Field Supervisor: Mrs.

Linda Yaughn Interview Transcript

Interviewer: All right, I think we’re good to go. So, if you could introduce yourself and give us
the position that you are currently holding.

Yaughn: Okay, my name is Linda Yaughn. I’m the media specialist at Crawford County High
School. I have been in this job for, uh, about thirteen years now. Um, and I love my job. It’s very
diverse. I get to interact with basically all the kids and all the teachers, um, so honestly I feel like
I have the best job in the building.

Interviewer: If you could tell us what degree it is that you have for you to do what you do?

Yaughn: Um, I do have an instructional technology degree, but it’s a library certification as well.
Um, so a lot of my classes that I took in my graduate work focus on library media and not as
much on instructional technology.

Interviewer: You said that you have a lot of different responsibilities with your position. What
are some of those responsibilities that you have?

Yaughn: Well, of course, my primary responsibilities are here in the media center, and, um,
focusing on collaborating with teachers as far as research and information literacy lessons with
their classes. And, I primarily work with our ELA staff, but also things like ordering and things
having to do with the media collections. Um, you know, looking for new materials, disposing of
or deleting old materials out of the system. Getting our library manager ready each school year
or semester with new students, deleting old students at my school I’m also in charge of all of our
Google accounts, so I have to delete the old ones, create the new ones for students, get that
information out to students, sometimes provide technology type lessons to focus on the different
features of the Google accounts for teachers and students, but also at my school, I’m the PBIS
coach and, so uh, you know that takes up quite a bit of my time and effort, um, and I’m involved
on our admin team, so I attend a lot of meetings. I guess you could say I do have a stake in a lot
of different parts of the school building because of PBIS I’m involved with discipline data.
Because of being on the admin team, I’m involved with curriculum decisions and then
everything that goes on here in the media center. I’m very involved with our ELA department
and research across the board with all concentrations.

Interviewer: All right, well, they keep you busy. So, um, with, you know, the rise in technology
due to COVID especially. How are you meeting the needs of your staff with that increase in
technology?

Yaughn: Um, well, we have tried to um push out quite a bit of video content, especially last year
when we were all quarantined at home, to help our teachers embrace using technology more
with their students. Fortunately for us, we were already a Google school. All of our classrooms,
not all, but most of our classrooms have a Chromecart in the classroom. So, most of our
teachers were already using Google Classroom extensively and some of them were using other
types of software programs available on the internet with their kids. What they don’t so as much
of is actually videoing lessons. Actually being able to push out real instructional content. What
we were good at before the pandemic was pushing out, um, assignments through Google
Classroom, but what we weren’t so good at was actually providing the instruction that students
needed to complete those assignments, and so I worked real hard, um, at the beginning of the
pandemic to try to get some information out to my teachers in the form of videos on how to do
some of those instructional videos and tools that they could use, and I delivered a lot of that
information when we came back to school in the fall. Some of them jumped on board and began
really, uh, stretching and, and reaching out and, uh, doing some things that maybe they weren’t,
uh, fully comfortable with yet. But, some of them just never really, uh, took hold. Um,
unfortunately for us in our district we had a completely separate platform for our virtual kids, so
the ones that really suffered were the kids, probably who went out on quarantine and were out
for maybe ten, um, or fourteen days. And, I’m just not so sure that they received good
instruction across the board, consistently during that time.

Interviewer: Um, that kind of leads into my next question, um, so when those kids were
quarantined, did you have any role in maybe helping the parents or students with, you know,
getting to their work on their lessons, or is that just solely on, you know, the parents and
students themselves.

Yaughn:, Well, here in our district we did have some Amazon fire tablets donated to our school,
and so I was responsible for getting those tablets distributed to our students and for coming up
with a procedure, a protocol, on how that would be handled. Um, it was tricky. Um, but those
were ot the best thing for our school. Just simply because we used so many Google products,
and, um, Amazon tablets did not go hand in hand very well with the Google applications. So,
um, it was a bit tricky. We,um, we fortunately were able to have many of our students face-to-
face for a short time. And, we gave them some instructions on their devices, Um, but I still don’t
know how effective that was, um but you know, I did participate in that. I did participate in some
of the discussions about um, how we were going to provide internet for students on the buses.
That helped, I think, a few students but I don’t know how many actually took advantage of going
to the locations where the buses were located that had, so that students could access the
internet. Um, so, uh, you know, other than, I’ll be honest, other than pushing out the Amazon
Fire Tablets and getting those in the hands of parents and students and coming up with the
procedures and protocols. There, um, I did not have a lot to do with getting the take any
additional technology out to families during that time.

Interviewer: I had touched on this a bit earlier, but, uh, so what are your typical daily activities
as a media specialist?

