Rudolph Gordon Elementary School Library

 For my second interview, I spoke with Becca Welch (who is an elementary school librarian at Rudolph Gordon School) about the shared foundation of "Curate". A list of interview questions can be found here.

Rudolph Gordon School is a K-8 that serves around 1,500 students. Of those students,  Becca Welch primarily serves the elementary students. For school demographics, the school has approximately 33% people in poverty, 33% special education students, and they have a low population of ESOL students. The primary race of the students in the school is white with Hispanic students and black students making up the next largest minorities.

For this interview, we really looked at how the Curate shared foundation is used in the library. This was particularly pertinent because that summer the library had been re-vamped to be organized by genre instead of by Dewey. This makes it easier for students to identify and gather information from books.

Before we really begin, the first thing that I need to state is that the middle school and elementary school libraries are in the same space. As a result, there were kindergarteners running around the library doing checkouts while the 8th graders were having a lesson on how to use DISCUS- all in the same space. It was the most overwhelming situation I have ever been in. There was a lot going on and I was incredibly impressed with both librarians' patience as they went about their day. That being said, curating is an interesting shared foundation for them because they have to cultivate a library that meets the needs of both elementary school students and middle school students, and they have to keep many of the middle school books away from the elementary school students due to content.

One of the big issues that we discussed with this school is that it is a really big school. As a result, Becca only gets to see her students once every two weeks. That means about 18 times a year (less if they come on Mondays). She only gets 18 lessons a year with her students. That means that if a student is sick, she only gets to see them once a month that month. Or if the student comes on Mondays- a lot of school holidays fall on Mondays. That is not enough time to really work with students in the library. However, she has come up with quite a few clever ways to encourage students to work on the Curate shared foundation. In fact, one of the big ways was in genre-fying the library. This help students to better understand the library and helps them to be more independent in the library and in their book selections. Another way that she teaches curate is by working hard to have students interact more with each other and share in her lessons. The curate shared foundation is all about making sense of information and applying it to yourself (giving it personal meaning). As a result, having students talk with each other and share with each other helps them to process those different types of information. Another way is that she spends a lot of time teaching students how to use the digital library resources like Sora. Sora is the ebook and audiobook resource that Greenville County Schools use. Being able to show students how to access this resource really maximizes their access to library resources. Finally, there are a few projects that she implements that are a lot of fun for students. For example, they have a project on the Titanic where they got to research the tragedy. Another particular student favorite was a research project on mythical creatures. Students got to pick a mythical creature and use DISCUS to create a news report slide about that mythical creature. They also had to tell the audience about why people believe (or don't believe) in that particular creature.

One of the things that I had not thought about before when teaching library is that if you are on a two week rotation, you only get to see each student less than 20 times a year (once every two weeks). It is so hard for them to remember what they have been looking. As a librarian, you have to find ways for what you are teaching to be impactful so that they can internalize it. That brings a whole new level of challenge to lesson planning because it has to be memorable. It has to be something that they internalize and make meaning from so that they remember it when they come back in two weeks (instead of getting a refresher the next day like in the general classroom).