Assignment 8: Professional Learning Plan for Media Center Integration

Hillgrove High School

Description of Hillgrove High School Media Center

Hillgrove High School is a traditional 9-12 school established in 2005 with a robust
media center. The Media Center is open to all students and serves as a library, computer lab,
project room, copy center, and social area. Students are permitted freely in the media center
before school and during lunch with a pass. Except for students in a work-based learning
program and seniors with enough credits to skip a period, all students attend school in person
throughout the day. The media center has 42 Dell desktops and five hardwired laptops that
remain in place. These computers are connected to the school internet, which is policed by a
firewall, and have access to word processors and a digital library with multiple academic
databases. The school system pays for access to these various databases and for students to have
Office 365 accounts to access their documents anywhere. The media center also contains a 50-
inch portable screen that teachers can use for class (rendered somewhat redundant by the
installation of similar screens in each classroom) or for small groups in various breakout rooms.
The media specialists routinely offer to teach any class how to use the databases or how to use
the current citation software. Teachers can check out various technology for students, including
cameras and portable drives. A green screen is set up in a side room for recording video. There
are various poster-making, die-cut, and laminating tools available for projects. For the 2023-
2024 school year, the media center will be staffed by one certified media specialist and two
parapros.
The Hillgrove High School Media Center's biggest concern is teacher participation. The
media specialists have plenty to share with students and excellent training and knowledge to
share with the rest of the school. However, most teachers are either unaware of the resources
available through the media center or unwilling to allow the media center to influence their
teaching significantly. Frey and Fisher (2008) describe the benefits of students learning through a
visual medium. While many would call and clamor for schools to add such resources, it only
works if the teachers actively use the available resources. This is currently the case at Hillgrove
High School.

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 In order to correct this problem, this team has designed a plan to incorporate the media
center further into the school and ingrain its resources into the fabric of every applicable subject.
In order to do this, we will work with the current media center specialist (in a new role) to spread
information about the resources to the staff. In addition, we will work with the administration to
ensure that teachers are actively engaging with the media center instead of simply using it as a
lab.
The implementation of this plan will hopefully lead to more students engaging in visual
media and becoming better digital and general citizens. The other hope is that this will break
down some of the barriers that veteran teachers have built up, which would hopefully lead to an
increase in positive collaboration across the school. Learning Forward (2014) believes that
teacher preparation and growth in content knowledge is a vital component of professional
learning. In the case of visual media, nearly all teachers would benefit from additional training—
professional
Learning Objectives
Objective One. Design and implement school-wide professional learning sessions lead by the
media center on three occasions during the Fall Semester at Hillgrove High School. These
sessions will inform staff of services provided by the media center and encourage the use of the
resources. (completed by August 2023, October 2023, and December 2023.
Objective Two. Require teachers of academic subjects to bring at least one of their courses to
the Media Center on two occasions for subject-specific enrichment via the resources of the media
center. (by December 2023)
Objective Three. Incorporate at least one thirty-minute lesson conducted by a member of the
media center staff into two different courses per subject area at Hillgrove High School. This
lesson will be conducted in the classroom in order to facilitate better collaboration between the
teachers and the media center. (December 2023)

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Objective 1 Details.

Objective 1:
Design and implement school-wide professional learning sessions led by the media center
on three occasions during the Fall Semester at Hillgrove High School. These sessions will
inform staff of services provided by the media center and encourage using the resources.
(completed by August 2023, October 2023, and December 2023.

Stakeholders: Timeline:
Professional Learning Plan Supervisor (Eli Barber) July 24, 2023-December
Media Specialist (Cindy Ford) 16th, 2023
School level administrators

Action Steps Evaluation

1. Meet with the Media Center team to discuss which Formative: Pre-learning
services they would like to discuss in the three survey
professional learning sessions.
2. Meet with administrators to discuss time frames and Formative:
dates for the three professional learning sessions Future learning Survey
3. Design 1st professional learning session geared
toward an introduction f the Media Center and its Summative:
resources Post-learning session
4. Design a formative pre-learning survey for teachers evaluation
about the services the media center offers
5. Design a post-learning formative study about what
teachers want to see from the media center.
6. Conduct the first professional learning session during
pre-planning of Fall 2023
7. Gather the results of formative assessments, and
design a second session based on feedback.
8. Conduct a second session, and re-administer the

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 productive post-learning survey from the first
session.
9. Use results of formative assessment to design the
final professional learning session
10. Design a summative review of the sessions to be
conducted by the teachers attending the sessions
11. Conduct the last session and administer the
evaluation.

