What we've been working toward: Our program is Exemplary!

The CMS Media Center was named a Georgia Exemplary Library Media Program for the 2011 school year! This is what we have been working toward since 2009 when we changed our program development planning to use the Georgia Exemplary Rubric as our guiding document. After receiving GA Exceptional status (step below Exemplary status) for the 2010 school year, I made some changes and our program was nominated again, so I rewrote our application for the 2011 school year back in the spring, and finally, last week the Georgia Department of Education called our administration and told them we had won!

A little more about the award and our programing:

A library media program named as Georgia Exemplary Program must be nominated first. Then, the library media specialist must write a six page narrative detailing their programing, and the program must be evaluated and receive Exemplary in all twenty areas of the Georgia DOE Library Media Program Rubric.

A strong focus of the CMS Media Program in the last few years has been on information and digital literacy skills. We have collaborated with teachers to provide participatory and inquiry based learning experiences for our students. Many of these collaborative projects integrated technology in various content areas through hands on experience with digital media, Web 2.0 tools and using music and images from the public domain through Creative Commons Licensing.

One significant change we made in the media program this past year was to add additional hours outside of the normal school day and to extend a warm invitation to families and community members. The CMS media center was open before school and after school until 6 p.m. this past year. In addition, over the summer, the CMS Media Center Website hosted a Summer Reading Blog in which students blogged online about the books they read this summer, and we opened the library media center on Thursday afternoons in the summer time for students and parents come and check out books, play games, read, use computers, or just hang out.

Additionally, an area reflected in the GA Exemplary Rubric that I felt I needed to improve in was professional sharing.  Although I have done a pretty good job with sharing with my district media specialists, I had not created a state or national professional learning network for myself.  I have since started this blog, acted as a guest speaker at new library media specialist grad school classes, returned to graduate school to work as a TA in grad level LMS classes, become a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant (with Red Clay Writing Project/UGA SI) , and most importantly joined Twitter.  I would say that this professional sharing, especially my Twitter PLN, has probably been the most beneficial change for me as a teacher.  I have learned so much from this sharing and my new professional learning network!

Our 2011 Application