BrP Bytes

Genre-izing Fiction

2011-06-17T10:39:00.027-05:00

The listservs I belong to have had many postings on making our school libraries as inviting as bookstores, one suggestion being to organize fiction books into genres. After much contemplation I took the plunge this year & genre-ized my fiction section.

When we suggest something different from what's always been, many question it's validity. But if we expect to survive in a changing world, we must be ready to try new things. If they don't work, we can always go back to the tried & true, but how will we know what's best if we don't experiment? One question always arises about a student’s ability to locate books in another library if we use some different organization method. Here's my justification:

I believe the main purpose of the school library is to support the curriculum. Our state's new ELA standards stress genres & our teachers especially focus on fiction genres, so I need to support that as well as I can. If my kids learn about fiction genres in their classes, then that is what they look for as they choose literature, regardless of where they are. Children live what they learn.
Students who are smart enough to get into college are also smart enough to figure out the system of organizing that library (most of them use LC anyway, which is certainly different than DDC). Non-college students will use the public library (and many public libraries are genre-izing now) or the bookstore where things are already by genre. People are adaptable--that's one of the things they become as they progress through school!
Libraries have been around since Alexandria yet it wasn't until the late 1800s that DDC & LC provided a universal organizing structure. Even DDC isn't carved in stone--if we went strictly by DDC, we wouldn't have a separate fiction section at all!

Some librarians will decide that genre-izing fiction will not work for their campus & they are making a wise professional decision. Others, like me, may see a benefit for their students & I hope they'll try it. Sometimes librarians have to be Trekkies--boldly go where no one has gone before!

HOW I DID IT

I already had genre stickers under the spine label on many books & wanted to continue that so my first task was to run bibliography reports by Subject, sorted by Call# so it was easy to go down the aisles & label the genre books. I did one genre at a time, beginning with Mystery (also mystery & detective stories). As time permitted--usually while shelving--I labeled all the mysteries on my list. Then I did Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Sports & Humor (also humorous stories). I decided to use a very cool new Scary label instead of Horror & I had to get a bit creative with the search terms (supernatural, good & evil) & with Romance (dating, relationships). Multiple subjects can get tricky--time travel was put in Fantasy or SciFi depending if it was magical or machine. Both my Sports & Humor sections have books pulled from all the other genres. I did have to go through the lists 2 or 3 times, but this method allowed me to continue circulating books throughout the semester. By the middle of December I was done identifying & stickering. Realistic Fiction books--about a third of my collection—are not stickered.

Nancy Limmer, West Memorial Junior High Librarian in Katy (TX) ISD wrote that she put Demco transparent color labels over the regular spine label & I decided that was the ideal solution--it wouldn't require changing anything on the book & labels could easily be removed if the next librarian decides not to be genre-ized. (In fact, during the process I could see that even without moving books into genre sections it was so much easier to see the different genres on the shelf by the colors of the spine labels, so you might consider this if you don't want to actually move books.) I had fun picking transparent label colors to coordinate with the Demco genre stickers—light green for Historical Fiction, light blue for Romance, dark blue for Adventure, red for Scary, pink for Fantasy, dark purple for Science Fiction, orange for Sports, yellow for Mystery, and tan for Humor. I tell students that "Blo-o-ody Red" is for Scary & "Peanut Butter" is for Humor because PB sticking to the roof of your mouth is funny.

I wanted an OPAC search to show the genre location of the book, so I needed to change the HomeLocation field to the appropriate genre. I pulled a few shelves of a single genre onto carts & did a global Home Location change, put on the transparent color labels, then returned books to the original shelves. It took only 3 days to do all the genres & it was pretty cool to walk down the aisles at the end of the week & see all the colorful shelves.

Once I had the HLs changed I ran a Count Items by Home Location report to see how many books I had in each genre in order to determine the number of shelves needed for each genre. Over our winter break I used the counts & an Excel map of my shelving until I had created a layout I liked. The first 2 days of school in January I moved books into their genre location & created new signage to coordinate with the genre colors. Classes began coming in for a genre lesson & book checkout on Thursday & the change was a big hit with students. In fact, my circulation numbers increased 50% over last year, most of it during the second semester because students can quickly find multiple books in their favorite genre without a lot of wandering around the aisles! I got so excited I ordered new Demco bookends & bright-colored carts to coordinate with the genre colors. I do love Demco!

