May 2006

Middle School Benefits from Teaching and Library Resources

Medical Lake Middle School, Mary Kay Rolwes, Librarian

Mary Kay Rolwes, the librarian at Medical Lake Middle School, says the reason her school signed on for the DLC's middle school pilot this year was "to have access to free stuff with budgets the way they are." She adds that Medical Lake joined for the 2006-07 school year because "the staff's use convinced my principal that we should have it."

Rolwes herself hoped to get library resources all in one place for the students. "And I got that," she says, adding "as long as I can stay on them and get them before they go to Google." To wean students off of Google, Rolwes put the DLC search box on the library web page.

"But the DLC is more than just the library resources," Rolwes says. "It's a tool the entire staff can use and that was really the selling point."

Resources to target skills and enrich curricula

Medical Lake's resource room teacher, who works with students who need extra help, uses ALPs and ClassTools. The reading teacher also uses ALPs with his seventh-grade students. Both ALPs and ClassTools allow teachers to target specific skills for individual students as well as enrich their classroom curriculum. Many teachers use netTrekker to find activities for classroom starters, such as a noun game.

Rolwes is facilitating a workshop with the language arts teachers this month to dig deeper into ClassTools and Beyond Books. She initially put off exploring both teaching resources because she needed a password to access them. "You know it was a big excuse, and when I finally got in there, I said, 'Wow, this is really good stuff.' "

When Rolwes saw how rich these resources were, she wanted to work closely with staff to help them set up some units for next year.

Training and support key to technology integration

School staff were initially introduced to DLC resources through an all-staff training in February. "Maile [DLC staff member] did an awesome job…and the training allowed staff to sit down in the lab together and help each other and get the hands-on exploration that they don't have time to do on their own," Rolwes says. She has found that the initial training and follow-up training the DLC provides is really important to getting the resources established.

Rolwes credits Principal Mike Dahmen, who has been with the school for two years, for being the force behind technology integration.

"We have a principal who provides the technology and expects the teachers to use it. So we're pretty fortunate that way. It allows for creativity for the teachers, and the students like it. It's what they see every day and it brings them in, especially kids who don't do well just sitting in the classroom."

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