debate. Ms. Speed said this activity really put the students to the test because some of the questions were great to get them to debate amongst each other in a safe space. Putting rules in place was important in this activity. Ms. Speed said she also did role play activities with the students to get them ready for the debate. The classroom teachers help out by streaming the video live and completing a follow up lesson in their classroom after the video to get the students involved in the election process. Ms. Speed did this during a US election year and the students that were old enough to vote seem to be more willing to participate in the US election because they had experienced and it was not something unfamiliar to them. During the debate it was important for Ms. Speed to have some rules so the students would feel safe to speak during the debate. Ms. Speed said she will be doing this activity again because the meaningful conversations that the students had after the debate was a great thing.

 

Ms. Speed said some challenges she has faced with this domain was teaching students to have empathy for the opinions of others. Empathy comes easy to some students but not to all students. A lot of the time when high school students disagree, they just want to fight it out. By having the debate, it showed them that they can disagree and still be friends. They learned that everyone does not have to have to same opinion but they could still respect others’ opinions. Ms. Speed also added that not all of her coworkers allowed the students to watch the debate when it was being live streamed because it was taking away from their class time but she recorded it so the students could watch it at a later time. She pointed out that change is hard for some teachers and don’t feel discouraged if you have a teacher on your staff like that. Instead, just keep doing what is best for the students.

References

 

AASL. (2018). National school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. American Library Association.