Today I spent the school day at a high school for my required site visit at other levels than where I am presently employed. Having only worked in a middle school the last eight years, and volunteering at an elementary school five years before that, it was a new and interesting experience. The media specialist and I shared best practices and compared experiences at the two different school levels. Besides the selection of books being different, it was interesting that she checks out few books over the course of the day, MUCH unlike what I do at the middle school level. Sixth through eighth graders probably check out as many books in one day as high school students check out in month, or more. This is not to say that her library is not a busy place....
When I arrived at about 7:20, a half hour before school starts, there were students at almost each of the 30 computers and many others congregating at the various library tables. A lot of printing was taking place for assignments to be turned in later in the day. Others were researching various topics for projects, while others were just "hanging out" until time for class, and there were even a couple of book check-outs/renewals. The atmosphere was pretty much the same during lunch breaks when students are allowed to come to the media center without a pass, as long as a teacher has not reserved the library for class time. Students can read, use computers, relax, and even play board games at the casual/soft seating area. The LMS and I both helped students to print projects during the day, such as brochures that needed double-sided printing. Students are not charged for printing as long as the pages are school-related. Any pages printed for other purposes are charged 10 cents per page. The LMS keeps track of this by keeping the printer behind the circulation desk so that she has to get the pages for the students after printing. This is similar to how we handle printing at the middle school level, except there is no charge for any printing. Printed items must be school-related, but anything printed for other purposes are not allowed and students do not get any non-school-related printed pages.
The LMS and I discussed the recent change over to the new library circulation software and all the required training and resultant correction of errors. Since she had not trained the majority of students on Destiny Quest and how to log in, I shared with her my Destiny Quest screencast and the features my students seem to enjoy most, such as making friend requests, sending book recommendations and submitting book reviews. I also shared the website I created for the teacher online training in Destiny which I thought might be helpful for her future training. She showed me how she buys and uses nonfiction and reference ebooks, both from Folllett and Gale, and how students can use them for research.
We also discussed what we felt were the biggest differences between a middle school library and a high school one, especially as it relates to the students. She felt that there is a higher level of independence and self-responsibility for high school students, especially when it came to obtaining research information and getting their work done. High school teachers make assignments and it is generally up to the students to find time to get to the library for research, typing, and printing. At the middle school level, teachers make more class time available for library visits and computer use. She also said that there is not a big demand for fiction/pleasure reading so she does not purchase fiction ebooks, nor does she have a huge fiction section. To increase interest though, she did sort her fiction books by genre last year, which is the same way I have my fiction books shelved.
Overall, I enjoyed my high school site visit. I saw many of my former middle school students as they came in to use the library media center. It was very interesting and eye-opening to see how things are different from a middle school LMC, yet the same in some ways.
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