SL Interview with Stephen Roper - Shared Foundation: Curate

 

CURATE

**Implementation** 

As a first-year school librarian at Hephzibah Middle School, Stephen Roper has concentrated on domains Think and Create in these first four months of school.  For the domain Think, Roper presented a lesson to 8th grade International Baccalaureate (IB) students on using the GALILEO (GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online) database to research their topics for their IB projects.  Topics relate to improving local community problems such as homelessness, food scarcity, and pollution.  Roper provided an introductory lesson and incorporated the basic research process.  This involved using keyword searching by brainstorming words related to their topic.  Then, the students had to use GALILEO TO idenitfy sources of information they chose to use in their research.      

**Resources**

GALILEO is an excellent and underused resource by students because they do not fully understand the scope of the resources that are available on the database.  It provides free access to thousandsof resources thorugh the Georgia University System online libraries.  It is a valuable resource for the library where students can find scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles, news articles, images, and film footage to support their research goals.  However, because the comprehensive nature and lack of familiarity, students resort to simple Google searching.  In addition to providing research lessons, all students at the school are rotating through the library for a nonfiction orientation in the media center.  Roper held fiction orientations in November, which involved ficiton and nonfiction comparisons.  During this orientation, he also discussed the library's genre system and how the fiction section is organized on the shelves.  Currently, the nonfiction lessons include the Dewey Decimal System, the organization of the nonfiction section, and using the Follett Destiny online catalog to find nonfiction books for research or personal interest.

**Collaboration**

Mr. Roper collaborated with English Language Arts (ELA) teachers on providing support to students in using the Follett Destiny online system.  The collaborative content for helping students included writing down the call numbers and finding the books on the shelves. Additionally, Roper collabs with teachers in providing the appropriate books and other materials selections to support the classroom research and individual student research topics.  He plans to implement more collaborative efforts as the school year progresses.  

**Challenges** 

Collaboration is a challenge because the teachers are scheduled for collaborative planning as a department on Thursdays; however, their collaborative planning has been incumbered by Professional Learning (PL) initiatives spearheaded by the school's Instructional Coach.  Also, teachers use this collab time to participate in online coursework assigned by the school district.  Roper has made efforts to collaborate with the teachers to determine how he can better serve as a support to teaching and learning.  Remeniscing as a high school English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, Mr. Roper realizes that teachers collaborate on the fly because of the various demands and time constraints.  Therefore, he inserts himself in this same way with the teachers to determine the needs.  As time progresses, teachers will need supportive library services to carry out classroom experiences.   

**Other Comments** Mr. Roper plans to address domains Share and Grow the second semester.  He will incorporate these domains through class rotations for lesson on evaluation of sources for credibility and citation of resources.  He contemplates how the students can share their final products with a larger audience.