BrP Bytes

I remember when I began as a school librarian I was eager to begin collaboration with teachers.  After all, that was touted as the most important reason a school needed a certified school librarian rather than just a clerk to check out books.  It was also the reason I wanted to move from the classroom to the library--to have a greater impact on more students in all subject areas.

What I realized was, only librarians know that collaboration is what is supposed to happen!  Now why should that surprise me?  I only learned about it from fellow librarians and from my library coursework, so why should I expect other teachers to be any more knowledgeable? Clearly it was my responsibility to promote collaboration.  Now how to do it...

I decided that the most critical thing to do was to become familiar with the middle school curriculum for our school district.  If we librarians can't expect teachers to come to us, and we have to go to them, then we'd better have our "appropriate resources" guns loaded with "curriculum knowledge" ammunition. (or would that be the other way around?)

Originally I borrowed teachers' curriculum binders, copied the basic parts, and created my own 6-8 curriculum binder.  As I began studying subject areas, I was able to pinpoint places I could promote collaboration--usually research projects--and then work with selected receptive teachers to create  better lesson plans and handouts.  Sometimes it was a successful collaboration and sometimes less, but it was a beginning.

Three years ago our school district implemented an online curriculum that includes many prescripted activities and I can access it directly anytime and anyplace I want.  So I began converting my copied curriculum sheets into printed ones from online, mostly for lessons I'm already collaborating on, but also for ones I want to promote.  Curriculum building & rewriting is an ongoing, continual process, so I had my hands full trying to keep up with the changes. Finally I came up with the idea of making a chart, a matrix, with MS Excel spreadsheets to track all the library-oriented assignments in the curriculum, and then to use it to build a program of library skills that progresses throughout the 3 years the students are with me.  I can link it to the digital documents I've been compiling to replace the bulky binder of print documents.

After 5 years of personally seeking collaboration opportunities, I've built enough of a reputation with many of my teachers so that if they even sniff the word librarian in the online curriculum, they come to me, even 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time. Fortunately, librarians have had some input on the curriculum, especially for creating what we call "Essential Lessons," and that collaboration with other librarians and teachers in the district has helped me greatly. I still go to teachers with ideas for trying a new way of doing some project if I sense that collaboration will make it more effective, or if it's a new teacher that I haven't worked with before. I admit that I still don't do half as much collaborating as some of my district colleagues, but with 1/3 to 1/2 staff changes over each of the past 4 years and with the complete rewrite of curriculum, I'm satisfied that I'm doing as much as I can.

I'm hoping that by the end of this school year I'll have organized a set of tools that will enable me to approach teachers well ahead of time with some even better collaboration schemes to enhance student learning.

# posted by Barbara Paciotti @ 9:13 AM