Thursday, August 25, 2011

Budget cut? Huge Classes? Make Lemonade!

We use the team teaching model in our school. There is a bright young social studies teacher teaming with an English teacher for the 10th grade Integrated Social Studies and English class. We are on an alternating block schedule but students attend this class every day and will end the year with 2 credits!

It is a great interactive class because students learn about the history, read and write about it- often debating or do hands on research or projects. The kids learn tons, and gain meaning through the video and audio presented in class.

But the class is big - almost 70+ kids in it. We take down the partition between to classrooms for that hour and use one huge room. Mr Carpenter effectively uses short video clips to emphasis points and up until today we have had a projector/screen on one end of the room.  We have been writing grants so that each teacher now has a projector and laptop (and raging sound system!). Just yesterday we were able to connect the two projectors together (with a 100' coax video cable through the ceiling), converter box/splitter for the VGA input from Mr Carpenter's Macintosh laptop. Learning is achieved!

I tell you this because I really think the librarians role is truly varied. I look forward to collaborating with both teachers very soon, but right now my work has been behind the scenes- troubleshooting to get this system working. Now, instruction can proceed seamlessly using technology in a way that highlights learning not impeding or  being and end to itself. I know student's learning is stengthened!

Lucky day to be a librarian!