Michael Scott, Assistant Director

On November 7th, I had the opportunity to visit the Kingsland Schools.  The school district includes the cities of Wykoff and Spring Valley, Minnesota.  I started the day at 6:30 AM at the Middle School in Wykoff.  There I met Laura Gudmundson, the media specialist for the school district.  Laura begins her day at 6 AM at the Kingsland Middle School, preparing for the school day, helping students check out library materials, and teaching computer course to middle school students.  Students at the middle school are in grades 5th - 8th.

The middle school media center is a fairly large space with seating and public access computers for students as well as a collection of books and journals.  Strengths of the collection include a strong historical fiction and "country" books (books about a particular country.)  Laura stated that the country books can be difficult to find, especially about certain areas of the world.  Accelerated Reader is used in the school district as well and these materials are clearly marked in the collection to be easily found.  Kingsland Schools is not a SELCO Online Library but the media centers are on a shared ILS system, Destiny from Follett.  Connected to the library is a computer lab where Laura teaches computer and techology courses, including courses in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as well as keyboarding.

Later in the day, after visits to other libraries in Preston, I arrived at the Kingsland Elementary and High Schools in Spring Valley.  The elementary school was added to the high school and opened in the fall of 2008.  The media center is a shared space with the high school and elementary parts located at opposite ends of a large room.  During my visit, the staff was preparing for a Scholastic Book Fair and were busy setting up displays of books and other materials.  The high school portion of the media center had a large number of computers for students' use as well as a collection of fiction and nonfiction books.  The elementary portion was still being assembled (waiting on shelving) but does have a storytime/reading area for students and a centrally located information desk.  Oh, and for a bit of nostalgia, I even saw a collection of filmstrips, complete with CASSETTES for sound.  Just to be fair, Laura has tried to get rid of the filmstrips but teachers still use them (plus, it is difficult to find them in another media format.)

I wanted to say a special thank you to Laura and her staff at Kingsland for welcoming me to their media centers.  Laura is interested in finding out what other media specialists in the region are doing with regards to other teaching duties (besides being a media specialist) and sharing helpful tips with one another.  You can certainly contact Laura directly (gudmundson.laura@kingsland.k12.mn.us) or feel free to send out information via the SELS_K12 email distribution list maintained at SELCO.