Objective 2 Introduction. The first goal was designed to spread better awareness of the
resources of the Hillgrove High School media center. Previously, emails had been sent out but
not read. The second objective is designed to actually have teachers required to visit the media
center. The purpose of this is so that the teachers who are rather stubborn in their ways will be
forced to experience the media center and its abilities. In theory, requiring teachers to take only
one of their courses on two occasions will incentivize teachers to begin using the media center
more willingly, exposing more students to visual learning. The professional learning coordinator,
the media specialist, and the administration will evaluate this.

Objective 2 Details

Objective 2:
Require teachers of academic subjects to bring at least one of their courses to the Media
Center on two occasions for subject-specific enrichment via the resources of the media
center. (by December 2023)

Stakeholders: Timeline:
Professional Learning Plan Supervisor (Eli Barber) August 1, 2023, through
Media Specialist (Cindy Ford) December 19, 2023
School level administrators

Action Steps Evaluation

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 1. Work with the Media Specialist and an administrator Formative: Teacher self-
to set up a signup system to track teacher use of the evaluation of media
media center. center/visual media use
2. Provide teachers with the formative self-evaluation of
their use of the media center/visual media Formative:
3. Provide teachers with the signup requirements for Media specialist self-
semester evaluation of lesson
4. Begin signing teachers up for time slots during the
semester. Summative:
5. Track down teachers who have not signed up, and
sign them up Evaluation of media center
6. Begin media center integration integration process
7. Have media specialists complete a self-evaluation for
each class they teach
8. Provide teachers with a link to the process evaluation
at the end of the semester.

Objective 3 Introduction. Many teachers do not want or have the ability to quickly move their
classes to the media center during the day. As the main goal of this was integration between the
media center and teachers, we also want the media specialists to go and visit classrooms and
teach visual media in the classrooms. To make things simpler, the media specialist will only visit
two classroom teachers per subject area, most likely the department chair and someone else. The
overall goal of the entire PDP is increased collaboration between teachers and the media center,
and the hope is that having visits going both ways will increase that.

Objective 3 Details.

Objective 3:
Incorporate at least one thirty-minute lesson conducted by a member of the media center

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staff into two different courses per subject area at Hillgrove High School. This lesson will be
conducted in the classroom in order to facilitate better collaboration between the teachers
and the media center. (December 2023)

Stakeholders: Timeline:
Professional Learning Plan Supervisor (Eli Barber) August 1, 2023, through
Media Specialist (Cindy Ford) December 19, 2023
School level administrators

Action Steps Evaluation

1. At a department chair meeting, the lead facilitator and Formative- Teacher

the media specialist will inform the department chairs Evaluation of Media
of the process and gain their input on the best times. Specialist
2. A schedule will be sent out to the teachers being
visited, with requests for information about the current Formative- Media
unit. Specialist self-evaluation
3. Based on the individual units, the Media Specialist
will develop a small 30-minute lesson that targets
visual media literacy. It will be the responsibility of Summative- Schoolwide
the teacher to use that information to re-enforce those survey of Media Center
ideas in the classroom. integration Process
4. Teachers will fill out a survey of their experience with
the classroom visit as a formative assessment
5. The media specialist will fill out a self-evaluation
based on their visit.
6. At the conclusion of the semester, all participating
teachers will fill out a summative evaluation of the
entire process and whether or not they think that the
school should continue the integration.

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Evaluations
The process of evaluating the stakeholders and the media center is vital to this project. If
students are to begin engaging more with visual media, then the teachers must be willing to use it
in the classroom. In the case of Hillgrove High School, the teachers already have plenty of
resources to choose from by way of the media center. However, according to Yan Ma (2015),
Visual media is still a fairly new concept for media centers, and therefore they must be
evaluated.
The goal of the evaluations is to provide both the media center and the stakeholders with
feedback from the most important people in the process: the teachers. Professional development
is rarely met with excitement, so it is important to make sure that teachers can see the full value
of professional development. In addition, self-evaluation from the media specialists is vital, as
they may not have any classroom experience.

