[Sarahsea1]

I am subbing for the Media Specialist at my daughters school next week, and wonder if there is any advice or general direction from all of the Media Specialist here? I worked as the Children's Lead at Barnes and Noble for ten years, so I know my way around children's and teen books, but maybe less the computer aspect unless I have a second to play on the computers.

Any Information will be great.

[Tawaki]

I worked as a media specialist assistant, who did all the grunt work stuff like check outs etc.

Subs at my school had to actually do activities left by the media specialist. Whatever she would have done, the sub had to do. So it was non stop cutting, writing, coloring, glue sticking with a 10 minute check out for books.

The sub and me never stopped running the whole day.

You may luck out that they will only have you book wrangle and check outs. For me it meant, ferrying baskets of supplies, and hoping the sub had a clue how to manage a 30 kids who thought it was make a mess day.

The subs never did check outs because they didn't know our computer system. (More complicated than needed).

I'll be honest, as a sub it was more art class than Barnes and Nobles. Our specialist did projects on genres that were on going. One week was a writing part or discussion, next week might be cutting out stuff and coloring.

My district gave no subs breaks as you had to be licensed to be a sub. It was hard to get subs for the library. Our teachers left you with 30 niblets, and see you in 50 minutes. Each grade was a different project.

Just giving you a heads up if it's elementary school. No clue what they do in secondary.

[KatrynG]

I am a Media Specialist, and I love subbing in the library/media center/Learning Commons!

The activities at each school are different. But every time the librarian/Media Specialist has left detailed plans on what to do. AND every other time I have been left with a Library Assistant to advise or run the system. Greet the children with smiles and let them know they are welcome, and give them guidance on polite behavior in the library.

Sometimes the computerized Check-IN/ Check-OUT books system is run by staff and sometimes it is set-up where the children can scan their books themselves. Often it was to make sure the Chrome Books/lap-tops carts were plugged in and checked out properly to the right teachers.

Sometimes there are classes to be taught/movies to watch/activities to direct... sometimes there are books to re-shelve or pull from the shelves for teachers.

Sometimes you have student assistants/parents/media helpers to do book reshelving or jacket covers for you.

I personally love story-time, but generally a parent of library assistant will ask to read the story to the children.

And there are always library tours to get the students familiar with the set-up of Everybody, Fiction, Non-Fiction, High-Interest, Series, and the Dewey Decimal sections in general.

Most of the time when I sub in a Media Center, I have too much time on my hands!!!

I love it!

I have subbed for library several times. While I absolutely love the book parts of it, I HATE the technology parts. But apparently, they go together nowadays. In both the schools I subbed in, they had a separate technology teacher who is also in the library full time, so it worked out for me. The librarian left detailed plans and I enjoyed teaching different lessons to different grades throughout the day. On another note, there was a surprise(even to the teachers) lockdown drill and I was scared for a few minutes.