Key Assessment: Strategic Management Plan
Reflection
The strategic management plan really showed me what it would take to plan, implement, and evaluate a successful library media program at my school. I completed this key assessment during my first semester in the ITEC program, just a few months after I had started working full-time as a media specialist. I was able to use the management skills I learned when completing this assignment immediately on the job; I revisited our media center's mission statement, completed a facilities evaluation (which led me to visit other school libraries that had recently renovated to get ideas for our space), and started to brainstorm media center goals with my staff. To be a media specialist truly means being an effective administrator, and this assessment introduced me to those skills at a key moment in my new career.
Strategic Management Plan Site
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Full Strategic Management Plan Document
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Task 4: Grant Application Draft
Reflection
Since my school is a private college preparatory academy, we don't qualify for very many grants. I ran into this problem several years ago when I first started looking for additional sources of funding for the media center. The majority of grants available to school libraries require that student populations fall into a specific demographic group, and we tend to be excluded as a result. Of course, there are always exceptions, and I was happy to find one for this exercise. I chose to draft an application for the TEI Landmark Audio’s 25th Year Children’s Literacy and Programming Grant, which awards 25 grants with amounts of up to $1,000 to non-profit community organizations (like schools and libraries). In this grant application, I asked for funds to partner with a local public school to bring Atlanta-based young adult author Aisha Saeed to Monroe for a speaking event. A grant of this nature could definitely help us fund an event that would otherwise receive little consideration from administration (budgets are tight at every school, not just public schools!). Moreover, it gives my school library a great opportunity to partner with a local public school library and to make the terms of that collaboration more beneficial for both parties.
Task 5: Library Media Program Evaluation
Reflection
The school library media program self-evaluation task was a good report card for me as the leader of my school's media centers. This rubric adequately demonstrates just how much work, dedication, and support goes into creating and maintaining an exceptional program. In fact, I asked my three media center staff to conduct their own independent evaluations using the same rubric so they could get a better idea of where we all stood on the state or our school-wide program, from lower school to high school. In all honestly, I would expect an independent media program to exceed standards for a public school program; we should definitely be able to meet the exemplary level in all evaluation areas. We're not quite there yet, but we now have a game plan for how to proceed.
I knew when I began my tenure as the upper school media specialist that teachers' resistance to true collaboration would be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. The self-evaluation rubric confirms that we still have important work to do in this area, but it also shows that we have made progress over the last few years. Collaborative lessons will remain a significant focus for me as I continually seek to demonstrate the benefits of this process to faculty and administration.
I knew when I began my tenure as the upper school media specialist that teachers' resistance to true collaboration would be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. The self-evaluation rubric confirms that we still have important work to do in this area, but it also shows that we have made progress over the last few years. Collaborative lessons will remain a significant focus for me as I continually seek to demonstrate the benefits of this process to faculty and administration.
Completed Program Evaluation Rubric
Memo to Principal and Action Plan