Information Literacy Curriculum? Scope & Sequence?

2009-01-22T20:07:00.009-06:00

I just returned from a district librarian Curriculum Committee meeting. During the first gathering, librarians began curriculum charts for each grade level & subject in order to identify the areas in our district's curriculum where we could have library lessons. As we looked today at what had been started, discussions heated up and my mind was wheeling. I just need to sort this all out by some writing...

We lament that teachers are so locked into the district's proscribed Online Curriculum (and so pressed for time to complete it) that they won't take time to bring kids to the library for lessons, even though no one is teaching kids any information literacy. We talked about adding our lessons to the OC so teachers would have to bring them to us for the lessons. Whoa...that's locking us into a schedule and taking away the flexibility we've clamoured for, for so long--plus trying to complete a required lesson with all [pick an unmanageble #] grade-level/subject teachers--so we don't really want to do that.

Alternative: prepare lists of resources or pathfinders or Webquests for selected lessons that are most likely to benefit from library resources & lessons. Make them available on the OC, and "market" these to teachers to peak their interest & suggest the kind of lessons we can teach. Good idea, but not everyone has the same resources for a set list, and it still won't ensure that all kids in X grade learn the information literacy skills they need to prepare them for X+1 grade. We've been "marketing" for 10 years and no one hears us.

We talk about district technology trainers taking existing grade/subject lessons & developing alternative tech-embedded lessons to teach the technology skills sorely lacking across the early grade levels. They add the lessons to the OC and then present them in short trainings to teachers so the teachers can begin teaching technology skills properly & regularly. With state technology standards now being tested, teachers don't have much choice about it. Good idea, except tech folks aren't really "on" the campuses like the librarians, who want to do the teaching to the kids, not just the teachers. Plus 10 years ago we did just that--embed our infolit curriculum into the various subjects. Unfortunately, there were no indicators that these were librarian lessons, so as grade levels & departments rewrote curriculum to align with continually changing state & district standards, our standards & lessons were removed because they weren't part of their standards. So we're back to the first problem.

A big question is, do we actually have a library curriculum, a scope & sequence? Well, we used Information Power standards to embed information literacy into the grade & subject curriculums and the scope & sequence was generated from that. But since the S & S was embedded into other curriculums, it's written in their language without being very specific about the infolit skills to be addressed. Perhaps we need to rewrite the S & S. Hmmm...maybe we're finally onto something!

We start looking at what's introduced in kindergarten, continued upward, new skills introduced at various grades...uh, wait...shouldn't we look at the end product--what we expect our graduating 12th graders to know and be able to do? Once we have some concrete performances in mind we can begin moving downward toward Kinder--or even PreK--by then asking, "If we want a 12th grader to be able to do this, what must they know and be able to do in 11th grade? in 10th grade? in middle school? in elementary school? And what does that look like at each of those grade levels?" Once we know what information literacy skills we want kids to know and do at each grade level, then we can determine what we need to do to get them there--lessons, resources, projects, whatever--and where they can fit into the grade level & subject curriculums.

Is it just me, or is this is the same place everyone's been starting from for the past 15 years? How did we miss this? We really should have begun here when we tried embedding the standards from Chapter 2 of Information Power. Now we have new AASL "Standards for the 21st Century Learner" that expand on the original ones to include multiple literacies. So this is a good place to begin. Look at the totality of Information Literacy standards and ask about each one, "What does this look like when a student meets this standard?" (At this point I notice the "old" ones nodding agreeably, while the "young" ones are looking astonished that this has never been done! I feel like we are hopelessy behind the times and every other district's librarians have already done this.)

The next step might be to determine for each grade level what are the 2 or 3 essential skills students must learn in that grade. Information Literacy skills are applicable across all content, so we can explore the options for introduction, reinforcement & mastery of just those few skills through the entire grade level curriculum & teachers a little bit at a time. If I know I need kids at X grade level to know Skill #, I can work that into Teacher A's English/Language Arts lesson, Teacher B's Social Studies lesson, and Teacher C's Science lesson. I now have a "product" to market to the teachers that will help students be more successful with that teacher's future lessons. True, kids may be learning this at different times through the year, but they will have learned more by the end of the year than they are now...and the teachers may ask me to teach another lesson later on, which gives me an opportunity to either reinforce or to introduce another skill.

