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As an intern teacher librarian at the Shorewood High School Library in Winter 2005, I assisted the librarians in teaching classes that came in to do research, eventually taking on classes on my own. Over the course of the Directed Fieldwork I worked with twenty-seven classes doing research for nine different projects, and nine more classes coming in to the library to check out class related reading material. This experience was significant because I had never taught before. Teaching classes of high school students how to use the library and how to do research was a whole new experience and certainly a bit of a challenge at first. Working alongside experienced teacher librarians made learning the ropes much easier. By the end of the term, I felt confident teaching classes on my own. Thus the experience was significant not just because I took on a new challenge, but also because by the end of it I had gained enough experience to feel confident teaching classes on my own.

Teaching in the Library

In preparation for each class, the librarians and I spoke with the teacher about the project their class was working on and the types of resources they wanted. The librarians at Shorewood High School work hard to maintain good communications with the teachers who use the library, and keep logs of past assignments. I was surprised by how well the simple systems they used worked, and how positive relationships were between the teachers and teacher librarians. Based on the assignment and our discussion with the teacher, I would then pull relevant print resources to make up a bookcart for the class, and make up a list of web sites and other online resources if the teacher wanted the students to use web resources.

Since these classes are coming in to the library to do research for papers or projects, bibliographic instruction is integrated into the process of directing students to useful resources for completing the task at hand. With each class we introduced the students to key reference sources that would be helpful for the project the class was working on, and showed the students how to use them. This included both print and web based sources. For instance, with the "Latin America Research Project" that the World Geography classes were working on we introduced students to good reference sources for doing background research on their countries:

• CultureGrams,
• The Latino Encyclopedia,
• The Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life,
• The Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, and Peoples of the Earth

As part of teaching students to use these sources we talked about how some of the reference works were organized, about using both the table of contents and the index to figure out whether a source contains relevant information, and about looking under multiple subject headings that might relate to one's topic when searching the index of a book. When the class split up to research their topics we would work with individuals or groups, helping them to find more specific resources on their topics. This often included showing students how to use the library catalog, and helping them find the best keywords or subject headings to search under. Walking to the shelves with students to retrieve books also provided an opportunity to show students how the call numbers on books serve to collocate books on similar subjects on the shelves. When classes were directed to use web resources, we worked with individual students on web searching, as well.

Classes Taught at the Shorewood High School Library, January - March 2005

• World Geography: Latin America Research Project
  Class Assignment
  Resource Lists for Latin America Assignment

  Students needed to write a persuasive letter about a problem or issue occurring in a Latin American country. The letter needed to be written to an actual person, business, or organization to whom it would actually be sent. For this project, students were required to do background research on their country and issue in the library. They also needed to pick, and find contact information for, a person or organization to write their letter to. I put together a bookcart of print resources and a list of additional resources (print and online) to supplement the resource list in the assignment. We spoke briefly with the class about how to do research and search for information, introduced students to key reference resources that would be of use for the Latin America project, and helped individual students to search for resources specific to their country and issue. As discussed above, we introduced the students to print and online resources for researching their countries, and a variety of resources for learning about the issues they chose to write about including books, online databases, news websites, and websites of organizations addressing these issues.

• Language Arts: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), Renaissance Research Project
  Class Assignment

  Students needed to research some aspect of life in Shakespeare's time such as government, law, exploration, science, medicine, architecture, religion and holidays, clothing, games, music, art, or theatre. They were to write an essay on their chosen topic and do some type of creative presentation demonstrating their research. Many works in the library collection on the subject of the Renaissance and Shakespearean times are already identified by yellow tape on their spines. I put together a bookcart from a selection of these books and others relating to topics mentioned in the assignment. We spoke briefly with the class about how to do research and search for information, introduced students to some of the resources i had selected, told them where they might find more resources in the library, and helped individual students to search for resources on the specific aspects of life in Shakespearean times they were researching.

• World Geography: Latin American Research Project II
  

  This was a short, end of term project. Students had to research a Latin American country and write a short (two page) paper. We spoke briefly with the class about how to do research and search for information, introduced students to key reference resources that would be of use for learning basic information about Latin American countries, and helped individual students to search for resources specific to the country they had chosen to research. Students worked primarily with print resources in the library, including many of the same resources they used for doing background research on Latin American countries for the previous Latin America project.

• Reader's Choice: Free Reading
  

  This was a class where students came in to get books for Silent Sustained Reading in an elective class. We gave a brief library orientation, explained how to search for books in the library catalog, helped student search for books, and did reader's advisory.

• American Studies: Books by American Authors
  

  Students were assigned to read a book by an American author. For this class we pulled a selection of books by American authors for a bookcart. Like the class doing free reading, we gave a brief library orientation, explained how to search for books in the library catalog, helped student search for books, and did reader's advisory.

• Biography/Career Reading Assignment
  

  Students at Shorewood High School use the Biography collection for career and portfolio related projects. With the classes coming in to check out biographies we give a brief explanation of how the Biography section is organized (separated out from the rest of the collection but still ordered by Dewey umbers and thus by subject), explained how to search for books in the library catalog, helped student search for books, and did reader's advisory.

• American Studies: Informative Speech Project
  Class Assignment
  

  Students needed to pick a topic on which to give an informative speech, narrow their topic appropriately, and do research in preparation for writing their speech. Because the nature of the project made for such a broad array of topics, we did not prepare a bookcart of materials. We spoke briefly with the class about how to do research and search for information, and helped individual students to narrow their informative speech topics and search for information on their topics. Many students made use of a combination of print and online resources, and many had a need for information on current events.

• World Studies: Ideas & Inventions Project
  

  Students were to research the influence or affect that a particular Idea or Invention had on Western Culture. I put together a bookcart of ideas and inventions books. We spoke briefly with the class about how to do research and search for information, introduced students to selected books from those I had selected for the bookcart and a few reference resources relating to ideas and inventions, aided students in formulating and focusing their topics, and helped individual students to search for resources on the specific idea or invention they had chosen to research.

• Health: Diet & Disease, What's the Connection?
  Class Assignment, includes recommended web resources
  

  Students needed to research a disease and create a pamphlet answering the following questions: "What goes wrong with people who have the disease?", "How can diet increase the risk of the disease?", "How can people reduce their risk of the disease?", and "Why should teenagers be concerned about the disease?" I put together a bookcart of health and disease books, made up primarily of reference works, and a list of web resources including the health information databases available through King County Library System and web sites of major organizations doing research and advocacy work related to particular diseases. We spoke briefly with the class about how to do research and search for information, introduced students to the library's reference resources on health and disease, and helped them find information on the specific disease they were researching. Since they were going to be doing some of their research on the web we also cautioned students about some of the issues relating to reliability of health information on the web and attempted to direct them toward accurate and creditable sources.

Significance

  Send Comments or Questions to: Aurora Grey agrey@juno.com