In one school year, I went from running the library alone to a full-time Library Media Assistant (LMA). What a difference a year and a person can make! This needs to be the focus of my End-of-Year (EOY) report.

For a change, this report is not focused on asking for anything. Instead, I am focused on showing how a good partnership can lead to a great school year. I need to show that both students and staff benefitted. With this focus in mind, the next step is to collect data.

The number of student classes I taught grew dramatically (Mid-Year Report). While I cannot see statistics for all the databases we use, I can see the statistics for the ones I pay for. I wanted to see if teaching more classes translated into higher use of the databases. The answer is yes. The sessions increased by almost 300% and the searches increased by over 450%. I presented this as part of the proof that having a full-time aide directly impacts student learning.

For my annual EOY report, I decided that it was not mine alone. At the start of the year, I worked with my LMA to create her goals as compliments to my goals. The EOY report should showcase our goals and how they worked together. Also, I considered this report to represent a big “Thank you” to the district for providing me a full-time assistant. (I said this to the school board members and superintendent in person at their March meeting.)

As a school librarian, my goals have to align with the SLEI (school librarian evaluation instrument). My aide’s evaluation is with DKES (non-teacher, non-Media Specialist, non-Administrator school-based personnel). We purposely aligned our goals. Ms. Smith will be the first to tell you that I can be a bit controlling within the library, but she’s helping me to learn to let go (just a little) this year. It helps to have a partner.

I recognize that my goals this year were faculty-oriented. I did that partially because I wanted to create a synergy with my LMA. The reality is that in helping teachers, I created more opportunities to work with students directly.

I worked more this year with my seniors than in past years. And, I will miss this my graduating seniors. (I probably say it every year, but we just had graduation and I miss them already.)