LIBE+463+Assignment+2

Assignment #2: Community Analysis for Journey Middle School, Sooke, B.C.
This community analysis follows the outline as defined by Kay Bishop 2007) in Chapter 3 of her book "The Collection Program in Schools." Bishop reasons that in order to best serve students, Teacher Librarians must have "reliable knowledge about the collection's users" and that such information must be collected and analyzed at both the community and the school level. (p. 19)


 * Sooke, B.C.:**

The community of Sooke is located on the south end of Vancouver Island, approximately thirty kilometers west of Victoria. Sooke is a semi-rural community, surrounded by west coast rainforest and the Pacific ocean. It serves largely as a bedroom community to the Greater Victoria area. Sooke is a growing community; the town's population currently stands at [|11 435], an increase of 17.9 % since the last census. In the past, the community's economy has been primary resource based, however, logging and fishing have now largely been replaced by service based occupations. [|(Census, 2006)]

Sooke is serviced by numerous community organizations and facilities. Basic recreation facilities include a [|recreation center] with swimming pool and ice rink. Organized [|sports clubs] abound including, soccer, hockey, and football. As outlined in the [|cultural mapping project], Sooke is a thriving arts community. Wether it is through opportunities provided by the Sooke Dance Academy, the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra and Choirs, or at the Sooke Fine Art show there are also lots of opportunities to participate in the arts. The town's heritage is preserved and recounted at the [|Sooke Region Museum]. A variety of [|service and community clubs] also exist to support the community. The Sooke [|Fall Fair] is a long held community tradition.

The community is serviced by a local newspaper, The [|Sooke News Mirror], and several regional news stations, including [|Check TV] and [|VI News]. High speed internet is available to community members through Shaw or Telus. Library service is provided to community members through the [|Vancouver Island Regional Library] which has a small branch in Sooke. This large, but spread out, network of libraries allows community members access to a small immediate collection, as well as access to the wider interlibrary loan system. Being so close to Greater Victoria and having so many residents who commute each day, families also have access to the [|Greater Victoria Public Library] system.


 * Journey Middle School:**

[|Journey Middle School], one of four middle schools in the [|Sooke School District], serves approximately 550 students in grades six to eight. The school's eighteen divisions are currently supported by a teaching staff of twenty-eight teachers, seven educational assistants, three clerical staff, and two administrators. The school has a diverse student population hailing from a wide range of [|ethnic backgrounds]. Family household [|income statistics] for the community match provincial statistics closely, the community is neither highly affluent nor of significantly low socioeconomic status. A lunch program does exist at the school and serves approximately thirty students. Journey operates on a schedule of six, fifty-minute blocks per day, Monday to Thursday, with only five blocks on Friday.

The school was constructed in the early 1990's and was designed as a Middle School. The design of the school is such that it is divided into four wings or neighbourhoods. Each neighbourhood is made up of classes from all three grade levels and serves as a community building unit. There is sufficient space to hold small neighbourhood assemblies and teachers are encouraged to partake in community building activities within their neighbourhoods. In following the middle school model, students at Journey Middle School also participate in an exploratory program (in addition to their applied skills courses). The exploratory program runs once per term, three sessions per school year, for eight weeks at a time and is an opportunity for students to take part in experiential learning activities that are of interest to them. Examples of exploratories that are offered include: kids cooking, woodworking, rock and roll band, cake decorating, First Nations crafts, mosaic tiling, gardening, rugby, movie making, hyper studio, digital photography, yearbook, leadership...

Journey is a dual-track middle school providing both English and French-Immersion instruction. The current percentage make up of the school is 83% enrolement in English track instruction, with 17% enrolled in French Immersion track. The French-Immersion program has grown significantly in the last four years from having split or small classes of 8-18 students depending on the grade to, this year, having three full classes of thirty students. This growth is expected to continue as the community expands and new families with immersion students seek space and, as the increased number of immersion classes at the elementary feeder school reach the middle school level.

Special needs students are supported by one integration support teacher and one learning support teacher. The needs of students this year have qualified the school to utilize seven educational assistants, but this can vary from year to year. The upcoming 2012-2013 school year will see the school receive only enough funding for two educational assistants. Planning meetings for the upcoming school year have revealed that teachers are concerned about the increasing number of grey area students. They feel that these students would benefit greatly from some form of learning assistance but don't currently qualify.

The school has a First Nations support room which is staffed by a First Nations support teacher and a First Nations support worker. Approximately a hundred students are designated as First Nations (including metis) with the majority belonging to Scia'new, Pacheedaht or T’Sou-ke nations. An important task of the First Nations teacher is to provide English as a Second Dialect instruction to students who qualify for instruction in this area. As a team, the two staff members provide academic and social support to all First Nations students in both fixed (for students identified with specific needs) and drop in formats. Part of their role is also to promote and encourage cultural awareness and acceptance with both native and non-native students.

Journey also receives funding to support the full time staffing of a behaviour support room. This position is currently being split by two staff members. The program is in place to provide space for students who are having difficulty being integrated into the regular classroom. The general goal is to keep students in their regular classroom and to use the behaviour support room on a drop-in, as-needed basis. Alternate instructional plans are sometimes developed for individual students when strategies to keep them in the regular classroom aren't successful.

