ISCI 794: Blog Assignment Interview - Engage with Lorie Willis-Richards

 

This GIF was created by Carson McCallum using Canva with information from "The National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries."

The Engage Shared Foundation and Insight with Lorie Willis-Richards from Union County High School

Reflections on the Shared Foundation

The Engage shared foundation is geared toward how the librarian interacts with information materials and students. An important aspect of this standard is that information is shared legally and ethically. Students should know how to find information in different varieties that suits their needs and be able to incorporate, respond to, and cite that information without plagiarizing. The librarian should also be that same role model for staff - helping them to find resources and avoid copyright violations. One of the competencies that stood out to me about this foundation was from the Think domain about school librarians demonstrating how to analyze information for accuracy, validity, context, and appropriateness for need. Something I could do is share the article “Cutting to the Common Core: Analyzing Informational Text” by Kate Kinsella (n.d.) from Language Magazine or apply its suggestions to collaborative lessons and interactions with students. The article shares sentence frames for response to information and emphasizes the importance of returning to the text more than once. To truly engage with information, students must be able to find, understand, incorporate, respond, and cite it - this is not just limited to classrooms doing research assignments. Additionally, I thought of the importance of having handouts or videos related to policies regarding the sharing and use of information. The task of the librarian outlined in the Grow domain is to host an environment that demonstrates different forms of information sharing and technology incorporation. This can be demonstrated through having resources available in the library space or online that students and staff can recognize and also through the librarian being a knowledgeable and approachable resource for students and staff.

The Interview

What are some examples of the ways in which you are implementing these competencies in your library program?

An example is with the Grow domain's competency for "championing and modeling safe, responsible, ethical, and legal information behaviors" () is sharing copyright resources on our website and through resources posted on Schoology. Also, modeling how to find verifiable information and cite it within an assignment when collaborating with classes on projects or papers. Trying to encourage students to use e-books or DISCUS where the citations are already generated for them.

What are some of the resources in your library program that you are using to implement these competencies?

There are print and online sources. Mrs. Willis-Richards has two resources for e-books - encourages their use because citations are easily generated. The most encouraged resource is DISCUS because the information is already verified and easy to cite. Other resources from universities on citation formats and avoiding plagiarism are shared over Schoology or the school website using linked slides or embedded videos. Also provides links to free resources without copyright permissions such as Flickr and Photos for Class. 

Do any of the competencies that you are implementing include collaboration with classroom teachers? If so, please provide examples.

Many teachers come to the library for collaboration with their resources and lessons already made, they just want the students to be shown where to get information, how to find it, and how to access the citations for resources they find. Mrs. Willis-Richards collaborated with most with Spanish and English. There was a Spanish teacher Mrs. Willis-Richards helped make real estate themed posters for in a lesson and then students had to communicate in Spanish about houses they where looking for and compare posters. There was also a collaboration about Don Quixote Day where a shortened story and a mini assignment were sent to the elementary schools, student collaborated to put it together, and they used the morning show to share videos of Spanish speaking students reading bilingual stories. There was also a Literary Criticism unit that was done by a teacher in the English department that resources are online and in the library for. 

What are some of the challenges that you face when trying to implement these competencies?

Older materials in the weeding of the 800s section of the library - a goal is to update older sections of the collection that are geared toward student information. The biggest challenge has been time for collaboration. The school libraries in Union County do not have assistants and Mrs. Willis-Richards is also the Union County High School resident laptop technologist as there are only 5 technologist that all the schools in the county share. The lack of an assistant cuts into library time and function - if 

Mrs. Willis-Richards leaves the library to go to another classroom, the library has to be closed for that period of time. If a class comes to the library, Mrs. Willis-Richards attention is divided or she must close the doors to anyone but the class she is hosting. The hardest part of getting to Engage is getting the time to recruit and collaborate with willing teachers and provide full, undivided support to students. 

Are there any other comments that you would like to make regarding the Shared Foundation / Competencies and Domains that we have discussed today?

Mrs. Willis-Richards emphasized that demonstrating the use of DISCUS and pointing students toward sources of information and materials that are free, accessible, and stressing citations is the most common way she achieves incorporating this standard.

References:

AASL. (2018). National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Librarians. ALA Editions.

Kinsella, K. (n.d.). “Cutting to the Common Core: Analyzing Informational Text.” Language Magazine, https://www.languagemagazine.com/cutting-to-the-common-core-analyzing-informational-text/#:~:text=Close%20analytic%20reading%20of%20an,author's%20support%20and%20language%20use.