ELL Collection

After attending the AASL Conference this fall, I have been working hard to put together a collection of books for my ESL/ELL students. The population of ELL students in my school are primarily Russian, Arabic, and Spanish. I have been ordering more Graphic Novels to help them out, and in turn have helped out my lower level readers. The graphic novel has grown so much this year that it barely fits in the section of shelves it is currently on. I have also moved the picture books from the teacher resource room to the Media Center shelves, and have seen those checked out. I have playaways of many popular titles, and have added titles as I have had funds. My final touches are going to be adding a collection of Orca and Stone Arch books, as well as books in the students native languages. I am having trouble finding good books in Arabic and Russian, but I will keep looking until I am satisfied. I have been working with the ESL/ELL teacher, and she is very excited to see these final touches. I have the principal on board and we are getting ready to submit a proposal to the district to see if we can get some extra funds from the ELL budget to start up this collection. I am really excited to see all my hard work paying off. What are some special projects you have undertaken this year? Do you have a native language collection in your Media Center? How did you start it, and how have you kept it up?

Presenting Budgets and Staffing Proposals

I am currently working at two middle schools. When I started working at the schools, I realized there was a large discrepency in the money in the budgets. For example, my budget for books at one school was almost twice that at the other school. I have asked my building principals if I would be able to present sugested budgets to them for next year. I am working on these presentations now as both principals agreed to hear me out. I am planning on creating an excel spreadsheet of what would be purchased from each budget, and an accompanying Word document backing up the use/need for each item and state standards regarding these items as appropriate. Have you submitted a similar proposal to your administration? If so, how did you present it, and what were the results?
Being split between two schools makes it hard for me to collaborate with teachers because I have a fixed schedule. I am at one school in the afternoon and the other in the morning. Since I am in a middle school, this means that I miss some periods of English classes, and some periods of other classes as well. In order for me to teach research methods to my students I have to coordinate with my support person at each school. This can be a pain if teachers need to reschedule or wait until the last minute. I am proposing that rather than having my time be split between both buildings each day, that I would have a full time support person in each building to free up more time for collaboration and technology integration. I am going to submit this as a Word document backed up by research by Keith Curry Lance and MEMO standards. Has anyone else done something similar? Can you give me any pointers?