Yaughn: Um, well, that really has changed in the last year and a half, and, um, we don't see
nearly as many classes. I don’t do the lessons that I did prior to the pandemic. We’re getting
ready to move into a new school, so this year a lot of my time is being spent getting our
collection ready to move to the new building because we are going to have to downsize
considerably to go to the new building. But, I will tell you what a typical day for me was like prior
to the pandemic,um, because that’s probably more accurate. Really, part of my day is spent,
like right now, part of my day is spent with an advisement group in the morning. Those are the
eighth graders, the eighth grade honors group. Um, I am a club advisor for them, and we have
something called a spirit club, so I supervised that group for about forty-five minutes in the
mornings. On a typical day, um, one week I would do media related, administrative type duties,
you know. Getting, ordering, going into the computer and adding students or adding materials or
deleting materials or adding information that sort of thing. Um, and then, on the next week,
every other week I would do classes, so, um, I provide information literacy lessons for every
student in the building. Every English group. Every grade level. So, we do checkouts, uh, after
we do the literacy lessons, so that is basically a typical schedule for me.

Interviewer: Do you have a budget? A budget that you control or do you have any impact on
the decision when it comes to selecting resource.

Yaughn: Yes, I do have a budget that I control, and fortunately me, at my school, I have a lot of
liberty with that budget. Some years we order a lot of books. Other years we may order software
or databases. Sometimes I even help with other needs in the building. You know, if there’s a
Spanish teacher who really wants a class set of Spanish dictionaries, and I’ve got extra money
that year, I may help purchase something like that. Or, some extra ELA novels like, um, last
year. I used part of my media budget to actually help with some summer reading books for
some students who couldn’t afford those books. Um, you know, so we do some different things
with that money, and I do have, you know, the final say. I guess you could say on how that
media money is spent. I will be honest, this might be one of your questions, I don’t know. In
some years we have a very active media committee who helps with those decisions. Um, but for
the last couple of years, since the pandemic come into being. Um, you know, I have really just
sort of made those decisions myself. We have so many different meetings that a lot of times I
will just get together informally with the ELA staff or with my academic coach in my building, and
we kind of make the decisions on what the needs are.

Interviewer: That was one of my questions. Uh, I know we don’t have a huge, like, technology
department. But, the technology committee, so I know you guys work on, like you said, you
have the Fire Tablets. I know we’re getting the new Chromebooks, so I’m sure those are things
that you guys talk about in those meetings.

Yaughn: Right, yes. Absolutely.

Interviewer: This also falls hand in hand with this. Have you have the opportunity to impact
technology throughout your school? I think we have touched on that a lot already.

Yaughn: Absolutely.

Interviewer: So, how are technology decisions made within, I guess, more so the district
because we’re so small. But, how do we make those decisions? And are there times when he
does consult with the media specialist to try to get a feel for what’s happening in that building.
We for years did have a technology committee where we had a representative from each of the
schools. Um, well, we actually had two representatives. We had a media specialist from each of
the schools, and then at least one teacher from each of the schools. Um, and then the
technology director. That was a very successful group together. Specifically for a technology
grant that we were working on, and we were fortunate enough to have a, um retired, uh
professor who used to work at Mercer and had done a lot of grant writing. She was wonderful
with bringing us together. She was a real wordsmith and helped us with that grant. She
continued to help us with future work for our district. Um, probably about three or four years ago.
That initiative just kind of began to fall apart.

Interviewer: The last two questions are easy. Um, so what is the most challenging part of your
job?

Yaughn: Um, probably the most challenging part of my job is that it is so diverse. There’s so
many different hats that I wear, and nobody other than myself really knows how many irons in
the fire I have at any one given time. So, there’s always somebody who needs something. You
can be in the middle of a big, uh, project or program that is time sensitive and you need to get it
completed. And, inevitably there’s going to be three or four teachers that come to my door and
need something or five or six kids that day that really need my help to finish a project or
something that they’re working on. Or, somebody needs me to go to their classroom and help
with something. So, because you wear a lot of different hats, um time management is, can be
an issue. It really can, and, um, that’s a constant battle. Yeah, it’s hard when you’re the only
person doing so much.

Interviewer: Lastly, what’s the best part of your job?

Yaughn: Oh my goodness. There’s so many good parts. Um, well, I touched on it a little when I
introduced myself, and that is that I feel so fortunate that I get to be a part, um you know, a little
piece of so many different things in my school building. Um, you know, when I taught 10th grade
ELA, I got to be a really important part of my 10th graders lives, but in my job now, I touch the
whole faculty, every kid in the building, my administration, and parents. It’s a very rewarding,
um, or it can be a very rewarding job. You feel like you really do get an opportunity to make a
real difference in individual lives, but also, in your school as a whole.

Interviewer: Thank you, Mrs. Yaughn! I’m going to go ahead and stop the recording.