Ben Wightman

LIS 585 Spring 2016

Program Evaluation Part A

Library Site: Solvay Middle School, Solvay Union Free School District (Syracuse, NY)
*Disclosure note: I am currently student teaching in this library
Summary of Evaluation:
Overall the library media program (LMP) at Solvay Middle School (SMS), directed by librarian
Heather Turner, is a strong model of a modern school library program. Inquiry learning,
leadership, teaching collaboration, and the equipment & facilities are relative areas of strength,
while documentation and management collaboration are relative areas of weakness.
Proficient
Distinguished
Approaching
Distinguished
Collaborative
Instructional Design
Planning
Information
Inquiry Learning
Literacy
Intellectual Freedom Reading
Social Learning
Resources and
Materials
Professional
Development
Equitable Access
Resource Sharing
Budget
Educational
Technology
Climate Conducive
to Learning
Facilities
Instructional
Leadership

Proficient
Assessment for
Learning
Teaching for
Diverse Learning
Needs
Social
Responsibility
Staffing
Administrative
Support
Program Planning
and Evaluation
Communication
Reporting
Program Advocacy

Basic
Staffing
Facilities
Program Planning
and Evaluation

Figure 1: Summary by Area

Areas and Evidence of Distinguished Service

Technology is easily the most distinctive strength of the SMS LMP, and a driving force behind
several other areas of strength, including: inquiry learning, building leadership/ professional
development, learning environment, and outreach. The library learning center (LLC) includes
two class sets of laptops and related equipment, iPads, iPods, cameras, a 3D printer, multiple
types of robots, and a green screen. This equipment is thoroughly integrated into all collaborative
library instruction, and several of the teachers I have interviewed consider Ms. Turner to be their
resident expert in technology and emerging applications. At present, she is the point person of a
school-wide effort to integrate Google Classroom into day-to-day instruction more thoroughly.
Technology is also the major focus of her blog, Twitter stream, weekly Tech Bytes newsletter,
and open house presentation. The up-to-date culture of the library creates many motivating
opportunities for the students, including an after school Minecraft club, which serves over 120
4th and 5th graders, and is largely directed by a core group of 7th and 8th graders.
Student-centered programming in general is a relative strength of the LMP. Over the past four
weeks I have observed Ms. Turner and one of the 6th grade writing teachers implement a coplanned and deliberately-paced inquiry unit that began with team building activities and open-

Ben Wightman

LIS 585 Spring 2016

Program Evaluation Part A

ended questioning, and will end with the production of a news video. Along the way the students
have been researching the answers to their questions, creating characters, writing and practicing
the delivery of scripts, and adding special effects to the raw footage. Lessons are routinely
scaffolded and differentiated, with multiple opportunities for students to interact and engage in
thinking that goes beyond teacher-generated questions. Previous projects have been disseminated
to authentic audiences, including administrators and community members, and according to Ms.
Turner this is a major administrative priority, in part because it is a condition of several grants
the district receives.
Study hall and extracurricular periods are also student-centered, with a focus on creating
opportunities for students. The town of Solvay is a high needs area, with a major roadway acting
as a geographic barrier between the public library and about half the residential neighborhoods.
The school library, which is on the same side of the roadway as the underserved developments,
opens on a regular schedule throughout the summer to compensate for this limitation. In
addition, students have remote access to the growing number of electronic resources in the
collection. The LMP also offers several resources and services to meet the needs of students with
disabilities. The collection includes materials in Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, and Spanish for the
districts diverse group of English Language Learners. Furthermore, the special education
department has employed shelving and partner reading as forms of occupational therapy and
social development.
As the previous paragraphs imply, leadership within the classroom is one of Ms. Turners
personal strengths. She is a member of both building and district-wide curriculum planning
committees, and is also active in regional associations such as the New York Librarians
Association School Library Section, and Central New York School Librarians association. These
connections allow her to participate in, and lead a variety of professional development activities.

