Annual end of year report from Palisades High School Library: special edition due to quarantine events.

1. 2019-2020 Special Report
Palisades High School Library

2. This year’s report
A few things came into account to make this year’s report different than my traditional annual reports and
they all relate to the quarantine we faced in mid-March before our third quarter ended. I have selected a design
to keep the theme of Covid-19 in mind in recognition that this report will be different from past reports and we
look to the future wondering just how different next year’s report must also eventually be.
Decisions:
Within our district, our library department decided not to include statistics since they are so significantly
altered and it would be a case of comparing “apples to oranges” if we tried.
In this report, I will focus on collaborations and support.
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3. Hello!
I am Karen Hornberger
I am the Library Media Specialist at Palisades High School
You can find me at khornberger@palisadessd.org
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4. Hello!
This is Jenny Duke
Jenny is our wonderful, creative, and welcoming library assistant
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5. Basic Roles (quick overview)
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Jenny
Run events and promotions
Karen
Design and deliver instruction to
students and staff
Jenny
Help students with library needs
and manage circulation, etc.
Karen
Oversee and manage library
program

6. Displays and Events
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Jenny Duke is an incredibly talented woman who
came to us with expertise after running her own
business, Sacred Cinder, for years. It quickly
became apparent that Jenny was wonderful with
the students and could engage them in various
interactive ways. I “charged” her with coming up
with a monthly display and event and book
suggestion list. Jenny worked tirelessly to create
quality work. Her displays had props and lights,
her book lists had well thought out themes. Her
interactive challenges included naming as many
presidents as possible in sixty seconds (January)
and a Where’s Waldo hunt (December) plus so
much more! Jenny is truly invaluable to us.

7. Professional Growth Objective
Our district library staff has not traditionally had newer professionals in the library but over the past few years, we
have had some staffing transitions. In order to provide a resource to new staff, I created a shared Google Site which
houses consistent procedures and practices for everyone’s reference. District librarians collaborated to populate the
manual that provides step-by-step instruction on how we fulfill each task and it is now shared by all library staff.
Many of us print these electronic documents to also keep available in a binder within our libraries.
The site has the following sections that each have pages that are more specific, within:
Budget
Collection Development
Collection Maintenance
Promotions/Initiatives
Learning Environment
Instruction
Program Administration
Professional Development

8. Differentiated Mode of Supervision
Each year that we are in the differentiated mode of supervision, we can get approval for a professional focus. This
year, I chose self-study and sought to communicate and improve library collection resources for the social studies and
science departments. I worked with the teachers to communicate resources that we already owned, make them
available in a web collection platform, and assess new materials needed for each unit in the future.
It was suggested to teachers that they use the collections to:
Advertise them to students as enrichment opportunities
Ask students to read portions of the resources and record their analysis (individually or in a group)
Just simply post the list on Canvas as "resources available through our library that match this unit"
Use them to develop their unit/teaching
Here is the link to my report
Within the report are the links to the collections and the timeline of the process that was taken to
achieve this self-study goal.
In addition to these, I created collections for teachers outside of social studies and science.

9. Nonfiction Analysis
As district department chair, I facilitated a nonfiction analysis
in each of our libraries with the focus of improving sources for
struggling readers. We focused on interest areas, what our
data indicated, and curricular units. We each ran an analysis to
determine how many resources within our nonfiction
collections were useful to struggling readers. We followed up
by adding new resources to our wish lists that would help
students who had difficulty reading to locate books that
would be easier to understand.

10. Graphic Organizer Revamp
As I was teaching and pointing students towards graphic
organizers in the fall, I suddenly recognized that having one
blank organizer alongside an example piece of student work
was not as efficient as could be. I decided to include example
work for all of our organizers in grey text so that students
could use the example as a model as they completed their
own work. Here is an example of one organizer. This is a
newly created organizer that was created during this school
year.

11. A few new lessons
Some new lessons that were launched this year were:
Transition and Topic Sentence lessons (worksheet and slideshow) -
this was in response to helping Morgan Flagg-Detwiler grade first
rough drafts of papers last year and seeing that students largely
were not using these sentences in their writing and being marked
with a lower grade, as a result
Citations (common mistakes guide, daily edits, and NoodleTools
inboxes to provide feedback) - this was in response to teaching
citations in numerous ways and still seeing students struggle even
those ready to graduate. I needed to strengthen the approach.
WWI Google Unit Site: Kevin Ronalds asked that I switch content
that we traditionally teach during the WWII unit to the WWI unit.
As a result, I created model projects for students revolving around
objections to the war and added some new topics to research.

12. Co-Teaching
For the past few years, I have maintained a co-teaching log.
This year (pre-quarantine) I noticed that my interactions had
significantly increased and I attributed it to having Jenny Duke
(my assistant) handle a large amount of the daily needs
related to students (signing out Chromebooks, helping find
books, helping with the copier, shelve books, etc.). It allowed
me to free up to help classes more often.
On the co-teaching log, you will see where the semester
changed and you will see where quarantine started. It is
another weird “apples to oranges” circumstance, though. For
example, I may have marked pre-quarantine that I went into
Mr. Ronalds’ class to teach thesis statements one period.
During that period, I may have helped ten students. After the
quarantine, each student has their own cell so the statistics
did get a little altered.

