As one of the most culturally diverse schools in New York City, the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School (MELS) serves about 850 students in grades 6 through 12. MELS is "A School for a Sustainable City" and a New York City Outward Bound School. MELS uses the Expeditionary Learning education model, which focuses on student…

In an effort to carry out the work of Bismarck (ND) Public Schools, while implementing the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) "National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries," the district has started training school librarians to be the backbone of the project-based learning (PBL)…

When the challenge of adapting curriculum to meet the requirements of the Common Core State Standards were presented, this author immediately sought out the assistance of experts in another field: the school library staff. It was apparent that staff needed to practice the beneficiation of the current curriculum to meet the CCSS requirements.…

In this article, the authors describe McNair Middle School's Independent Study process. Each year in late January the authors connect to look at the calendar to schedule time for the seventh-grade gifted and talented (GT) students to come to the school library to begin their annual Independent Study. "Independent study is a planned research…

Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of the role of the school librarian in the twenty-first century, but, for many reasons, collaboration is challenging to implement. Some classroom teachers may not know how students benefit from the classroom-school library collaboration. Others may be unwilling to relinquish control of their…

One of the benefits of working at the middle school level is the opportunity to work with colleagues in a variety of content areas; this not only makes work more interesting, but offers a multidisciplinary approach to learning that ultimately benefits the students. In the Londonderry (New Hampshire) School District, collaboration between classroom…

Most seventh grade students partially define themselves through everyday media messages. As a part of understanding how these images and the media impacts their lives, the author collaborated with her colleagues to develop a unit to help teens learn how visual messages such as those in pictures, media icons, logos, slogans, clothing, toys, and…

This article presents the results of a research project centered on challenged books, which was used with a twelfth-grade class of mixed ability levels. The study of banned books provided the students an opportunity to engage with literature on a number of levels, generating text-to-self connections by involving students in a discussion centered…