I like this approach--I believe we need to quit thinking in terms of marketing "our library" or "our resources" or even ourselves, and begin marketing a specific "product" to teachers--a particular lesson that gives students a particular Information Literacy Skill that is critical for the global 21st century and, more importantly, that will give the teacher a better product from the students. I believe we need to know very clearly the specific skills we need to teach at each grade level, confident that what is needed to learn it & understand it has been taken care of at the prior grade levels. The only way I can gain that confidence is to have a very clear pathway with stepping stones along the way to guide me through everyone else's ocean of curriculums. That means a concise and specific K-12 library information literacy scope & sequence, written in Information Literacy standards language that I can translate directly into meaningful lessons for any grade, any subject, any teacher.

I'm overwhelmed at the thought of this task. But there is a rich sisterhood (and a few brothers) who will help us, having already gone through the process. And librarians love to share--we're all about helping folks find the information they need!

What to do with Lessons when leaving your Library

2008-12-31T11:41:00.002-06:00

Periodically a discussion comes up on one of my listservs regarding what a librarian who is leaving a school ought to do with her lessons & lesson plans. Some administrators expect all lessons to remain at the school & librarians balk at being ordered to leave their work products. Some fear leaving lessons for another would minimize their value, whether using the same lessons at another school or publishing/presenting your ideas to make some extra money. However, I believe most educators are of a sharing nature and appreciate others using our ideas & work.

I remember my first year in my school. The librarian had been there only two years (it was a brand new MS), but had done a few collaborative lessons with teachers. Imagine my apprehension when a teacher came to me and said, "B_ and I did a unit on _____ and I want to do the same unit again this year." The teacher didn't know exactly what B_ had done--and why would she--but thank goodness B_ left me her lesson file folders so I was able to see what the teacher was talking about and she didn't need to spend inordinate amounts of her planning time to get me up to speed. I had a starting point rather than scrambling to create something new while trying to determine what resources I actually had in my fledgling library. As I worked my way through B_'s lessons, I jotted down ideas for making them my own in later years, but not having to recreate already existing lessons gave me the time and enthusiasm to develop my own lessons with new teachers or those who hadn't already worked with B_. Thanks partly to the previous librarian, my first year was a real hit with faculty.

If I were a classroom teacher who had spent much planning time working with a librarian on lessons for a unit, I'd be really disappointed to find that a new librarian had no information whatever about that unit. Sure she might be a real whiz and able to recreate something, but I might actually feel a bit resentful about all that valuable time I'd spent planning with the previous librarian--possibly over several years. If all my hard work was down the drain and I had to begin all over, I might wonder about bothering to do any of those carefully planned units I'd done before.

I guess my point is, that any lessons generated through collaborative planning with teachers should remain on the campus to maintain the continuity a teacher would expect after putting much time and energy into a lesson.

Anything that is a personal creation done only by you in the library, without collaboration with a teacher, I say, it's yours, take it if you wish.

Developing Independent Learners

2008-09-17T20:45:00.005-05:00

Students should not be expected to become independent learners independently. Student independence is a logical extension of having learned & practiced.

Student independence is developed by design, not by chance. Teachers organize their instruction to show students how to develop as independent learners & teachers structure activities for students to practice processes in a more independent manner (structured practice). Ultimately, students structure activities themselves and apply processes individually.

Independence is relative to concepts studied, resources used, & maturity of learner. There is a mistaken belief that if a student can read, s/he can read to learn content with minimal further instruction. A student's failure assumes they've not learned to read, so we recycle learn-to-read skills; what the student needs is advanced instruction to support transition to content-intensive reading material. We need to teach reading & reasoning processes consistent with the curriculum concepts & resources as a natural part of the curriculum: variations of concepts & organization among curriculum areas; adapting to demands of various resource materials; independence relative to abstraction & complexity of materials; learning at a level of sophistication consistent with what is studied & with grade level, beginning anew with each move to the next level within a discipline.