13. Flipped Lessons
While it was not a professional growth objective or a DI activity, I spent a large focus during this school year on
flipping library lessons. I created screencasts to guide students through upcoming library assignments.
We tested the screencasts out in Mr. Ronalds’ online class and also in Mr. McGovern’s face to face class. While Mr.
Ronalds’ online class was completely virtual, the way that we arranged the lessons for Mr. McGovern’s class was to
have them watch the video and to have them visit the library shortly afterwards for a class period. When they
arrived in class, various elements of the lesson would be highlighted by me for just a few minutes at the beginning of
class. This allowed Mr. McGovern and me to then “divide and conquer” to support any students who needed help and
to check on their progress. With this, my role greatly changed from lecturer to support system/content expert.
Each lesson required that a student complete a graphic organizer upon completion of the task and this is the way in
which we checked whether the students watched the screencast or needed help in addition to checking in with them
regularly.
Here is a timeline of lessons for senior project with rubrics.

14. Flipped Lessons, continued
Initially, I focused upon screencasts. Eventually, I decided that I could be more organized and comprehensive if I updated
the old research slideshows that I had created and had become out of date. From January to March, I worked on
screencasts when I had a spare moment. After quarantine, I switched to focusing more on slideshows. This was a relief
since I no longer had to worry about my voice and my flow and vocal presentation. I was also able to become a little
“artsy” and fun.
I reached my goal that I had set last year to add once again to the program Slideshare. I updated and added fifteen
slideshows as a result. It was nice during quarantine to go through all of my teaching resources on each topic and
organize the best content and add include examples of work for students within the slideshows. I hope that students
everywhere find them useful.
Speaking of everywhere, I am a Creative Commons kind of girl and share my work widely in hopes of helping others
(teachers and students, alike.) I did create and remove a YouTube channel that housed the screencasts because I felt that
they were functional but did not reflect my best work in the way that the slideshows did.

15. Instructional Resources
As I was developing mass quantities of content, I felt that I
needed to organize them. I responded by creating a master
list of instructional resources that I have developed or
found. This list is shared with all teachers and all students.
It is also shared publicly and other librarians do like to refer
to it. Teachers can use any of the resources and students
can self-teach as needed if they want a refresher or to
enrich their learning at any point in time.
Here is the master list of instructional resources.

16. Website Updates
As I was revamping my resources to flip lessons, I needed and
chose to radically update the following:
Library website
Research Unit Sites
Summer Reading Site

17. @PaliPirate411
I wanted to create a sort of “self help” resource for students
this year based around some common questions or needs that
students have. As a result, I created @PaliPirate411 for
students to use some available tools to do things such as build
a thesis or outline, conduct a reverse image search, summarize
text, etc.
This resource offers minimal to no additional comments or tips
and is solely a launchpad to some resources that they may
find useful.

18. Canvas Commons
I was approached by Carole Lee Deemer, an English
teacher, during our quarantine to make some Canvas
resources. Canvas is our school’s learning platform (LMS)
and Carole Lee was hoping that I could make some quizzes
that she could use. Carole Lee guided me in how to best
created these and she encouraged me to go even farther
and create an entire library course within the program that
teachers could find, use, and import. Now, anyone who
has Canvas can search for and access my lessons that are
arranged by lesson type and also by grade level.

19. Enrichment
One concern about teaching during quarantine was that
teachers were not able to provide as much coverage of
content. Each department was asked to provide enrichment
opportunities for students wishing to increase their learning. I
responded by creating enrichment activities related to the
new library content that I created and identifying major
upcoming units in English, science, and social studies.
Additionally, the English department asked me to create a
Canvas course and locate some articles for them. The social
studies department asked that I locate articles to support
various units and develop guiding questions and activities. It
was fun to do each of these for them.

20. Professional Development
In addition to attending meetings (in person and virtual) and
sharing content with others using a listserv email, I attended
and/or watched some webinars. My favorite ones were
related to misinformation and bias. I had not known a great
deal about the topics prior to attending and I found them
very useful.
Webinars from News Literacy Project:
What does it mean to be News Literate?
Fighting Fake: Exploring the Misinformation Landscape
Understanding Bias

21. Quarantine alterations

22. “
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From loved ones:
“You mean you are still
working? What can you even
do?”
From husband:
“Do you always work this hard?”
Me:
“Yes, it’s why I’m always tired after
work.”

23. It’s really not unusual in the library world for people to not understand what we do. It’s why I create
these reports in the first place. People have a hard time seeing what we are doing at our computers and
that makes it important to explain.
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24. Example virtual outreach
● Students writing research papers took me up on offers to
help find resources, give editing feedback, or to guide
them through each process.
● Jennie MacDonald allowed me to help her give feedback
to every one of her students who were creating citations
● Gena Stoverink allowed me to participate in class-wide
research checkins (voluntary Google Meets)
● Kevin Ronalds allowed me to help him collaboratively
grade student research assignments
● Alex Bobsein allowed me to give feedback to his senior
students
● Jeanne Olliver allowed me to offer individual support to
struggling students.
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25. Goals
We really cannot fully know what next year looks like. In an
attempt to assume that things will be “normal” my goals are:
▸ Fulfill the collection goals (weeding and inventory) that I
had set for this year but was unable to complete
▸ Assist teachers with library Canvas course (if you build it,
you have to help them know how to best use it)
▸ Assist teachers with flipped library resources
▸ Add new content (debate resources, literature review
resources, verification of source quality resources)
▸ Expand on enrichment resources
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26. A special thank you!
Tinicum Civic Association continues to support our libraries each
year. This year, they have generously donated once again to our
libraries. Their commitment to our schools and students is
incredible. We typically ask that our community attend and
support the events that this association runs. They have needed
to cancel their annual event for this year. Please keep them in
mind as you look to local organizations to consider membership,
donations, or support in any way.
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27. Credits
Special thanks to all the people who made and
released these awesome resources for free:
▸ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
▸ Photographs by Unsplash
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