The Wheeler County Middle School/High School Media Center serves 712 patrons. The library has 15,152 books in its collection, 16 desktop computers, a conference room, a quiet room for students (with computers), and a STEM room. Mrs. Evans claimed that when she became the media specialists, she had a lot of cleaning up to do. The books had apparently not been weeded in a while because the average publishing date for the library’s collection was 1983! Oh my stars!
The first thing that I picked up on that was very different in the library was that students really WANTED to spend time there. The library was definitely not a quiet zone and the students interacted with each other, myself, and Mrs. Evans during their visits. In the morning, Mrs. Evans has the AR store open to the students. Students may also come in an play educational games on the library’s desktops, play some board games that are present on the tables in the library, work on the puzzle on one of the tables (once finished, she glues it and displays them on the wall in the library), and/or check out books. As soon as the library lights came on, students came flying in!
While students were coming in this morning, they kept asking for lunch passes. I later found out that these lunch passes were for students to come in after eating their lunch to check out books, read, collaborate with their peers, or play educational games. Isn’t this great!? Mrs. Evans said that she allows 20 per grade to come in during their lunch time. She said that she had to start doing the lunch passes because all of the students were wanting to come in all at once.
The layout of the library is the most impressive part to me. When Mrs. Evans became the media specialist, the bookshelves obscured a lot of the view in the library. Mrs. Evan’s nicknamed some portions “lover’s lane” because students, especially high school students, would try to go behind the tall bookshelves and have some alone time. Mrs. Evans collaborated with the woodshop and art class to help her get a new layout of the library. They chopped the bookshelves in half, making them shorter where she could see students, and placed the remaining tall shelves against the wall.
The single-handed best idea I’ve heard today was “genrefying” the Fiction books. Instead of having books organized by author’s last name, the books are organized by genre. This makes locating books an easier task for students, and it has really increased the circulation of the books. Mrs. Evans stated that the circulation of the books went up over 50% when she genrefied her library. I definitely plan to genrefy my library when I become a media specialist.
Teacher requirements vary between the middle school and high school students. Most middle school teachers require students to check out and read one book from the library and one book from the classroom library every two weeks. The high school Reading teachers require students to check out two books from the school library every two weeks. Mrs. Evans will allow a student to check out more than the required books if they are a dependable student. For example, if they are responsible and do not damage the books or lose them, she will let them check out an extra book. If they are not responsible, she will only allow them to check out one at a time.
Wheeler County schools are high-poverty. The school does not have as much funding as Telfair schools do. Mrs. Evans stated that she does not make much money at all through the AR store or Book Fairs. They do not have any kind of budget for the school libraries. When they need or desire something, they have to go to email people at their Board of Education, describe the item, and state how it relates and applies to the school and state standards. Mrs. Evans gets a lot of her funding through grants. She says that she writes and applies for grants almost every month. She has received grants from the Dollar Store, Home Depot, and Jimmy Johnson Technology Grant. She said that it was very important to try to apply for as much grants as she could to try to help keep her library a float and make sure that her patrons had access to the materials and resources that they need. When she does purchase books, she tries to purchase them through Permabound. Permabound is a company that has a lifetime warranty on their books. If they get ruined, all she has to do is call the company, provide the bar code label for the book, and they will ship her a new copy of the book. She said that this is something I definitely want to use when I become a media specialist because it has saved her a lot of money.
The weeding policy is also much different at Wheeler County schools. First, Mrs. Evans deletes the book from Destiny. Then, she places the books on a bookshelf outside of the library for students to take for free. After the books have been outside for a month, she calls the prison to see if they would like the books. The books that are left over go to the Art teacher. Now, I sort of cringed when she told me at first what they do with the weeded books, but I quickly regained my composure! The books that cannot find a home are given to the Art teacher to make crafts. One craft that students really enjoy making are the giant letters made out of the books (the r and e pictured below).
I asked Mrs. Evans what the hardest part of the job was to her and she stated that she just had 10,000 jobs to do and she was all by herself. She claims that the jobs are never-ending and that she can’t seem to ever get ahead. However, the most rewarding part of her job is that she gets to help teachers and students. She especially loves helping a student discover their love for reading!
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