MassCUE is pleased to announce Pam Vallee as April’s Featured Educator! As Lunenburg Middle High School’s Library Media Specialist, she serves many roles in her support of teachers and students alike. Pam collaborates with numerous teachers on various projects, ranging from historical research to designing podcasts. She helps classes and individual students discover the best academic resources, primary sources and technology tools to use for projects. She supervises students in the media café and other library spaces as they take online classes. She is passionate about reading and loves sharing great books with students and teachers. When COVID regulations changed how students accessed the print book collections, she researched digital book options and purchased access to the SORA platform to provide high interest ebooks and audiobooks for her middle and high school students. She also worked closely with the Lunenburg Public Library to provide LMHS students with a new integrated connection to the public library’s extensive collection of digital books.
Faced with the challenge of supporting seven grades of students when the middle and high schools combined, she designed a new LMHS Library website [1] to support students and teachers even when not available for in-person consultation. The website is constantly updated with research and projects guides, tutorials and guides for learning and incorporating technology tools, and resources for finding great books. In addition, Vallee recently designed accessible websites for the district and each school, and currently maintains the LHS and LMHS library websites with the updated information needed by students, teachers and the community.
Well-versed in the Google platform, Pam provides professional development and general technology assistance for teachers, administrators and students. She is responsible for all day-to-day operations in the library: checking books in and out; stocking shelves; and ordering all print and digital library materials needed to keep up with changing trends in research and reading. Pam also teaches 6th and 7th grade Library Enrichment Classes geared toward educating students in information and media literacy, Internet safety, research methods, and proper use of library resources. Much of her recent personal professional development and coursework has focused on increasing equity and access in the library and the school district. She is working to improve district communication methods and to convert paper registration and annual student information collection into an online system.
She indeed wears many hats at LMHS, and is a valuable staff member for the entire building. Congratulations to Pam on a job well-done!
Pamela Vallee received her undergraduate degree in History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a Master’s Degree in History and a Master’s Degree in Library Science with a concentration in Archives & Manuscripts from the University of Maryland at College Park. She has been the library media specialist at Lunenburg High School since 2000, and currently assists students and teachers in grades 6-12 at the recently combined Lunenburg Middle High School. She is a co-director of the Massachusetts School Library Association and LHS Class of 2022 advisor. She is proud to have piloted Google Apps for Education at the high school back in 2008, among the first schools in the state to do so. She lives in Lunenburg with her husband, two children and their cat.