Independence does not mean isolation; it has to do with who is in charge. Student independence is never fully attained, so we must not be impatient for them to be independent & not limit the time needed for becoming independent. Showing students how to become independent learners is part of our responsibility.

Transitional Instruction is organized around three categories of activities: preparation, guidance, independence. Preparation gets the student ready for reading through predictions & curiosity arousal, Conceptual Conflict (what if or how did that happen?), and anticipation guides. Guidance activities teach how to apply reading & reasoning skills through extended anticipation guides and student self-generated questions. Training students for self-questioning aids retention; students need to be led through such activities so the procedures become automatic.

I don't remember where this information came from, but it's a summary of some reading I did for a graduate paper in an education course back in the 80s. I've carried it around for many years because it so thoroughly summarizes my belief in how we need to teach information literacy to students, especially at the middle school level. BrP

My Voki !!

2008-08-09T22:28:00.004-05:00

Get a Voki now!

5 Things you want a Principal to Know

2008-02-10T20:40:00.000-06:00

Contract renewal time is coming up, and that means some librarians (and teachers) are preparing requests for transfer to another school or position, and some are submitting notice of intent to leave district employment for a job elsewhere. With that in mind, I'm recalling my response to a recent request on one of my listservs:

What 5 things would you want a principal to know about you and your library program?

1) The most important thing I'd want a principal to know is that my primary role is as a teacher of information literacy, and that I can be successful only through collaboration with other teachers. Not only do I need the principal's support, but I need active promoting of teacher/librarian collaboration so we can assure the achievement of all students. Research shows that librarian/teacher collaboration increases student achievement, and I would expect to produce documentation of collaboration during my job reviews; it wouldn't hurt to also ask teachers for documentation of their collaboration with me during their job reviews.

2) Secondly, I need the principal to provide me adequate funding for collection development and building needs. Even if library budgets come primarily through a district library coordinator or director, I still need a budget that comes directly from the principal for items the state deems cannot be purchased with library funds: those incidental audio/video needs (like cameras and whiteboard easels) that teachers ask me for.

3) I'd ask not to assign me before & after school or lunch duties--not only is it often the only planning time I have during the day, it is often the only time during the day that some students can come in the library to check out a book. In addition, teachers who do have duty often send students to the library for monitoring of make-up tests or to review videos or classroom presentations. Teachers also rely on me to be available to make appointments for collaboration or gathering materials for the classroom.

4) Even if I'm the only member of the library staff, I am a department head, and I need to be included in the various decision-making meetings: other than the school secretary, I know more about the building than anyone else, and I'm quite possibly the only teacher in the building that knows every other teacher's curriculum. With the library's and librarian's activities touching every subject & grade level, I often see and hear more of student and/or teacher issues than many others and can provide a persepective that no one else can.

5) Keep in mind that, just because the library is sometimes empty, I really am busy working, and not just shelving books. It takes a lot of administrative time for collection development--purchasing, processing, and shelving new materials; for inventorying materials & AV in the library & throughout the building; for generating reports on circulation, budget, lessons, & curriculum; for planning with teachers, preparing materials for teachers, & creating lessons for students; and finally, for all those extra things I do, like working with students and teachers in classrooms on audio/video/digital projects, creating and updating webpages, creating presentations for staff development, and keeping up with my own professional development.

I'm sure other librarians have other ideas on what the essentials are of their job, but for me, having a principal who actively supports me in these areas is a dream come true!

End-of-Semester Musings

2008-01-17T21:21:00.002-06:00

It's the end of the first semester at my middle school and the week of semester final exams. Final exams are hard on kids--an hour-long exam can make or break the effort of the previous 18 weeks. Final exams are even harder on teachers--career success encapsulized into the final grade of 120 or so beings with whom you spend barely an hour each day. You hear concern in teachers' voices about those who will surely fail, though it is such a small group compared to those who pass. Looming in the background is worry about the next semester.

Suddenly, here comes that pesky librarian trying to get overdue books turned in & lost books paid for! I could easily be the bane of kids and teachers and parents, so during this time I take extra care to be a good listener without taking too much of it personally. I must admit our state calendar change--moving exams after the holidays instead of right before--has made a big difference. The week before semester exams used to be full of frustration but this year the 2-week break has brought everyone back refreshed and cooperative. So, this seems to be a good time to reflect on where we are regarding the school and the library. It seems to boil down to 3 things: leadership, organization, and communication.

