Fenton Senior High School

Welcome to the FHS Media Center!

Media Specialist: Rachael Hodges-Hassell

Library Technical Assistant: LuAnn Hall

The FHS Media Center is open from 7:20 - 2:40 each day.

The 2018-2109 school year flew by! It was a big adjustment year for teachers, staff, and students at FHS as we switched from block schedules to a six period day. This switch impacted the way we all taught our classes.

This year, we had ten Media Services student assistants. These students help run our circulation desk and assist with the smooth operation of the FHS media program.

Over the course of the 2018-2019 school year, an upwards of 45 students were supervised by Rachael Hodges-Hassell, the Media Specialist, as they participated in online course work for one or both semesters. Of the 45 students, 20 of them were enrolled in AP courses online.

There was a lot of teaching and learning in the FHS Media Center. As usual, each 9th grader visited the Media Center for a 9th Grade Media Center Orientation with their Literature and Composition class. This orientation teaches new students how to navigate the FHS Media Center, what resources and materials are available to students, and other useful information. Additionally, Rachael Hodges-Hassell offered mini-research lessons to students involved in research projects over the course of the year.

The biggest addition to the media program was the piloting and implementation of yoga and mindfulness. It was determined at the end of the 2017-2018 school year that social-emotional learning needs would need to be addressed and met by all teachers and staff. Over the summer Rachael Hodges-Hassell became a Certified Yoga Ed Adolescent Yoga Instructor and took 3 classes on teaching mindfulness to children and adolescents. Yoga and mindfulness are slowly developing into another way for students to work with their life stresses in a way that teaches them important social-emotional skills.

Drop-in yoga was offered in the Media Center every SRT.
Every Wednesday, Mrs. Hodges-Hassell practiced yoga with Mrs. Moore's Girls Fitness and Conditioning classes from the beginning of October through the end of April.
Most Thursdays, Mrs. Hassell practiced both yoga and mindfulness with Mrs. Thompson's IB Theater students
Over the course of the school year, with heavy emphasis during the month of May, Mrs. Hodges-Hassell worked with the Mott Early Middle College students, teaching mindfulness as a method for stress reduction.

The post-course survey results are promising. One hundred percent of students feel that mindfulness classes have been beneficial to them. They have felt that mindfulness has helped them to focus, have emotional awareness,reduced stress, and have an awareness around responsiveness vs. reactiveness. One hundred percent of students either like or loved all the ways in which they have been taught to practice mindfulness. Mrs. Hodges-Hassell plans to continue yoga and mindfulness in the 2019-2020 school year and will be looking for more ways to incorporate it into FHS culture.

Statistics

232 New Resources Were Added to the Collection*

500 Resources On Loan At One Time

375 Visits Per Week**

3,082

Total Resources Loaned

The value of the collection is $155,082.

The average age of the non-fiction collection is 29 years. The average copyright date is 1990.***

*The FHS Media Center generally does not purchase non-fiction print materials to be utilized for research. It has been determined that the majority of research done by students is done online via databases and search engines. Most of the new resources added were fiction and/or pleasure reading. Of the 3,082 books checked out, only 330 of them were non-fiction.

**The student visits to the FHS Media Center are down slightly from past years. There seems to be a correlation between this decrease and the increased use of Chromebooks in the classrooms. There also appears to be a correlation between this decrease and the increased use of Google classroom for assignment submission. Less students are also using the FHS Media Center to print. In addition, FHS operates on a flexible schedule, which means that students are NOT required to visit the library each week. All FHS visits are on students' own time or when their teacher signs out the media center for use.

***An extensive weeding/de-selection project occurred at FHS Media Center this year; however, the average age of the collection seems to remain the same, 1990. It seems this may be linked to the fact that very little non-fiction is purchased and added in to the collection at this point. While the average copyright date of the collection remains the same, the FHS Media Center staff would like to note that several databases are purchased and/or available, offering students and teachers thousands of up-to-date, current resources in every subject matter.

Budget

The FHS Media Center received a building budget of $2,500. This equates to about $2.08 per student. This money was used to purchase the database called Global Issues in Context, add novels to the fiction collection, and update SAT and AP test preparation books.

The FHS Media Center also has an Internal Account which helps fund books, supplies and other media programs. This account accrued $822 over the course of the year. Money for this account is earned through the sale of school supplies and water.

While it may seem that FHS has the highest building level budget, the one database alone costs $1,785, which leaves only $715 to use for the purchase of books and supplies. Additionally, the Internal Account brought in an upwards of $3,500 in previous years. We believe the decrease is related to the new water bottle dispensing stations AND the removal of bottle recycling containers; students are, therefore, buying less bottled water. While the FHS Media Staff is happy that students are more environmentally conscious, we are discouraged by our significant decrease in funds. We will be actively pursuing new avenues for supplemental funds in the event that the building budget is not increased.