Shared Foundation 5- Explore with Dr. Landrum

 Shared Foundation 5- Explore with Dr. Landrum

    For the Shared Foundation, Explore, I interviewed Dr. DeSherah Landrum, the librarian at Jonesville Elementary/Middle School in the Union County Schools school district. Dr. Landrum has worked at Jonesville Elementary Middle for many years. Right now, she has a fixed schedule with set classes that come to the library for lessons and to check out books.  

    I was really excited to hear what Dr. Landrum had to say about this Shared Foundation because I had had trouble getting students excited about reading at my high school. She works in the same district as me, so we have the same students and that makes her insight even more valuable. From my interview I learned that Dr. Landrum was doing many different things to foster curiosity and promote deeper thinking with her students. She does a lot of group work with lessons, provides information and resources to classroom teachers, and plans library lessons that encourage students to read a variety of books.  

    She does a lot of work in groups, I think this is something I can easily incorporate into the lessons I teach and co-teach with classroom teachers. I already have in the one research lesson I taught last month. Collaboration makes the lesson more fun, interactive and promotes exploration for students. She also told me that she can’t often go into the classroom due to her fixed schedule, but she will make resource lists for teachers to use in their lessons. This is something else I can reach out to classroom teachers of all subjects about to work on for them.  

    To do these things she uses technology, books, magazines, audiovisual materials, reference sources, and makes sure she has an updated and diverse collection. She also creates a welcoming and positive environment for her students and the school staff.  

    I plan to create more programs that will get students in the door who might not be enticed by the books in the collection. I also have plans to host events and drop-ins for the teachers and staff in the building. I want to host a casual drop in book tasting sometime next semester with snacks and book suggestions. I think this will be a great way more me to chat with teachers and see if they have any projects or lessons I can help with and to get them reading. I want to really get teachers promoting reading for fun to students because most of the students don’t want to read for fun. They are so used to reading books for school they haven’t realized there is more out there. I have a variety of craft and STEM projects planned for kids to get them in and even if they don’t check out a book, they will leave with a positive feeling about the library.