Exploring Librarian Life with Mrs. Sarah Goodfellow

 February 26, 2025

Interview with Sarah Goodfellow; Teacher Librarian at Jennie Moore Elementary School

    I had the opportunity to speak with Sarah Goodfellow, librarian at Jennie Moore Elementary School in Mount Pleasant, S.C., about the shared learning foundation explore and how she is implementing the foundation/domains and competencies through her library program. 

    Explore is to discover and innovate in a growth mindset developed through experience and reflection. Through the explore foundation, school librarians can help foster learners' personal curiosity, stimulate learners to construct new knowledge, prepare learners to engage with the learning community, and help learners develop through experience and reflection (AASL, 2018).

    In order to start the conversation, I asked Mrs. Goodfellow the following questions: 

• What are some examples of the ways in which you are implementing these competencies in your library program?

• What are some of the resources in your library program that you are using to implement these competencies?

• Do any of the competencies that you are implementing include collaboration with classroom teachers?  If so, please provide examples.

• What are some of the challenges that you face when trying to implement these competencies?

• Are there any other comments that you would like to make regarding the Shared Foundation / Competencies and Domains that we have discussed today.

    At the elementary level, Mrs. Goodfellow serves a little over 1,000 preschool through fifth grade students. Mrs. Goodfellow follows a completely flexible schedule; however, she schedules class checkout once a week. Students simply visit to the library to pick a book. Mrs. Goodfellow does collaborate with teachers and works to plan lessons around curriculum-related content. In order to collaborate with teachers, she looks at the State Standards first and then finds a grade level whose standard matches a theme or activity that she would like to collaborate on. She stated that she starts with the resources she has then plugs in the academic content.

    The biggest challenges that Mrs. Goodfellow run into are timing, scheduling, and teachers willingness to collaborate. “Most teachers don’t want a true collaboration, they just want me in the room with the kids. In order for teachers to want to work with me, I will give them a break” S. Goodfellow (personal communication, February 26, 2025). Most of the collaboration occurs before the lesson is taught.

    

    In order to encourage learners to read widely in multiple formats, she regularly promotes Beanstack. Beanstack is a tool that Charleston County School District has adopted in hopes of encouraging students to read more by offering challenges, activities, and rewards. Mrs. Goodfellow runs the morning news show and once a week she runs a slide with the Beanstack Top Reader Leaderboard. She notes that “students love seeing their names. The music that I use gets them excited as they anticipate who from their class will be the top reader of the week” S. Goodfellow (personal communication, February 26, 2025). The top readers get to visit the library and receive a “Brag Tag.” The school gave necklaces out at the beginning of the school year and students are able to earn tags as they achieve goals around the school building. Mrs. Goodfellow promotes reading in second grade by participating in Read Around the Bases. Students are encouraged to read, as they get to move to bases based on the number of pages that they read. For the upper grades, Mrs. Goodfellow enjoys participating in Battle of the Books. When students participate, they are exposed to genres that they likely would otherwise not read.

    

    Mrs. Goodfellow stated that she is always asking children what they are reading so that she will get a feel for what she may need to order more of. She notes that she really makes a point to buy relevant books. For example, students are currently interested in Wicked after it showed in theaters. She also likes to make sure that she has biographies on the most current NFL players, among other current athletes.

    

    In order to stimulate learners to construct new knowledge, Mrs. Goodfellow provides many opportunities for tinkering and making when she works with classes. She likes to come up with things that students can take home with them. For example, this fall she led a lesson centered around the book Creepy Carrots. Students were given a real carrot to work with that they got to take home.

    When she has first and second graders come in for lessons, she sets up stations during checkout time. Manipulatives like Magnatiles, Keva planks, and brain flakes are among the open-ended items that students can explore.

    In order to prepare learners to engage with the learning community, Mrs. Goodfellow recently spent time having students engage in a Black History activity. She had students research an influential black person that a similarity to them. For example, someone who liked to play baseball picked Jackie Robinson.

    

    Regarding assisting learners to co-construct innovative means of investigation, Mrs. Goodfellow creates Transformation Rooms for classes, based on the curriculum. She created Spooky Science stations, where students had to see if their ideas worked or didn’t. They created catapults and if they didn’t work, they had to change their set up until they found a way that worked. Themes for exploration rooms that she has created in the past included Spooky Science with a haunted house, math scavenger hunts, ghost stories, Mock Caldecott awards, a Genre Café, an operating room with text features, and next she is working on a golf/masters theme.

    

    Mrs. Goodfellow creates many activities where students take charge of their learning. For a recent lesson on call numbers, she took subject that each student was interested in and had him/her find the correct call number/section of the library. She also notes that she often uses MackinVia through Clever for students to explore specific topics.

    A way that Mrs. Goodfellow is helping students reflect on their learning is through the news show that she runs. She stated that students are finding out that they have skills they never knew they had. For example, the news anchors learn to read with inflection and fluency. There is a lot of interest in being on the news show. She stated that even shy students are wanting to participate.

    Some resources that Mrs. Goodfellow is using to implement these competencies include: databases like MackinVia, a flip book on the circulation desk where students can find books that they may be interested in or books on topics that they are studying, pictures of characters in areas of the library where their books can be found, dots with numbers on book series if they should be read in order, and manipulatives like Strawbees, Magnatiles, Legos, tinker toys.

    This interview helped me understand the importance of creating experiences that allow students to have time to both discover and reflect. Mrs. Goodfellow has creative ideas regarding how to excite students and make their curriculum content meaningful and exciting. The Transformation Rooms are an idea that I would like to adopt for my elementary library. I recently taught a lesson on text features that could have been much more engaging had it been in an “operating room.” Creating more activities where students take charge of their learning is a goal of mine. Mrs. Goodfellow seems to have great connection with her students and strives to put their interests at heart when creating lessons. Recently, I had students research individuals for Black History month, but I had not thought of having them research someone who they had something in common with. After talking to Mrs. Goodfellow, I will be more mindful of ways that I can connect content with students interests. 

(S. Goodfellow, personal communication, February 26, 2025)