At some point I learned that control is not leadership, but it's oh, so hard to keep the balance. A wise principal, Dr. Frank Taylor, once said, "You gain more power when you give it away." Even the best leader cannot do everything. Develop leaders in the school by recognizing each person's strengths and giving them assignments to use those strengths, then step back and let them soar. That applies no less to students than to teachers. Their success brings respect to us. Stand by their product; don't second-guess it. Engage them to refine the snags. Students become leaders when they are confident that they can find answers and solve problems.

Let the organized minds in the school refine directives--and we each have special organizational skills. Some people are skilled at time management, some excel at processes and procedures, and some have a real knack for visual simplification and presentation. No matter what is developed, an organizing whiz can make it better. Consider different forms and formats for presentation. We work hard to individualize for students; teachers deserve the same individualization. Collaboration takes many different forms.

Finally, nothing works if no one knows what's going on. Standard communication channels need to be established and used consistently, be they print, audio, video, or digital. Frivolous changes to what has already been communicated results in confusion, mistakes, and resentment. Interruptions over the PA need to be monitored carefully--too many of these and both teachers and students tune them out. Email can also be overused: rather than persistent, long, detailed explanations that invite deletion, send a few short, pithy communications to catch a teacher's interest & prompt further questions, visits, & collaborations.

The end of a semester can be frustrating, but it can also be invigorating--a time to review for improvement & plan for an even better new semester.

Does a 21st century school really need a library?

2007-12-29T20:29:00.000-06:00

I feel impelled to contribute my 2 cents on the issue of whether a 21st-century high-tech school needs a library. I'm not quite ready to say that a school doesn't need any library at all, but I honestly don't think a modern, high-tech school needs to build the kind of library that has been the norm for the past 50 years.

My middle school is in its 10th year, we have over 220 student computers for just under 650 kids, and I do more research teaching in classroom computer spines than I do in the library. Yet, for 6 of the 8 years I've been there, I could not purchase online database services beyond those provided by the district because I hadn't reached the state-required books-per-student ratio for our growing library. My district does provide valuable online resources for ES, MS, & HS but our schools have huge differences in facilities and populations: my school has more computers than at least two schools that have twice as many kids, and their libraries promote lots of print reference sources--our new feeder HS has an even higher computer/student ratio than we do. I haven't had my print encyclopedias off the shelves in 3 or 4 years, but my students were limited for many years to a single online encyclopedia provided by the district, even though my staff and students overwhelmingly preferred the additional ones I provided before it was decided I couldn't purchase them anymore.

I've heard the "what will they do when they get to college?" argument, but somehow that doesn't wash for me either. Our local colleges and universities are all online-resource rich, so students need to be more proficient at choosing and using a larger variety of online database services than print resources. The academic world is increasingly moving toward power-search tools that search both print and online databases at the same time, to provide students with exactly what is needed, regardless of format. Yes there will be a need to use some print resources, but the huge number of online database services make most undergraduate research easily completed with those alone. In fact, I was able to do much of my graduate work with them.

I hear the complaint that students do not use quality Internet/Web resources. There is no question about the quality of online subscription database services and their value as supreme research sources. Since higher education and corporations of all types use them more and more, there's a real need to teach students how to know and use those resources appropriately. It seems to me that providing and teaching a variety of high-quality, information-rich databases will allow students to see far more dramatically the inferiority of free Internet/Web sources than if we persist in restricting them to a certain number or type of source. Like, how often do you suppose the boss is gonna say, "Joe, we need you to compile some information for the annual report, and we want you to use an encyclopedia and a newspaper, and only one website."? I realize not everything is available online, but more and more research-type resources are going online or to e-books (which, thank goodness, I am allowed to purchase). Why? Simply because it's faster, easier, and CHEAPER to update and provide online stuff. (Isn't a major encyclopedia publisher ceasing its print version in favor of online-only for this reason?) I'm all for faster, easier, and cheaper...and for moving forward to embrace the future.

