Angela Knight is bursting with energy in her library media center at Harrison Elementary School. She buzzes around the room, collecting a variety of coding tools for her students to use in their Coding class.
“I love the library because of the thousand things it can be,” she says. “I love to settle in with a book and just read for a while, but that’s just one of the activities our students do in this space.”
Knight serves students staff at Harrison and Watkins Elementary Schools as their library media specialist. At both schools, she helps ensure that devices in the library are ready to meet student needs, as well as learning how to use a variety of technology tools that reinforce student creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking, she says.
“There are a lot of things that I know how to do with the technology and the robots we program, but there are a lot I don’t,” she says. “So the students, we learn together. I’ll tell them, ‘I don’t know how to do this, but let’s figure it out.’ I’m a life-long learner, and I model that with the kids. I help them to become the experts so they answer their own questions.”
During Explore, Knight uses her library space in partnership with other teachers to host Makerspace/Coding activities in the library. Knight helped to write the Explore Makerspace curriculum, which she says is a balance of literacy and technology. “It’s not either/or, it has to be both,” she says.
“Students need the space to be creative and to prevent the summer slide,” she says. “Some students, their reading scores drop their communication skills regress, their math scores drop. During Explore, devices are used alongside communication and collaboration activities to ignite their learning. And we get to have fun, too.”
Knight can’t stop smiling when she talks about her students and the fun she has learning with them in the library. Serving elementary students is her sweet spot, she says.
“I don’t just like my job, I love my job,” she says. “I had a very rewarding career in the financial industry prior to moving into education but it wanes in comparison to what I get to do each day. I’ve thought several times, ‘I can’t believe they pay me to do this.’ I am surrounded by kids, books and technology, and I help shape the love of reading and learning in hundreds of kids lives. It doesn’t get better than that.”
Knight received a bachelor’s degree in instructional technology from Drury University, graduating as a non-traditional student after working for more than 20 years in the finance industry. In the finance sector, she taught adults on a variety of curriculum she helped draft. At the height of her career, she worked as the Vice President of Operations at a local bank.
At the same time, she became deeply involved in Parent Teacher Association. While her children attended SPS, she volunteered in their libraries alongside librarians Micky Kittleman, Christa Larimore and Sandy Cash. The three inspired her to pursue becoming a librarian.
Knight earned her master’s degree in instructional technology from William Woods University. She hopes to pursue a doctorate in curriculum from Evangel University. She is married to her husband, Cameron, and together, they have two children: Allyson and Garret.