Middle School Internship Day 5

(40 hours done, 0 to go)

It was a weird day today.

I realize how much of my days are categorized as weird. There is no norm, and normal, low-key days are starting to feel weird.

When I got to the media center this morning, all of the book fair things were by the front door waiting to be hauled away by Scholastic. They didn't come until close to 2:00, so we were staring at them all day long.

There was no aide again today, so I stationed myself at the circulation desk. I figure if I can be of a real help in that way I'll do it. I spent most of my time doing odd jobs, mainly covering three bulletin boards with black paper and posting all of the entries for the book fair bookmark contest (shoot! I had my camera but I didn't take a picture of the bulletin boards, they looked really nice!).  The five winners were displayed on one board, and two other bulletin boards held the rest of the entries.  It was so interesting to see the variety of styles that came in (and all the spelling errors). I think this is a contest I'd like to undertake in the future. I would have to think about what the reward would be, as I truly have no budget for anything exciting, but maybe if I get some extra books in sometime I can set them aside for a contest like this.

Very few kids were in during the morning. One class came in to use a computer lab, but that was about it. Ms. S remarked several times how odd it was, usually there are kids in all day long. Hardly any books were checked out, even. I didn't have to shelve any books today, because most of them were shelved by a few kids who come in during lunch time and can work on the computers in exchange for shelving books.

Right after lunch, there was a "light lockdown" which meant that we were restricted in movement from room to room, so nobody came into the media center in the afternoon.  Ms. S was very busy getting ready for her research unit coming up. I really only helped by cutting up the notecards she uses. The way she teaches research is pretty interesting. She has a video that she shows the kids without sound. She provides all the information, on which the kids take notes. This way they are prevented from copying directly what is said, and have to put information in their own words.  She can also scale the difficulty of the content up or down depending on the class.  Once the students have all their cards, they can group them into like concepts and begin constructing their paragraphs around that.

It was a very slow day, although it went by incredibly fast. I really enjoyed the experience (except for the cell phone drama) and I know that Ms. S will be a connection I keep strong. I really learned a lot from her, and it is so nice to have other media specialists in the area that I know I can depend on. As I was leaving it didn't even feel like goodbye, we were both in the same mind that although the week was done, our relationship isn't.

Which is very cool.