You know, I don't remember ever seeing a print reference resource on Star Trek. I know there were many incidents on the various series' where books were read and appreciated, but for reference they always used "Computer." Even in the famous "Court Martial" episode that appears to glorify books over computers, it is the dilution and homogenization of information put on the computer that is criticized--much as we lament the poor quality of info on the Web. (I am reminded of concerns about text-only periodical databases that ignore the power of the accompanying pictures and graphics--certainly a consideration when choosing which database to subscribe to). At the end of that episode, it's the skillful use of the computer as a reference resource --not the law books Cogley piled up in Kirk's quarters--that helps to find the real culprit. I do love books--I have hundreds--and I love to read books; I use reference books when appropriate, but I sure do love comprehensive and searchable databases for most information needs! (I wonder if Lexis-Nexis had been digitized back in the late 60's, would Spock have convinced Cogley that it was far easier to search L-N to find information than to wade through his thousands of books?)

One complaint I hear from our high schools is that students do little leisure reading because they are so overwhelmed with work. It seems probable that the fiction section of a high-tech HS library can be very small compared to the resources needed for research. It might even be preferable to consider mostly paperbacks for the fiction section to keep it as current and inviting as possible, maybe even set up some kind of arrangement with one of the large bookstore chains. As for the format for research sources, curriculum needs, facility technology, and student demographics are the best determinant, not an arbitrary ratio that extends from old-school thinking.

I am reminded that students need to have a place they can go to work or read or gather, and that is typically a library, so to have no such place in a school would be irresponsible. But I remember a comment in one of David Warlick's podcasts about kids needing a place to go to find, synthesize, and produce information in print, video, audio, and digital formats, that the library is the logical place to become that Information Production Center, and that if they do not have the opportunity to develop as effective communicators, their "voices" will simply not be heard. Now THAT is a powerful argument to architects and superintendents for having a library!

So, I think I will continue believing that it is curriculum needs, student demographics, and facility arrangement & equipment that ought to determine the library and its resources. To convince others we need to offer some different arguments than the tired old refrains about the difficulty of "curling up with a good computer" or "not everything is on the Internet" or even "it's faster to find some info in a good reference book than on the Internet." We need strong arguments about finding and using information in a variety of useful, high-quality resources in several formats, about the need to teach information-seeking strategies for any kind of research requirement, and about the one person in the school who can bring curriculum, technology, and communication together...a certified teacher-librarian, whether s/he has a "normal" library or not.

Copyright, Plagiarism, & Educators

2007-10-13T14:13:00.001-05:00

The subject is one I teach, and teach, and teach to students over and over again: plagiarism.

My big problem with plagiarism is that it needn't happen. How can we discourage kids from plagiarizing when we offer them no opportunity for their own original expressions? When a teacher comes to me about resources for a student research project that I can see right away is low-level Bloom, just begging to be copied from an encyclopedia or 3rd-grader's website, I immediately begin suggesting ways to rework the topic so that it will require more in-depth research, some higher-level thinking skills, and a genuine expression of a kid's own ideas and conclusions.

Here's an example. Toward the end of the year (after the dreaded TAKS writing and reading tests) the 7th graders are assigned a research project on Greek & Roman gods & goddesses, basically just choosing one, writing down their designations and attributes from a couple books, and then creating either a short paper or PowerPoint of the information. Ho Hum...I'm yawning and so are they. My suggestion: Compare a Greek or Roman god or goddess with a current popular star from TV, film, music, or sports; explain the key attributes they share and why you think these two were/are idolized. Now how could anyone plagiarize that? Every kid has a favorite star, someone they seek to emulate, and this assignment would help them examine the qualities they admire in this person and whether they really do want to be like them. They'd need to examine several G & R folks to decide who to compare, demanding more skillful analysis than the typical assignment, plus it would help them realize the continued need we humans seem to have to look outside ourselves for help in coping with the vagary of life. The one teacher who did do this project had great success with it, but alas she left at the end of the school year and the next year the teachers decided to change the research topic.