Areas and Evidence of Proficient Service

As with most libraries, space and staffing are limiting factors on the potential service of the SMS
LMP. Overall the facility has an inviting appearance, with large windows and flexible open
space in the middle. Areas for quiet work and group work are clearly marked, and Ms. Turner
enforces the distinction on a regular basis. The smaller student-accessible work rooms on the
side of the library are more cluttered. However, virtually nothing except the circulation desk and
perimeter shelving in the main room is fixed in place, so the clutter can be shifted to create open
space as needed. In general the facility is dedicated to LMP use, however there is currently an
exceptional situation (or what the administration assures is an exceptional situation) in which
construction has displaced some of the classroom teachers, necessitating the repurposing of the
library computer lab as a temporary classroom, and the consolidation of the computers within the
main area of the library.
Personnel is also somewhat limited. Ms. Turner has an aide two days each week, but otherwise
works alone. In effect, this often limits her to one major instructional unit at a time. Her teacher
to student ratio is slightly below the 1:500 optimum, but to a certain extent she compensates for
this deficit by regularly accepting practicum students and student teachers to extend the LMPs
presence within the school.

Ben Wightman

LIS 585 Spring 2016

Program Evaluation Part A

Aside from personnel spending, the LMPs budget is robust, enabling heavy investment in
technology and an active cycle of acquisition and weeding. The current collection of 16,000
items is near the upper end of the recommended 15-25 resources per student range. The
administration is also supportive in the area of intellectual freedom, with no precedent for
removing challenged materials from any library in the district against the wishes of the librarian.

Significant Weaknesses
The most obvious gap between the SMS LMP and SLMPE standards is a lack of collaboration in
the management of the library. While Ms. Turners instruction is generally co-planned and coassessed, her administrative work is typically done alone. Although she follows a Boardapproved selection policy, she has no committee to assist with collection development. She also
does not have a Library Advisory Committee. Her communication with administrators is regular,
but not necessarily frequent, and aside from her annual report she does not maintain a library
newsletter (although she does contribute to the school-wide newsletter, and give teachers regular
updates about technology in the wider world with her Tech Bytes) The concentration of
administrative responsibility in the person of Ms. Turner may explain the LLCs lack of formal
documentation in certain administrative areas. Although information literacy instruction is
embedded within individual collaborative units, there is no complete written curriculum on file.
There is also no written marketing plan, statement of budget priorities or long-term strategic
plan, although the three librarians in the district are current in the process of developing a
statement of their goals.
One other notable area of limitation within LMP instruction is student self-assessment. While
Ms. Turner and her collaborators frequently employ reflective questioning techniques, they are
not in the habit of using journals or portfolios, in part due to the time and patience such
assignments require. Formal self-assessments are also somewhat limited, although Ms. Turner is
in the practice of having students complete a short feedback questionnaire through Google
Forms at the end of every unit. School-wide assessment is also somewhat limited. Although Ms.
Turner can access student reading and writing scores, the testing itself is generally conducted
within individual classrooms or through other departments, rather than through the LMP. There
is no annual school-wide information literacy assessment, but there is a technology skills
assessment.

Essential Element in Need of Improvement: Social Responsibility

Although other elements in the Empowering Learning Through Leadership section are slightly
weaker, I am interested in researching this element because I see it as a pervasive issue that
extends beyond the SMSLLC into the school at large, and other districts beyond. I recently
completed a collaborative unit about the Industrial Revolution with the 7th grade social studies
teacher. In our post-unit debriefing she expressed a belief that the citations were the hardest part
for the students, because formal citations are not currently part of her regular practice. In a
follow-up discussion, Ms. Turner explained that she always insists on citations in units on which
she collaborates, but it is less of a priority for other teachers and departments. This is consistent
with my experience in other districts as a substitute.

Ben Wightman

LIS 585 Spring 2016

Program Evaluation Part A

While Solvay is proficient overall in this area, many classrooms appear to be caught in a selfreinforcing loop in which citing sources requires great effort from students due to lack of
practice, and this effort in turn discourages teachers from requiring citations. I am interested in
knowing how other successful libraries have created a building-wide culture of attribution in
which students are consistently aware that the source of information matters as much as the
information itself, and in which crediting sources is a routine practice, rather than an
extraordinary one.