After personally reflecting on diversity in the media center, I spoke with my middle school media specialist to gain her perspective about diversity. Our conversation quickly turned to the collection available to our 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. I believe that the collection of materials is a great place to begin the diversity of the media center. Selecting books to suit 6th graders as well as more mature 8th graders is often a difficult task. In this way, the collection begins to appeal to different ages, genders, cultures, languages, and special needs.
Since the collection can be accessed digitally and the books can be tagged with multiple genres, the technology begins to lead students to books that they may not have considered reading. As the collection grows, hopefully our perspectives as teacher and media specialist will grow to continue to serve the diverse population of students at our school. My media specialist and I work together to read and discussion items that may benefit the 8th graders. Because I work closely with my 8th grade students and what they are reading, I can provide a unique insight as to the diverse needs of these students.
Seeing technology helping the diverse population has been a challenge, to say the least, at my school. With very limited access to student computers, much of the technologies used comes from the teacher computer being linked to the TV. In one computer keyboarding class, the teacher uses a Wii as a smartboard. Unfortunately, I have not been able to see his demonstration, but it is something that I am interested in. Many of the colleagues at my school are not tech savvy and it seems as though technology is something to "add-on" to the lesson, not to be used for learning. I hope to continue my investigations of diversity and the media center in the future so that our school can dive even further into the diversity at our school.
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Selecting books for a diverse group of students will be challenging as the SLMS. With students coming from various backgrounds and with varying maturity levels, all things will need to be addressed. For my school in particular, involving the varying level of students needs to be addressed even with the Morning News. We tend to use the same students doing the same jobs day in and day out. I would like to see this become diverse.
ReplyDeleteI think that creating a diverse collection at any level can be a challenging task. I teach at an elementary school that has a high ELL population but also has a significant population of advance readers. When you mentioned accessing the catalog digitally and tagging books in multiple genres it made me think that perhaps we need to re-tag our collections. This could open up resources to students who may have seen or heard about a book and thought it wasn't for them. Since I haven't worked with much the automation sytsem at my school (that class is next semester) I don't know if when books are cataloged if alternate "tags" are suggested like they do on sites such as Delicious. Looking at our collections in a fresh new way by offering new "tags" for students to access when searching online for books is an economical way to diversify collections.
ReplyDeleteI really had not thought of tagging books as creating diversity, but I can see how it might.
ReplyDeleteI think getting students to work with each other and share ideas with one another is a way to foster communication among ethnic groups as well as among genders and ages. Creating a community where students share books with others is a start.
(Thankfully, there are those few books that cut across gender/age/ethnic barriers such as Twilight and Harry Potter.)
I really liked your comment about technology being an add-on in many instances instead of the way to learn. This too, can create diversified interests and learning skills in our students.
ReplyDeleteThe diversity in a middle school library is interesting too, as we all have to decide what is appropriate for our students and our children. Most all of us simply consider the populations within our school and what it would take to diversify them. There are so many other ways to take this task into our lives.
You made me think about a lot!
I think it is very important to ask my students what topics or books interest them. At the end of school, every student will complete a media center survey that will allow them an opportunity to tell me what books they would like to see in the media center. I think this will provide me a clearer idea of what each student wants in the media center.
ReplyDeleteI really would like to know more about the Wii lesson that you talked about in your blog.