Here's another one I suggested. The original research project was to create a PowerPoint about a national or ethnic group that immigrated into Texas. My suggestion was for kids to interview their own parents, grandparents, and other family members to discover when their family first came to TX (we have a very diverse population: black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Asian) and create a scrapbook, online journal, or webpage about their family. You don't expect them to create a family tree from the time of the conquistadores, but every child can at least learn about the life of their parents and grandparents. Imagine if Alex Haley had never heard his family history? Roots would never have been written, turned into a TV phenomenon, and a generation of Americans never had their eyes opened to the real history of our country!

Does Class Size Matter?

2005-11-03T07:40:00.001-06:00

In his Nov. 2 Education Week Commentary, Saul Cooperman argues that increasing class size would be more cost effective and would allow schools to attract more qualified teachers by offering higher salaries.

I'd like to address one of Mr Cooperman's assumptions, especially since it seems to be the universal explanation for problems in education.

It is the idea that higher teacher salaries would attract better teachers. Frankly, the best teachers are already in the system! People seem to think we teach because we can't get a higher paying job somewhere else; that is insulting and completely incorrect. We stay, regardless of the salary, because we are dedicated to our students and to their success, and we find fulfillment in knowing we make a difference each and every day we are at work. There isn't a dollar value on that. Those who leave to get a higher salary somewhere else leave because they no longer want to teach, and anything said to the contrary is just an excuse.

Higher salaries won't change that; what they would do is create an artificial need filled by people attracted to $$. After a couple years of "the real world of teaching" these people would move on to a job that gives them that high paycheck without all the baggage that comes with teaching.

And one of those bags is huge class sizes. The problem isn't just one of numbers; it's also one of space. Most school classrooms are designed for a certain number of kids and when you pack too many in, there will be numerous problems: seating, behavior, safety, limited activities. And all those affect the quality of teaching--notice I said teachING, not teachERS.

One of the problems of researching in schools is trying to match the variables. We are just beginning to apply research that tells us what the most effective teaching strategies are. And yes, most of them do not have anything to do with the number of kids in the room. However, when it comes to time management and record-keeping, the numbers make a BIG difference. And if those take precedence over teaching, no teacher, no matter what their salary, can provide the highest quality classroom instruction that they are capable of.

Sharing Websites with Teachers

2005-10-30T09:53:00.000-06:00

I want to comment on emailing lists of websites to teachers.

I do occasionally email a specific website I've stumbled across if I know a teacher is studying the topic at that particular time and it's really, really helpful, but sending out blanket lists of websites willy nilly to the staff as a FYI does not really seem to me to be collaboration. Even if you get a "Thank You" back from a teacher, I wonder if they really take the time or have the desire to wade through a long list of websites to see if they can use any of them. And if the teacher is passing off to students a printed list of websites, that seems even less collaborative. There's no direct contact with me there.

I will compile a list about a topic and email it off if a teacher specifically requests it, but while they're talking with me about it, I suggest to them a much more effective method that really is collaboration because it allows me to present it to students. By and large, teachers like my suggestion and go with it.

On my library homepage I have a section called ClassLinks with links underneath to a page for each grade level and one for Electives. Each sub-ClassLinks page has the subject area listed with the teachers' names, and under that I post pertinent links for access by students. I can add and remove links as needed because I also maintain a compendium of curriculum-enriching links that I've amassed over the years (I call it DeweyLinks and organize it as if they're books on a shelf--I got that idea from KidsClick).

My teachers would much rather have me add links to the ClassLinks page and then introduce that directly to students rather than putting links on their own webpage or printing them on a handout. I can introduce/reinforce the use of the library webpage with students in the library or even pop into and back out of a computer spine in 10 minutes while "stealing" a couple minutes to reinforce copyright/plagiarism or website quality/evaluation, or to direct attention to an online database that would be equally helpful. Thus I have engaged in a direct teach with kids and they've learned that not only am I the person to come to about books, I am also the person to come to about websites!

Teachers also ask me to use ClassLinks for their lessons or WebQuests, because it's faster than kids typing the URLs (and getting them wrong--often the URL the teacher sends is incorrect and I have to determine the correct one). Within the timeframe of a class period, ClassLinks maximizes what time kids have for gathering information--and I see that as part of my job too.

While I do send out a monthly email to all the staff (called Media Minute) about some pertinent subject (that can be read in literally a minute), I much prefer building a personal collaborative relationship with each teacher that also provides a teachable moment with students. I do use email abundantly, but for setting up a lesson collaboration, not to replace it.

