Blog Reflection on Blogging and Class Assignments ;)

In all honesty, between extensive assignments for multiple classes, creating impressive lesson plans for work, raising a 2 year old on my own, and life, itself, I have been slacking on writing my blog. Yes, this is all my fault and, yes, this is sad. However, after this entry, I will be completely caught up.

Blogging is an effective way to reflect on your work and your readings. I thoroughly enjoy being allowed openly express my thoughts and opinions on the material that we are reading/working on that week in class. It is just hard to remember to complete. You'd think that I would be better at this, considering the fact that I am quite the opinionated writer. Oh well, I have them all completed now and, personally, I think that my opinions adequately reflect on the topics assigned each week. 

As far as what we have been working on in class lately, well, I'm not 100% sure how I feel about this assignment. We have been working on an Instructional Unit with Classmates. It was not an easy assignment. I wrote most of the materials, lessons, and did the APA citations on the original submission and then contributed to the reflection piece. When the assignment was sent back to the group, I took a few days and edited the assignment to address the concerns of the professor. I then e-mailed the edited assignment back to the group. Then, the group met and changed the entire format of the unit and submitted it. My e-mail was rebelling against me being a great member of the group and I truly got to feel like what it must be like to be the media coordinator who is not 100% involved in the final creation of a unit/lesson that directly involves the use of my materials, resources, etc. While I got to go back in and approve of the final submission, there were times that I was completely left out of the planning portion. I addressed my concern via e-mail with my group and was able to work again with the group, but it was really difficult to plan with multiple people who are on very different schedules.

More now than ever, I want to be a librarian. I have personally felt what it is like to collaboratively plan with others who are on such different schedules and I know that I have the patience and ability to work around the schedule of others, even when mine is hectic. I feel like my personality helps me to have the skill set needed to work with others and make suggestions/revisions to work without being "pushy" or "overstepping my boundaries" in one way or another.

I did not realize how difficult the job was going to be, though. If I'm going to be honest, I went into this program under the assumption that the media coordinator's job was a lot easier than that of a classroom teacher. What I am learning is that the media coordinator's job is just as difficult and just as complicated. Sometimes, it might even be more complicated because of the expectation to work with the entire school - all grade levels and all content areas, including encore classes like music and art. While this is frustrating, it is also inspiring. I have so many great ideas as to what I will want to do once I have my own media center. I am incredibly excited with the possibilities that this class has made me realize I can do once I get in there and work in a library that is all my own. I am also very lucky that my own media coordinator has allowed me so much freedom in running the library so far. She has been very receptive to my ideas and has allowed me to do so much more than I imagined I would be doing at this point in my program.


--Andi