Chris of Follett Library Resources, Barbara McBride-Smith, 2007 Polly Clarke Award Winner, and Ellen Duecker, Tulsa Public Schools

Barbara McBride-Smith has been a media specialist for thirty-three years, the last eight of those at Hoover Elementary in Tulsa Public Schools.  Barbara is a nationally recognized storyteller and author of two books, Greek Myths Western Style, and Tell It Together: Foolproof Scripts for Story Theatre.  She is the co-author of a third, Storyteller’s Story Companion to the Bible: Women of the New Testament.  She was the Teacher of the Year for Hoover Elementary and the 2001 Elementary Teacher of the Year for Tulsa Public Schools.  Barbara has served on the Board of the National Storytelling Association and has been honored with several national awards, including the John Henry Faulk Award and the Circle of Excellence.  She is a frequent presenter for professional development workshops at the local, state, and national levels.  Barbara’s nomination letter for the Polly Clarke Award states, “…her greatest fans are the thousands of students and hundreds of teachers whose lives she has touched here in Oklahoma over the past three decades. “            

Jo Ann Kopp, Library Media Specialist Putnam City North (center)

          Jo Ann Kopp serves as Library Media Specialist at the Putnam City North High School Library Media Center which serves 2,210 students in grades 9-12 from northwest Oklahoma City.   She has also served as media specialist at Coronado Heights Elementary School and also at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School – both in Oklahoma City. 
            In her position, she has been a presenter at both Encyclo-media and at the Oklahoma Technology Administrators Conferences regarding technology integration.  Jo Ann has also served as chairman of her school’s technology planning committee and served as lead teacher regarding the Aurora Grant program to integrate technology into the classroom.             

Pamela King, Assistant Principal for Curriculum and Instruction at Putnam City North High School, states that Jo Ann is a “shining star” due to her advanced technological skills in order to help classroom teachers expedite their classroom preparation.  These included trouble shooting equipment problems for workshops, developing an enrollment video with dept. heads explaining different course offerings, training teachers and students to utilize and evaluate online databases, organizing a pre/post test reading assessment schedule, and modeling technology usage through classroom instruction. 
            In her own words, Jo Ann states that she can think of no greater privilege than to motivate a student to acquire effective library and information literacy skills so that he/she can become an independent learner.  Once these skills are mastered, students can apply their own knowledge to core subjects and real world situations.  Whether students are physically challenged, come from diverse cultures or socio-economic backgrounds – technology is the greater equalizer. 

Mitchell Elementary School

Tulsa Public Schools

Mrs. Stone’s support of the Mitchell Library has encouraged her students to become users of information. Bonnie’s ability to connect with her students and her talent at teaching simple concepts, as well as more advanced topics, are both truly superior.

Bonnie views the library media specialist, as an instructional partner. We work together as a team to identify links with curricular content, learning outcomes, student information needs, and information resources. We work closely in the critical area of designing authentic learning tasks and assessments and integrating the information and communication abilities required to meet subject matter standards. We work with each other to define goals and objectives we wish our students to achieve. Together we preplan, teach, and evaluate resource-based learning activities that will guide our students' learning to achieve the objectives. Using our school libraries flexible schedule, we accommodated Bonnie’s classroom schedule in providing resource-based learning activities, which extended learning beyond the classroom in a meaningful way. We are able to ensure the library program is integrated into the curriculum. Bonnie understands that the library media specialist cannot work in isolation when developing school library programs.

Bonnie’s support of the Mitchell Library and collaboration with me has created a vibrant and engaged community of learners within her classroom. Bonnie and I have established an effective working relationship. We have a united goal of wanting to guide our students to become life long learners. Teacher-librarian collaboration requires active, genuine effort and commitment. Our work shows that we support student learning by collaborating on units that encourage students to think. Bonnie and I both believe that classroom–library collaboration is key to providing students with learning experiences that incorporate 21st century skills. Bonnie and I use the information literacy standards for student learning.

*submitted by Tina Glass-Hamm, library media specialist