Collaboration

2005-10-30T09:13:00.003-06:00

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.

Fixed vs Flexible Scheduling for the Librarian

2005-10-02T13:33:00.001-05:00

I'm not an expert on this --indeed I'm often criticized and even flamed--but based on what I learned from library school and respected contributors to the LM_NET listserv, I would like to offer my comprehension of the Fixed/Flex Scheduling issue. It's not just a matter of where we are, but also how far we've come.

It seems to me that fixed scheduling was originally (and often still is) a system of non-negotiable library visits with lessons from a specific, fixed, scope & sequence Library curriculum based on what kids needed to know about the library & its books--that is, it was a separate curriculum just as English, Math, Social Studies, Science and Fine Arts were seen as separate curricula. There was no coordination of Library skills with what was happening in any of the classrooms, but that seemed OK, since none of the classroom activities were coordinated either, even in elementary schools. (Frankly, I'd have been real pleased to have had this kind of library education back in the 50s & 60s--I had none.)

Eventually everyone, including librarians, realized that a more coordinated and integrated approach to education was necessary. For 30 years educators have been struggling to improve what students are doing in classrooms, including coordination and integration of curriculum at all levels wherever possible. For example, Social Studies classes now study literature and art and music of cultures and time periods (and I don't understand why Fine Arts classes don't do more to coordinate with this). Along the way we've increased the use of technology and authentic project-oriented assessment (who else remembers when no one knew what a rubric was?)

Educational advancements increased use of the library, highlighting inadequacies in student information literacy skills and the need for an improved library program that could address these skills at point of need. Thus Information Power emerged, quite awhile ago actually, to promote the integration of library skills into the curriculum and a flexible approach to library use so that the teaching of these skills could happen when that point in the curriculum was reached. And for that to happen, librarians and teachers had to collaborate on how and when to teach.

So, gone is a library scope & sequence that stands alone, taught by a librarian in isolation from other subjects, when a particular class is dropped off by a certain teacher according to a prescribed time schedule for each day of each week. Now we need to be involved with curriculum writing so we can integrate library skills and write appropriate lessons, now we need time to plan with teachers about which classroom--theirs or ours or even the computer lab's--will be used and who will teach what, now we need the ability to schedule classes into the library when we need them to be there, for a few days in a row if necessary. And that is flex scheduling.

The key word in flex scheduling is the word schedule. It means WE, the librarians, have the flexibility to schedule library use, that WE have control of who uses the library and when, rather than being forced to accept specific classes one period a day, one day per week. It means we can decide when a class needs to be in the library and it also means that yes, kids who are working on projects we've had a part in teaching CAN come to the library at any time even if they're NOT scheduled.

While fixed scheduling denies us power over our schedule, flex scheduling is also being used to take away our decision-making power by telling us we can't have any schedule at all, that we need to provide unlimited access, for anyone, anytime they want to wander in, to do anything they want. On the contrary, flex scheduling also means we CAN say no to casual drop-ins because we DO have a class scheduled in the library and we need to be totally attentive to their needs, and this is especially true if we don't have an aide to assist and keep order. And it also means we CAN schedule the same class for the same time on the same day every other week all year long, because we have decided that IS what our students need.

Hmmm, what our students need. Information Power stresses integrating library skills with what is being taught in the classroom, and being on a flex schedule promotes that; however, being on a fixed schedule doesn't excuse us from it. A fixed schedule can provide more regular opportunities to present new library skills and reinforce what we're teaching (flex schedulers envy us that), so it means knowing our school's curriculum very well and developing a wide repertoire of activities to keep students engaged and moving forward. As teachers work with us, they can begin to see the benefits of having a flexible library schedule and can be our best allies as we try to convince our principal to move in that direction.

Fixed schedules actually demand that we become as flexible as possible when integrating library skills into our lessons and planning with teachers. Flexible schedules actually demand that we become even more regular about approaching teachers for planning and about scheduling classes into the library for curriculum requirements. Either way, we are forced to become a better professional.

And it begins...

2005-07-23T18:20:00.000-05:00

A first attempt at this blogging stuff...vacuity of thought...figures.