Pickering H.S. Practicum Hours: Sept. 11-15

This week was very exciting because I was able to start my practicum hours at Pickering High School Library and see how a different library works in Vernon Parish.  Pickering is a large complex that contains both an elementary school and a middle/high school.  It has a mixed population of both military and civilian children, but is predominately civilian.  Only 20% who attend Vernon Parish School's are military.   There are only about 900 students within the whole complex.  With 630 being in the middle/high school.  So the school is relatively small.  The high school has 36 full-time employed teachers and the teacher ratio is 17 students per teacher.  The graduation rate is 92% and test scores are about average with 60% passing in math proficiency and 54% passing in English proficiency.  It was interesting to note that more than half the students (57%) come from an economically disadvantaged background.  I was also surprised to find out that the high school had recently cut their AR program.  I thought this would make an excellent opportunity to boost student engagement in reading and talking about reading by introducing booktalks to the middle grade ELA teachers.  I'm hoping to have success with this during the course of the practicum.

 Pickering High School Journal

9/12/12 8:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (5.5)
9/13/12 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (6)
Total hours to date: 11.5

Summary of Daily Activities/Experiences:
-Labeled, processed, and organized new student workbooks and textbooks.

-Reorganized non-fiction and fiction shelves in the library.

-Evaluated non-fiction collection for currency in certain subject areas (i.e. technology, space, and medicine).

-Met with middle/high school ELA teacher Mrs. Winn to begin formulating ideas for unit lessons for constructing book talks.  Mrs. Winn would like to increase student recreational reading.  Since the school has recently dropped their Accelerated Reader program I decided it would be a good idea to introduce the concept of booktalks to get students actively reading and discussing the literature they read.

Personal Reflections:

This was my first week at Pickering High School.  The librarian and I have been trying to coordinate times and I think we have finally settled into a schedule that works for both of us.  My first day consisted of getting a feel for the library.  The library has several student aids that help to put away books and check out books for students.  Students mainly run the front desk.  The first task I wanted to tackle was to organize the library shelves.  Although students are helping in the library the shelves were in disarray.  The non-fiction section had not been organized since the end of the following school year.  I noticed that a couple of students who came in to the library to find books, were either taking a long time or were unable to find the book altogether.  I immediately started organizing this section and was able to the 585’s before taking a break.

Throughout the course of my work, the librarian was assisting a teacher who was working in the computer lab with a class.  The librarian was not directing the lesson, but was assisting with technology issues that would arise with the computers.  I was intrigued to see that except for students coming in to find books, there were not whole classes that would come in, except for the computer lab.  Perhaps the teachers are not in a research unit now.  After eating a quick lunch, I started on the fiction section and could organize most of it before I left.  Mrs. Labato controls all the textbooks for the school. This is an aspect that I did not know middle/high school librarians dealt with.  I was presumed that classroom teachers dealt with their own textbooks.  This adds another dimension to the role of the librarian.

Meeting with Mrs. Winn was extremely fun and exciting!  Mrs. Winn is seeking to create a love of reading in either her 7^th grade or 10^th grade class.  We are still deciding on which class to work with, but we are beginning to hash out a plan for the unit that I plan to deliver.  We only had 25 minutes to meet with each other.  This was really to just get to know one another.  I will be meeting with Mrs. Winn a few times next week to further talk about and to produce lessons.