Richmond Hill High School

7:15-3:15
Today I went to Richmond Hill High School to complete my hours in a high school. I worked with Annie Norton and Paula Wyatt throughout the day. When I arrived, I got a tour of the facility. It is an incredibly small facility for the size of the student body. There are 1600 students and it is smaller than my elementary school facility with only 600 students. It is about 1/3 the size of Bradwell Institute in Liberty County and BI only has about 200 more students. When I asked the two media specialists about this, they agreed that they should have more space and it is possibly in the plans when a new middle school is built. There is a middle school next to RHHS that will eventually be taken in as a part of the high school and another media center will be included in that part of the campus.
There were supposed to be classes come in all day to do research on the Salem Witch Trials, so Mrs. Wyatt had pulled books for this research project. She showed me that she has room on one set of shelves for teacher pulls. However, this teacher did not show up. He was not ready for his class to come in yet. There was another class that came in, though, and completed some independent research. The students took the laptops that were set out and went to their individual tables to look up whatever information they needed. They didn't need any assistance, resources, or extra materials.
Throughout the day, I got to see quite a few different roles that these media specialists play. I saw different teachers who came in and discussed activities with them. I also got to see different versions of teacher/media specialist cooperation. I don't believe I saw true collaboration, but I did see some interaction. I also saw a class that came in to work. The two media specialists don't do anything with check-out, check-in, or shelving as they have a full-time clerk that takes care of all of this. There were several students that came into the MC throughout the day and asked questions, found books, used the computers and printers, and just talked to the MS.
It was very interesting to see the difference between an elementary school that I was used to and a high school. The high school has much less traffic through the media center throughout the day. The traffic it does have seems to be just for socializing and not necessarily for education. However, the classes that came in were so independent. They just grabbed the laptops and got to work. It was pretty amazing to see the difference.