Four years ago a small band program was started outside of the timetable. It has now grown into a program that is within the timetable and includes both concert band and strings. Approximately 60 students take advantage of this music instruction which is provided by our part-time music teacher. This music teacher has also built a strong connection with the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra, who's members are often helping with instruction or providing workshops. Journey students have also always been involved in the local High School's musical theater production. As an extracurricular, our librarian takes on a group of student performers each year to put together our school's contribution to the musical.

Teachers at the school have developed a school wide reading assessment which they use largely as a planning tool in the fall and an assessment tool in the spring. Teachers, in conjunction with the school's literacy support teacher, collaboratively mark the assessment and evaluate the data to determine any school wide learning gaps and, in turn, plan instruction to close the gaps. In the 2012-2013 school year the school will also begin the practice of cohort looping. Current practice is to break apart grade six classes and form all new grade seven classes, a practice which is repeated as students enter grade eight. The new looping practice will see the current grade six classes kept together as a cohort and moved as a group into grade seven.


 * Journey Middle School Library:**

The school's library runs on a mixed schedule according to Bishop's definitions of school library schedules (2007). The Librarian teaches library skills to grade six and seven students eight blocks a week and also covers another three blocks of teacher prep, the remaining blocks are available on a first-come first-served basis for teachers to bring their classes. Students are also able to access the library before school three times a week and during lunch hours. Most Language Arts teachers have set up a weekly time with the Librarian in order to make sure that students have an opportunity to exchange or renew their silent reading books.

The library operating system is called L4U, which is a program chosen at the District level. Despite the capability of the program to be available online it isn't; students and staff only have access to the database in the library itself. The program is not what our Librarian would have chosen if she had had a choice when the old program crashed four years ago.

The library houses ten student computers and a printer, which are in constant use. A common student comment is that they are waiting for a computer, and are not interested in looking at the stacks for books. Students, on average, use Google as their main search tool; District 62 hasn't bought into any of the common academic databases yet. The computers are connected to one printer and students are able to print internet research findings and any word processing they have done. As of yet, a website for the library has not been developed.


 * Grade level and curricular information** :

Journey Middle School has consistently, for the last five years, had six grade six classes. This translates into approximately a hundred and eighty students that need to learn the grade six science curriculum each year. The common trend within the school has been that teachers start with the Extreme Environments unit, then move to Electricity, and finish the year with Diversity of Life. Teachers tend to finish the year with the Diversity of Life unit because the weather is drier and warmer and they like to go outside and have students participate in hands on experiences. The difficulty of having lots of teachers covering electricity at the same time is that there is only one cart with all of the experiential learning tools (wires, light bulbs, batteries, motors...). This means that the cart needs to be shared between potentially all six classes at once. This cart is stored in the science room, not the library, and is maintained by the science department head. The main resources housed in the library that support grade six science learning outcomes are non-fiction books about species, classification, and extreme environments. Teacher's manuals as well as a small collection of science related teacher resources are maintained in the library. Teachers also have access to the District Resource Centre but are responsible for ordering and returning the items themselves through an inter-district mail system.


 * Partners and community resources:**

General Library Resources: -[|Vancouver Island Regional Library] As the library in the immediate vicinity of Journey a connection with the VIRL is an important one. It is the most likely way that students will access reading material over summer months and is where students might go if they are seeking resources beyond the school's library. -[|Greater Victoria Public Library]. Connecting students with the services of the Greater Victoria Public Library will allow them to access some of the many digital resources that are offered including free music downloads, language learning programs, and digital books. -[|UVic] (Speaker's Bureau, Expert talks) Potential links with specific departments, expert talks, and use of the Speaker's Bureau are ways in which the Journey Library could connect to the wealth of knowledge at UVic. -[|Royal BC Museum] The Museum runs school programs linked to curriculum and show IMAX films that often a close or direct link with learning outcomes. -[|Provincial Legislature] Literature about government processes and history, as well as connections with MLAs are potential resources that could be used to help deliver Social Studies curriculum. -[|Maritime Museum of BC] The Museum helps to connect students with the coastal history of B.C. -[|Royal Roads] Royal Roads is another potential source of expert knowledge that could be tapped into and shared in some way with Journey students

Grade Six Science Resources: -UVic portion of the curriculum -[|Shaw Discovery Ocean Center] This small aquarium allows students to get a close look at the biodiversity that exists in our local waters. -[|CRD parks] Capital Regional District often runs nature based, curriculum linked workshops in schools and at local parks. -[|Bug Zoo] An opportunity for students to get up close to living creatures and explore the concepts of adaptations, classification and diversity of life. -[|Butterfly Gardens] Another opportunity for students to get up close to living creatures and explore the concepts of adaptations, classification and diversity of life.
 * [|Science Venture] Science venture runs curriculum linked workshops in the classroom,
 * [|Neptune] Neptune is a unique, sea floor observation project that links to the Extreme Environments

Works Cited: Bishop, Kay. //The Collection Program in Schools: Concepts, Practices, and Information Sources//. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2007.



