Some essential components of "keeping current" with trends and new developments in the school library field for library media specialists includes attending conferences and reading professional literature. Beginning in May 2007, one article on "keeping up" each year has been devoted to summarizing the major themes in conferences and professional…

In this article, the author traces her journey from fulfilling her evolving job duties to an increased sense of awareness that advocacy was an integral part of her work. The author started her career by doing the best she could do for the library media program she managed, and evolved to become an advocate for school libraries in general. Through…

In this article, the author talks about the net generation (NG) of learners and how the net generation media specialist could help students in their needs. The NG media specialist creates a program that serves students who are diverse economically, culturally, and academically. Thus, if the NG media specialist provides resources, facilities, and…

This article presents a story of the transformation of summer reading at Barnstable High School (BHS) in Massachusetts which took place during the last year of the author's practice as a school library media specialist before she began her work as a professor and researcher at Rutgers University. It is a true story about effecting change and…

Purpose: Self-declaration of personal values has been suggested as a means of identifying students with greater predilection for future primary care careers. While statistically significant differences have been demonstrated, absolute differences between those interested in primary care and those interested in specialist careers tend to be small.…

Bullying. Death. Disabilities. Peer acceptance. Cultural differences. Adoption. Sibling rivalry... These are some of the unfortunate realities and personal challenges that children experience and must deal with on a daily basis. Library media specialists are frequently asked to suggest books teachers can use to give children insight into…

Library media specialists are a literacy model. They hold the world of literacy at their fingertips and in their collections. Everything individuals need to know about literacy can be found in some form in the library domain, either in the stacks or in the professional repertoire that librarians posses. There are plenty of ways that library media…

New standards are not meant to be plugged into an existing information literacy curriculum. They are meant to get library media specialists to think differently about how they interact with classroom teachers, develop their curriculum, and provide instruction. Yet, the mission of the standards remains the same--to have staff and students become…

The announcement of the mandate for Constitution and Citizenship Day shortly before September, 2005, probably led to groans of dismay. Not another "must-do" for teachers and schools already stressed by federal and state requirements for standardized tests, increasingly rigid curricula, and scrutiny from the public and officials. But the…

The educational network of educational institutions that are implementing programs of primary professional education includes twenty-three vocational schools and two professional lyceums. There are departments of primary professional education in eleven technicums of technology and in a professional pedagogical (secondary-level) college. About 21…

This article explores the role of leadership, experts, and expertise and the functioning of teams in nine schools that modeled an exemplary integration of technology to support schoolwide instructional improvement. Through cross-case analysis, we identified three different staffing patterns and two different support patterns in how the technology…

The author's school had just been labeled a failing school by No Child Left Behind when its new principal arrived in the fall of 2007. In this demoralizing climate, teachers can get frustrated and choose to give up, or they can rise to the challenge, create a plan for improvement, and plunge into uncharted waters. This article discusses how the…

The release of AASL's "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" and "Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs" has provided school library media specialists with the opportunity to "develop new visions for learning" (AASL 2009), and to rethink what their roles are, and what skills and characteristics are required of them to…

In this time of change in our society, children's needs, preferences, and interactions with the world are changing. These changes have sent education policymakers scrambling to two extremes. The first extreme, a focus on testing and basic skills, seeks to ensure that all children leave school with equal knowledge and preparation for the workplace.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between teachers' organizational commitment perceptions and both their psychological hardiness and some demographic variables in a sample of Turkish primary schools. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 405 randomly selected teachers working at primary schools in Ankara…