Heather's Happenings

ISCI 794 Inquire                                                               (This is an image of a stack of books that are placed to                                                               form a circle, like you are looking through the books)               Elizabeth Lies is the librarian at Fairforest Elementary.  This is one of the biggest elementary schools in our district and is growing at a rapid rate.  Mrs. Lies has been at Fairforest for four years now, and loves to actively engage her students with inquire based learning.  She is the perfect person to talk to when exploring the competency of inquiry. ...

 ISCI 794    Explore               (This is an image of three people in the library.  Two are sitting down,                 one is on the computer while the other is reading.  One patron is                exploring the bookshelves behind the other students)     Being able to explore a library is probably the best thing about going!  I was able to spend one day at our only high school in our district, Dorman High School.  Dr. Natalie Childs is the head librarian there and has been a librarian for 10 years.  Dorman has the largest library in our district to help house almost 3,000 students.  I thought that interviewing Dr. Childs about the shared foundation of exploration would be perfect, because most of these students are independent and I wanted to know how she encourages her students to discover what the school's libr...

ISCI 794 Collaborate                                                      (Picture includes 6 bookshelves with lots of colorful books)     For collaboration I decided to interview Stephanie Case who is a second year librarian at Gable Middle School.  Her first year in the library was at an elementary school, so I was curious on how collaboration looked between middle and elementary school.  In our district elementary schools are on a fixed schedule, so collaboration is hard.  The middle schools are on more of a flexible schedule, which allows collaboration to be a little bit more tangible.      Mrs. Case shared many ways to which she collaborates with her teachers in her school.  One of the best ideas that she shared was how she actively participates in team planning with each department at least once a month....

 ISCI 794  Include     Inclusion is one of the most important shared foundations in the AASL National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries.  Libraries should be a place where everyone feels welcomed, wanted and should act as a safe place to explore.  I interviewed Dr. Cox ,who has served as the school librarian at Dawkins Middle School for 15 years and was an elementary school librarian for 8 years.  I felt like she would be the perfect person to talk to about inclusion in the library, because of not only her experience, but both of my children loved coming to see her and be in the library during their middle school years.     One of the most important examples of how she practices inclusion is the books that she purchases for her library.  Middle school can be a strange time for some students, so she feels like she wants to have a diverse collection that every student can see themselves in....