Robyn Young is director of school media at Avon High School.Learn more about Robyn at http://eduscapes.com/sms/young.html
Robyn Young would be an excellent person to e-talk about library media center newsletters, annual reports, and program assessment. Feel free to expand discussion to any related topics for school library media.
Hi Robyn,
ReplyDeleteI actually have one of your annual reports. Bonnie Grimble gave it to me when I visited with her during my internship. She was showing me her annual report, which I complimented. Then she said something to the effect of "It's okay, but look at THIS!" and she handed me yours! It really is fantastic. I would appreciate any information you could give us regarding how you stay on top of your data that you collect (organization, not getting behind...) and how you decide what facets of your program you want to measure. It looks like you have a great program in Avon. Thanks, Sandy H.
Robyn-
ReplyDeleteI see that graphic novels are an interest of yours. I know that you work in a high school, but could you recommend any titles/authors/series of graphic novels appropriate for elementary age students? What answers do you have for those parents or teachers who are skeptical of the literary value of graphic novels?
Thank you!
Elizabeth Stitsinger
Hi Robyn,
ReplyDeleteThank you for participating in our class blog. I have a couple of questions. How often do you create your media center newsletter? Is this distributed both in paper copy and online? How do you know that people are reading/using it? I have found with teaching that most students (and parents) do not bother to read newsletters, whether they come from the school or classroom teacher.
I was also interested in your findings about graphic novels. What effect did they have on reading comprehension, test scores, and overall class performance? Are you doing research at your school with this? I look forward to reading your comments.
Julie Mansfield North
Hi Robyn!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the helpful comments about adding graphic novels to a collection. I attended your AIME session this month and was motivated to focus on building up a GN section in my middle school media center. The only graphic novels in the collection I inherited last year were a few badly damaged copies of Captain Underpants. I am determined to use a significant portion of new budget money in January for this purpose, but I am very nervous about selection. I love the idea of using students as advisors, but at the middle school level I’m not confident that I can rely on their discernment as my primary collection development tool considering that I am totally unfamiliar with the genre myself. You mentioned that SLJ reviews were sometimes unreliable…do you recommend any specific publishers or series that might be good, “safe” choices for a starter collection?
Thanks,
Kelly VonGunten
Robyn,
ReplyDeleteOur school Book Fair is going on this week, and so far our sales have been disappointing. Our school population has changed a lot and we have a very large Hispanic community. Can you recommend any ways to bring those families into our media center and encourage the children to check out books? What is your opinion of having a collection of trade books printed in Spanish?
Robyn,
ReplyDeleteCan you elaborate further on what information you include in your newsletters? Do you share collaboration success stories? Do you think the newsletters encourage teachers to collaborate by showcasing what you have to offer?
Thanks,
Chad Heck