Fast Times at Alexander High

Today I visited a local high school media center. As soon as I walked into the media center I fell in love. The atmosphere was so warm and inviting and the two media specialists just contributed to this. They welcomed me immediately and made me feel at home. The media center was full of students, but the entire time I was there I so no behavior issues. One of the media specialists told me that they used to not allow the students to bring in drinks, food, or gum and they saw that they were having a huge problem. So they decided to remove the restriction and the messes stopped. She said that they wanted students to feel like they were welcome at all times, and she said that they do not monitor noise. On any given morning she said that there were anywhere from 50 to 100 students hanging out in the media center before school. She said they read, play on the computers, and work on school work, and get on their personal devices. She stressed that this was what they wanted. She said eventually you see more and more students picking up books. The media center has 30 student computers and 3 computer labs in the school. The computer labs have an online sign-up that teachers can access. A very neat feature the school has is called Lanschool. This program allows the media specialists to view and monitor every student computer screen in the media center. If students are doing anything inappropriate, they can limit web use, control the computer, limit printing, limit the USB capability, and they can also print the screen to show the teacher if there is an issue.  This high school has the highest circulation for fiction books in the county. The media specialist says that she works very hard to promote reading by promoting book fairs, using displays, and putting information on the message boards located on flat screen televisions throughout the school's hallways. She said that she is surprised to see how a books circulation can increase when you put it out on display. The school also had a large collection of graphic novels. They informed me that graphic novels were currently the popular thing among high school students, and they wanted to give the students what they want. I learned so much, and I am going to be able to apply many of their practices on the elementary level. Here are some pictures that I took during my observation: