Episode 705: The School's Largest Classroom: How Media Centers Can Ignite Learner Agency

Ashley Mengwasser:

There's a place in Georgia schools where you can check out student agency in practice. A place where passivity is discouraged, because why shelve a learner's inclinations in an environment so rife with imagination? An educator is here to tell us where this location is, and how your school can adapt it for optimal, personalized learning effects, next.

Hello, educators. Welcome to Classroom Conversations, the platform for Georgia's teachers. You're back. Of course you are, I shouldn't sound so surprised, because we are walking the walk and talking the talk to bring you every strategy under the sun that promises teacher support and students success. I'm host Ashley Mengwasser, tapped by our series presenters, the Georgia Department of Education and Georgia Public Broadcasting, to brighten your day.

Episode two continues a season-long exploration of personalized learning, as we pick up the second personalized learning standard and its affiliated strategies, Learner Agency. Remember from episode one that Georgia defines personalized learning as an instructional approach that uses student voice to enact an individual path and pace through a collection of competencies. These are student-centered practices for success.

A little history, this all began five years ago in the fall of 2020, when the Georgia Department of Education, GDOE, made a commitment to student centered approaches through Georgia's ReStart, Embrace, Engage, Expand, and Enhance Learning with Technology Initiative, also called GRE4T. GRE4T is designed to improve student learning and well-being across all subgroups through the promotion of personalized learning, and that's what our season is about. With Standard Two, which is Learner Agency, teachers encourage learners to advocate for their needs, their preferences and their interests to plan and drive their own learning.

The setting we've chosen for today's story of Learner Agency falls unexpectedly outside of the classroom, but in the center of learning, the media center. Shh, we actually don't have to whisper because the media specialist came to us. My guest is sitting here, beaming with Panther pride from Fayette County Public Schools. Introducing Dr. Amanda White, Media Specialist at Peachtree City Elementary School. Welcome, Dr. White.

Dr. Amanda White:

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here today.

Ashley Mengwasser:

How are you feeling?

Dr. Amanda White:

This is great, what a great environment. It's just a really exciting high energy kind of a place to be.

Ashley Mengwasser:

That's what we like. We're buzzing with excitement that you're here, of course.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely, I'm always excited to advocate for school media centers.

Ashley Mengwasser:

I know, and you're the perfect person to talk about this. You have 25 years in this business, right?

Dr. Amanda White:

Yes, yes.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Tell me about that journey.

Dr. Amanda White:

I grew up in a family with just one older sibling, one sister. And from the time we were very small, we played school at home. We played school at home, I was always the student because I was the youngest. But to that end, I learned to read at home before I ever started elementary school, before I started kindergarten and that was just a lifelong attachment to reading in books that starting in the little home classroom and playing with our notebooks and our cast-off school books that we could get from thrift stores or wherever. And really, that grew into a desire to become an educator too.

I was remarkably gifted in my little town with fabulous educators who really fostered a love of learning and reading also with me, and parents who were supportive. And I just couldn't picture myself entering into college, pursuing any career other than education. And two years in a classroom setting at the high school level and I loved every minute of it, but while pursuing a master's degree in media, I really felt like the library was the place where my ultimate education goal would lie, and it has. 23 years now in the media center at the elementary school level and I have never wanted to leave, it is a home for me.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Yeah, it sounds like, so this was built into you from a very young age.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You have an older sister who introduced you to this life. You're spending your life surrounded by books, and you've also picked up a rather interesting hobby, I think. It's very zeitgeist-y. People are really into this hobby right now. What is the hobby and how do you do it with your hands full of books?

Dr. Amanda White:

I do enjoy crochet, I do enjoy crochet.

Ashley Mengwasser:

She makes it.

Dr. Amanda White:

I brought a blanket to show you today in my tote. So during our big ice storm that it so impacted Atlanta and the metro areas and the surrounding areas, we kept power at our house during that time and I was able to watch YouTube videos and we had yarn on hand because we are a crafty family to begin with, and I just got invested in crochet. It's a lot of fun. It is a very zen kind of a thing to do, it's very calming and soothing. You can put on a movie that you're familiar with in the background and just work away, and then you have something beautiful to create. Most of the things that I make, I give away.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What do you make?

Dr. Amanda White:

In general, blankets. I'm not so great with the amigurumi style of crochet where things are done in the round where you get crochet stuffed animals.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Amanda White:

But I'm not great with that.

Ashley Mengwasser:

The Woobles, yes.

Dr. Amanda White:

Yeah, exactly. I'm better on the flat, so I like a blanket to give away. The blanket that I brought to show you today, my daughter once we got really invested in this, this was elementary school for her and she's 20 now. She wanted to design and have me make a blanket for her. So it's a granny square blanket and she was really into rainbow themed things at that time. So we worked together to lay out the squares, pick the design, what the borders would be, and that blanket has traveled with her lots of different places, but through two different dorm rooms at college now.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Wow.

Dr. Amanda White:

And yeah, so-

Ashley Mengwasser:

What a story.

Dr. Amanda White:

... it has seen a lot of things I'm sure.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Who doesn't want a traveling blanket, though?

Dr. Amanda White:

Who doesn't want a traveling blanket?

Ashley Mengwasser:

It goes everywhere with them.

Dr. Amanda White:

It seems like a picture book, it seemed like a good one.

Ashley Mengwasser:

It does. And you're not the first family member to be sitting in the Classroom Conversations talk studio with me.

Dr. Amanda White:

I am not, I am not.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Tell me who else was on this series.

Dr. Amanda White:

My husband, Dr. Donald White, who's my driver today.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Chauffeur.

Dr. Amanda White:

He is my chauffeur today. He also did a Classroom Conversation with you sometime back.

Ashley Mengwasser:

He sure did, in season one, actually. You can go back and find the episode with Dr. White, enjoy that. It was a favorite of mine, for sure.

Dr. Amanda White:

We are a family of educators.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Yeah, you get it honest. And what about your daughter, do you think she's gonna…?

Dr. Amanda White:

Our daughter has a definite bent toward education.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Really?

Dr. Amanda White:

She does do speaking engagements at lots of local schools, and she's taken her first TA job last semester and really found it to be enjoyable and fulfilling. So I have no doubt that she will have some level of education in her life. She's interested in science communication. So, I can see her taking a similar path that Donald and I have taken.

Ashley Mengwasser:

It's in that good, educator blood.

Dr. Amanda White:

We are curious people.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Yes.

Dr. Amanda White:

We like learning, we like knowing, and we like communicating that knowledge to other people. So, she definitely has that.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And you thoroughly do this in your role as media specialist at your elementary school.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What are some of your top-pick children's titles right now? Are there some favorite books?

Dr. Amanda White:

Well, I will tell you I am such a lover of a picture book. I love a picture book, I still buy them even for myself now. And I am a fan of a classic picture book, something along the lines of a Little Bear, a Stellaluna. My daughter just recently got a Stellaluna tattoo in honor of our relationship together, but I do love Janell Cannon. I do love the beautiful folk art illustrations of Jan Brett, we were fortunate enough to get to meet her on a book tour in Athens one time. But you cannot deny that graphic novels are having a hot moment.

Ashley Mengwasser:

They're having a moment.

Dr. Amanda White:

They are having a hot moment for kids and it's really great to see how some classic series like the Boxcar Children or the Hardy Boys or even newer series like the I Survived series, which are a historical fiction series, are being reincarnated into graphic novel form.

Ashley Mengwasser:

I didn't know that.

Dr. Amanda White:

Yeah, kids are so interested in graphic novel and it's not a medium that I am most comfortable in reading. It's not a style that I particularly enjoy, but you have to be aware of what the kids are invested in and what's going to draw them into the shelves and into reading more. So our graphic novel section, we actually had to move it last year. It was too cramped, it was too large for the section that we had it in. It's really-

Ashley Mengwasser:

It's growing.

Dr. Amanda White:

It's growing, so we had to move it to a larger section where kids had a little more room to spread out and really dig deep into that.

Ashley Mengwasser:

In your ideal world, how can a student best experience their media center from the moment they walk inside?

Dr. Amanda White:

From the moment they walk in, our media center at Peachtree City Elementary, first of all, going back to when I was hired two decades ago, I was tasked with making the media center a welcoming, soft spot to land for students. We wanted it to be a friendly open place. And I do work in a beautifully redesigned new build media center, so high ceilings, bright colors, a lot of great places for children to spread out and be comfortable in flexible furniture. So we want children to come in and feel curious about what we have on our shelves. We want you to always come in and feel like there's something really exciting to explore, something to discover. It's not the same room every time you come in, I want you to be surprised when you come in. So we want children to come in with that sense of curiosity intact and really just feel free to ramble around, pick things up. Don't feel like you have to be silent, don't feel like you can't touch things and move them around. We want you comfortable and exploring our room.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And you've just described something so inviting. Who wouldn't want to read there?

Dr. Amanda White:

Who wouldn't want to read there?

Ashley Mengwasser:

And find books there? How about a few secrets from a media specialist? You've put some time into this. What insider practices have you gleaned that you can share with us?

Dr. Amanda White:

It's probably controversial with some of my colleagues, but I really believe in a can't say no media center, with few exceptions. There are exceptions, there are times we have to say no, but I want our space and our schedule to be flexible enough that anything that you come to me and ask for, I hope that we can figure out a way to make it work. Whether it's in the space that we live in daily, whether it's me pushing out into your classroom, whether it's providing you with resources, borrowing them through inter-library loan. We are very fortunate in Fayette County to have a robust inter-library loan system between our libraries. People come and ask for the weird things. Do you have an iron? I do, I do.

Ashley Mengwasser:

The weird things.

Dr. Amanda White:

Do you have a hairdryer? I do, I do, because you never know what teachers are going to need to support learning in their classroom and I want you to be able to have that. And I want to always be able, as much as possible, to be able to say yes in my media center to your requests.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Having an iron and a hairdryer, you are my kind of educator, Dr. White, let me tell you.

Dr. Amanda White:

You never know.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You never know. And when you think about personalized learning, which is our topic this season, and more specifically, Learner Agency, which is a piece of that, how do you define it?

Dr. Amanda White:

Learner Agency, we really want our students just to feel empowered to take control of their own education, to express their own thoughts about what they're learning, to feel like they have a hand in what their educational process is going to be like. We know that they are more invested, their buy-in level is higher, their self-efficacy is higher, their independence and their general outcomes are higher when agency is involved. And the media center is a great place to foster that. I said before we started, don't sleep on the media center, but everything that's positive in education is happening in your media centers. And I think that agency is great place, the media center is a great place for agency to be fostered.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And to practice it.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

I love when you say don't sleep on the media center. We also joke, don't sleep in the media center. It happens, right?

Dr. Amanda White:

It is cozy, we have a lot of nice little places to cozy out.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You might fall asleep reading a good book at times.

Dr. Amanda White:

You could, you could.

Ashley Mengwasser:

How do you engage with students? And I guess we should talk about your school, how many students you see, if they strictly coming to you. You mentioned push out, you might go to them as well. What's that interaction?

Dr. Amanda White:

All right, so the media center at Peachtree City, we are a school of about 475 students. We are right around that mark. So, relatively a small school, and because of the way our circulation software works, when you come to check out, I could ask you for a number, but it's like a five or six digit number. That seemed really impersonal to me when we first started using this software, so I ask you for your first and last name. And because of that, I have learned almost all of the names of the students in my building. I can go down the hallway and call people by name.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Wow.

Dr. Amanda White:

And that's really important to building relationships with me. So yeah, I love for students to come in and feel like they are welcomed in, like they are someone that is important to us and that they have a relationship with us. I want you to come in and feel that with me.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You know them. How often do they get to see you? Is it whenever they would like?

Dr. Amanda White:

It's a combination. So we are part of the special schedule, the exploratory schedule or the rotation schedule, different schools call it different things. So when you're thinking about your chorus or your music, your art, your PE, your technology, media center at my school is part of that specials rotation. And with that, they are scheduled to come see me once every other week and they'll have a lesson with me and a checkout period at that time. But our students do have the freedom because of the staffing that we have, to come and see me anytime they need to swap out a book. So even though they'll see me just that whole group check out one time every other week, they can come every day if they finish their books and the teacher finds it to be an appropriate time. So, we do have students that we see every single day to swap out and check out.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Because they're voracious readers.

Dr. Amanda White:

They are voracious readers. They'll have a lesson with me in the classroom but there are times when we have some other activity booked in the library and a teacher really needs something to happen, really wants a lesson, and I might push out and go to their room and teach from that instead. So, we want the library to be a hub for the building and really an extension of the learning that happens in the classroom but knowing that it can go both ways. I can push back into your room if that's what would work best with our schedule. Falling back on that can't say no mentality, if our schedule is booked and I can still make it out to come to you, I want to be able to do that.

Ashley Mengwasser:

We're going to get into the cool way that your media center is laid out and configured. Let's start though with strategies that you use that allow you to facilitate student agency in the media center.

Dr. Amanda White:

All right. So we try at the beginning of every year with all of our exploratory classes, we run some little reader itineraries, little reader checklists, what do you like? We have conversations with our children because we are really wanting to foster independence in conversation with them and have them being the leaders in the conversation. Again, that student agency. What do you like to read? What was the best last thing that you read, the thing that stuck in your mind that you want to read more like it? And we try to keep that information on file, keep it tucked away either in the head or on paper, and we help to refer kids to those areas in the library where they can go back and find things that they love on their own. They don't always have to come to me to say, "Hey, where's this book series that I love?" I want them to be able to find it on their own.

But we spend a lot of time in the first weeks of the year trying to get children talking and really thinking about, going to the library isn't just I go and I choose a book at random from the shelves. I'm thinking about it. What's the genre that I like? What's something that compares that I like? We keep bookmarks on hand. If you like this, then you would like this.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Smart.

Dr. Amanda White:

We have signage in the library, if you read this, you might like this. So, really trying to help children see the signs and use the resources that we have to find things on their own.

Ashley Mengwasser:

It sounds so much like a scaffold to support, but it's all set up in terms of student choice.

Dr. Amanda White:

Yes.

Ashley Mengwasser:

If this, you might like this. You have options available to you that you can choose. And utilizing the environment of the media center is part of this because of your beautiful space that you mentioned. Your school was renovated and cool changes were made, you said it was about 10 years ago?

Dr. Amanda White:

Coming up on 10 years ago, yes. Our school is coming up on 60 years old.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Wow.

Dr. Amanda White:

And so we hit our 50th anniversary and then we had a lovely reno in our building, a beautiful new gym, a beautiful new exploratory wing, and the library was part of that. So, not every media specialist gets the opportunity to pack and move a library and it's something that I've done once in a career and might like to never do again.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Never do again.

Dr. Amanda White:

It was a lot of work. But in future planning for that room that we would move into 10 years ago, we knew we wanted to make some changes in the way the space was laid out and the way students interacted with that space. And at that time, and still even now, there's a movement to genrefy your library.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Oh.

Dr. Amanda White:

Yeah, to organize your library collection more in terms of the genre the book represents, by mysteries, by adventures, by realistic fiction, by historical fiction, because in the elementary school, our children are really browsers. It's a browsing library, it's not a research library in the sense that a university library would be. We do still utilize the Dewey Decimal system for our non-fiction books. People always like to ask, are you still doing that? We are. It's an organization system that works, but a lot of people are even reorganizing their non-fictions to just have, these are animal books, these are transportation books, these are-

Ashley Mengwasser:

Like a bookshop.

Dr. Amanda White:

Like a bookshop, and children really respond well to that. So planning the move into our new space 10 years ago, we preemptively sorted everything. It was a mess, it was a big organized mess of taking books off shelves and using resources, reading reviews and deciding, what stack does this one go into? What genre is this? We packed it by genre, we unpacked it by genre in the new room. And I have to say, I think it was one of the best decisions that we've ever made. We saw our circulation numbers go up. We saw our student engagement with the shelves and with the collection really increase. And while some teachers were concerned about it because they've seen a library organized in a particular way. We love ABC order, we love ABC order in the library, and they knew where their favorite books lived on the shelves. But our students were so excited by this fresh new space and a fresh new way to organize that they could really control, that they could manage on their own.

Ashley Mengwasser:

With their own agency.

Dr. Amanda White:

With their own agency. So, the collection organization was really important for us and even the layout of the space. So our library is a very large room and I was given my own agency to really design how that room would be chopped up into smaller spaces, because we knew we didn't want this large cavernous room that children could get lost in. But we've tucked away a lot of nice little areas. We have a cool area in the back with armchairs where the older kids, fourth and fifth grader love to come and sit and do their project work in the back. We have a Lego area up front, which is very popular with kids who have some extra time during a lesson to come and clip some things onto the Lego wall. We have a puzzle area where kids can work collaboratively, we really focus on those kind of soft skills. But it's really been a great place with a lot of flexible furniture, a lot of flexible seating. The room can be configured in a lot of ways.

And to that end, I think that's an empowering of the agency of students as well. They can choose where they're going to land in the room when they come in, which area best fits their need, and how they're going to use the space that day.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And walk right up to a category of interest and pick a book-

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

... on their own. The word you used that really struck a chord with me when we first met, you talked about, this allows students to use their library intuitively. Intuitively, and that obstacle goes away because you sometimes have young children enter a library and just the overwhelm of it all shuts them down. How have you seen a difference in your students as a result?

Dr. Amanda White:

Well, organizing with good, clear signage. Librarians love signage, we really put a lot of thought in the type of signage that we would use and how children could interact with that. Things are color-coded in ways that you can come in and even if they're pre-readers, they know there's a table of books that are laid out just for children who aren't reading yet. They can still choose from the shelf if they want to, but they know this table is a comfortable place for them to land. The color-coding of the shelving, kids know even if they're not the strongest of readers, I really did like those realistic books and they have a purple sticker on the side, so they can go and find that. And really, just giving them the empowerment to come in and not be afraid, more intuitively use the library.

The library can be overwhelming for people, and that is a sadness for me, because it was such a haven for me when I was younger and even now. I mean, I'm so fortunate to in my favorite place every day, but I don't want children to come in and feel off put by the library, to feel that you can't touch anything, that anything is off limits. So to that end, we just really tried to make it inviting and a space where you can feel free to learn just like you would in the regular classroom. We're a regular classroom, just the largest one in the building.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You're the largest classroom in the building. Oh, I love that. That should be a T-shirt.

Dr. Amanda White:

Right? Serving every child in the school and staff member, also.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Incredible. Talk to us about growth mindset and how that's a key part of the journey of personalized learning. I know you told me with this structure, with this configuration in the library, students are reaching beyond their current reading levels.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So organizing things by genre means that, you know that you like... When we come in and we do reader's checklist with children at the beginning of the year, what do you like? What have you read there? They think, well, I like graphic novels and I know where that section is. What we work on with children through the year is the growth mindset of, you like this and that's great, but now let's try over here.

And so, what we're seeing with genrefying, the library and working with students through their interest level and really advocating for students’ choice, is students who are not getting locked into just reading one title over and over or the same type of book over and over. They feel more agency to branch out across the room and try some different genres. We have lessons we work on with teachers with a bingo-style reader card, where they'll try different genres all around the room. And it's so gratifying to have a student say, "I never would've read a history book."

Ashley Mengwasser:

This book.

Dr. Amanda White:

"I never would've read this, and I love it." And to see them now going to that section and trying something new. So, seeing that growth of a reader over the school year is really, really gratifying.

Ashley Mengwasser:

As a media specialist, Dr. White, do you approach personalized learning and learner agency differently from a classroom teacher? How would you compare?

Dr. Amanda White:

I would imagine so. There's such a focus in education on collecting good data and drilling down and utilizing that data to really strengthen our instruction and strengthen our practices, and we most definitely do that in the media center as well. Again, sleeping on the media center, people forget that we are collecting data as well. I can tell you about circulation statistics and we can do ages of our collection to see how old things are and how quickly they're circulating and what changes we need to make.

We are gathering data as well, but a lot of times our data is more qualitative, more anecdotal. We know how children are growing and we're seeing different patterns in the hardcore data, the quantitative data that we're gathering to see how collections are used. But we can see in the attitudes of children when they come in, we can sense from there what types of changes that we need to make, and is this area of the library really underutilized? We perhaps need to try to inject some fresh new titles into that area. So, we do have different needs than the classroom, but we're all just working together to support instruction.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Do you have one or two examples of that qualitative piece where you can talk about the impact on individual students that you've observed?

Dr. Amanda White:

I love to run into our students in the wild, whether it's in the bookstore, whether it's in a restaurant. And especially our older kids who run into me and tell me... I remember coming to the library, one of our students I ran into not terribly long ago, and she said, I spoke to her and she said, "I remember your voice. I remember all the stories. I remember your voice reading stories to us all through elementary school." And that's such a wonderful anecdotal story, but it's a wonderful thing to remember and for media specialists, the impact that we have. We are the largest classroom and we do serve every child. So we have such a great impact on student learning, we have such a great impact on students as they move forward to help them become lifelong readers. If we can get them hooked on reading at the elementary level with our fun spaces and our bright colors and our beautiful picture books and our snappy graphic novels, then we hope that they carry that forward with them and they remember us when they're adults

Ashley Mengwasser:

To be readers for life.

Dr. Amanda White:

Right.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And of course they remember you, because you know their names.

Dr. Amanda White:

We know their names.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You empower them to choose, you take them to their favorite sections and then show them new favorite genres to love.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Of course that's working. Well, would you please, Dr. White, leave us with any tips or tricks for somebody who wants to support personalized learning and learning agency in their media center?

Dr. Amanda White:

There is so much great research now showing that student choice in reading is so profound and so powerful for student performance, for student achievement. And it becomes very easy, we are so focused on moving the needle for students for helping them improve and really seeing their reading levels grow. It can become very easy to take too much of a direct hand in directing children toward what they need to read and not paying attention to what their innate interests are. And if there is anything that I could tell a new media specialist, it would be to value student choice, to value student agency and to really listen to what their requests are.

My husband and I gave our daughter books when she was younger, just from the moment when she could hold something in her hands and lots of times they were books that she had no ability to read on her own, but she was interested in them. It's what she wanted, she wanted to look at the picture, she wanted to try to decipher the captions. And again, anecdotally in our own home, we saw her becoming a voracious reader because we fostered her choice. And we saw that at home and I see her as a reader now starting her third year in college. And I would want media specialists and teachers, all educators to really value student choice and student agency to help them see that they can be in charge to a degree of their own education and what they're interested in learning.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You are so incredibly uplifting, Dr. White. I vote that we all use our agency today to hug a media specialist.

Dr. Amanda White:

Oh, I love it.

Ashley Mengwasser:

That's what we need to be doing. I hope you can spend-

Dr. Amanda White:

I love it.

Ashley Mengwasser:

... all of your days ensconced in books.

Dr. Amanda White:

Absolutely. It's a wonderful way to be.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And thank you. We appreciate you bringing the magic of your media center.

Dr. Amanda White:

Thank you so much, I've enjoyed being here.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Thank you, Dr. White.

Okay, educators: that's two personalized learning standards down, only eight to go. Take this cool school model for a learner agency and put an emotion in your school. No matter your story, you're a great teacher, don't forget. Let's turn the page to a new chapter, which drops next week. I'm Ashley, goodbye for now.

The Personalized Learning series of Classroom Conversations is funded by the GRE4T Initiative. In the fall of 2020, the Georgia Department of Education made a commitment to student centered approaches through Georgia's ReStart, Embrace, Engage, Expand, and Enhance Learning with Technology Initiative.