Covering the Standards in Middle School: Francis (Susan) Mazur, Crayton Middle School

 



My teaching background is primarily in the middle school age range.  Getting a perspective of different levels of schools, I feel, would give me different perspectives and ideas.  Ms. Mazur was a wealth of information of ways that she covers the domains of Include, Collaborate, Curate, and Engage. 


Include:

To make sure all are included, she first makes sure she creates an inviting space for all in her library.  She then advertises, advertises, and advertises using posters, the morning news, flyers, and the website.  She tries to create programing that appeals to a wide audience.  She rotates groups that she highlights, in her displays and book talks.  Then, she makes sure that her overall collection is diverse.  Finally, she creates a different club every semester rotating the group that she targets. 


Reflection:  I love the idea of the rotating clubs.  At our school teachers pick what club they want to sponsor and many just pick something easy.  Ensuring a club is created that engages a group of students that normally do not get involved is a wonderful idea.


Collaborate:

With collaboration, Ms. Mazur noted that before students received their own laptop, a lot of teachers would want to collaborate and get students into the library for research.  Now, she mainly puts together pathfinders for both students and teachers with resources that she gathers to help with topics they are covering.  She does not really do much collaboration to help the students create, because there isn't time in the year built in that can be used for that. 

Reflection:  I love the idea of creating pathfinders for help in the content areas.  I think it is an easy way to be beneficial and support the classroom teachers cover a topic in a timely manner.  


Curate:

Ms. Mazur makes sure that she analyzes her collection throughout the year, purging and working on keeping it current.  She feels a very important lesson that she covers is website evaluation because many students just "go google" to find answers without really looking at the source.  She has also curated a large section of professional resources for teachers and staff, but says that they are never looked at.  

Reflection:  I try to get the staff/teachers involved in reading challenges throughout the year too, but with little effort.  The realization that they are overwhelmed is evident.  Trying to come up with other ways/incentives to get them to take part is a goal for me.  It would be good if the students saw them engaging in reading too.  


Engage:

The library at Crayton Middle school is well used.  Ms. Mazur sees, on average, between 100 to 110 students daily.  Many come in with questions about technology, but there is also a high population of readers there.  She is constantly having contests and student recognition activities that the students love.  

Reflection:  She noted that she does contests that appeal to reluctant readers and students that normally do not get recognized often (like special education students).  She not only puts up bulletin boards showing these students, but gives them very small prizes.  I love the idea of publicly recognizing the students. 


Challenge:

Ms. Mazur noted that her biggest challenge was standardized testing.  Oftentimes, that push, push, push to cover everything in classroom, takes away library time and creativity time.  


Reflection:  I really hate standardized testing.  Maybe with collaboration, library time can become what teachers see as valuable time to review and cover main ideas.  

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