Figure 1
Formative pre-learning evaluation

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Figure 2- Future Learning Survey

Figure 3- PL session evaluation

Figure 4
Teacher Self Evaluation

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Figure 5
Media Specialist Self-Evaluation in Media Center Setting

Figure 6- Teacher Evaluation of Media Center Visit

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Figure 7- Media Specialist Self-Evaluation of Classroom experience

Figure 8- Teacher Evaluation of Media Specialist Classroom visit

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Figure 9- Overall summative evaluation of the process by teachers.

Sustainability Plan,
The sustainability of Media Center-Teacher integration lies exclusively with the attitudes and
buy-in of the teachers and media specialists. As Killion (2013) discusses, effective professional
learning is only effective when the teachers are willing to implement the strategies. Many
teachers may sit through these sessions simply to check off a box, so they can go about their day.
Those same teachers may drop their kids off at the media center and leave to do what they wish

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during that time. The key is the buy-in. The media specialists must show the teachers that what
they have for them is worth it. Which, for many teachers, might mean making their jobs easier.
If this plan is to continue, then there must be measurable success on the teacher feedback
forms. This cannot be a box to check off; it must be something everyone invests in. No amount
of policy change will do anything to help students if teachers do not want to participate.

Reflection

The professional learning plan for the Hillgrove High School Media Center will be a
large undertaking. Mostly, it will be difficult as it requires that teachers be made to sacrifice their
already limited time in order to facilitate this collaboration between the teachers and the media
center. Nothing such as this have ever been undertaken at Hillgrove High School. So far, the
only advertisements for the media center have consisted of a media specialist making an
announcement at a faculty meeting and email blasts that usually end up in the trash bin. The
desire for this change came from the surveying of various teachers and media specialists.
Teachers with good rapport were chosen, as their opinions tend to carry more weight. As good as
saying that better collaboration is needed, it will never come to fruition with a professional
development plan, which, according to Killion (2013), is the best way to drive teachers forward.

The survey results revealed that teachers were either unaware of all of the services
offered or received no communication on when the media specialists could help. This revealed
that the best course of action would be to foster better communication between teachers and the
media center. In order to do this, it was determined that Professional Learning sessions
conducted by the specialists, forced integration into the physical media center, and classroom
integration of the media specialists would be necessary. As this plan was developed over the
summer, the actual implementation of the plan could not be observed. As the media specialists
were the ones who were most excited about this plan, it was determined that the burden of the
creation of lessons should fall on them. The fear was that if teachers were made to become more
than observers (meaning, participation in the lessons should be voluntary on their part), then the
reviews provided by the teachers would be overwhelmingly negative. Our timeline is the first
semester of 2023, as Hillgrove is on a block schedule, and entire courses will be taught over the

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span of five months. Should this plan be implemented, the results would be in by December 16,
2023.

The creation of this learning plan has made the developer visualize the gaps between the
media center and teachers. As the main goal is the integration of visual media into the classroom,
and the media center is the primary keeper of the visual learning process, I wanted to make sure
that I designed a plan that would truly connect the teachers and media center of Hillgrove High
School.

The process of creating such plans is vital to anyone seeking post-graduate education in
the field of public education. Getting a degree beyond the minimum required should mean that
we take on more responsibility. In education, the greatest bigger responsibility should be the
improvement of teaching and learning. This professional learning plan put me in a position that I
have never encountered before as the leader of change. While I have been the one receiving the
learning, I have never had the opportunity to be the one driving it. I have a new respect for all of
the administrators and professors of education in the world.

Professional Development Plan diffusion supervisors:

Elias Barber

Cindy Ford (Media Specialist- [email protected]).

(Intentionally Deleted)

References.

Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (Eds.). (2008). Teaching visual literacy: Using comic books, graphic
novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills. Corwin
Press.
Learning Forward. (2014). Evaluating Professional Learning: Measuring Educator And Student
Outcomes | Learning Forward. Learning Forward.

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 https://learningforward.org/newsletters/transform/march-2014/evaluating-professional-
learning-outcomes/
Yan Ma. (2015). Constructing and Reading Visual Information: Visual Literacy for Library and
Information Science Education. Journal of Visual Literacy, 34(2), 1–22.
https://doi.org/10.1080/23796529.2015.11674727

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