How to share new learning with my wider educational community.

As a Teacher Librarian, I love the fact that I get to interact with everyone in the entire school. Most of my collaborative planning for co-teaching happens “on the fly” in conversations I have with classroom teachers. Through these conversations, I have built relationships and learned what each needs, wants and prefers. It took my first year of being a TL to build the trust of my colleagues in that they know they can rely on me and know I am capable. It is strange that the TL is one of the only positions where building relationships with the entire staff is a must! Now that I feel established at my school and solidified relationships, I can really start to make changes.

Start slow:

Many teachers are still getting used to the idea of having a TL available to them more often. There was a such a long time where the position was so limited that many TLs worked at multiple schools and only had time for book exchanges, maintaining the collection and maybe a few lessons squeezed in. So, teachers got used to doing it all on their own and so are out of practice with collaborative teaching. In addition, when I started as a TL, it was the big push to transition to a Learning Commons model. Therefore, classroom teachers needed time and information about what this change means. I think many still don’t understand also because the transition is still happening in many instances. I think many teachers are worried that they will get used to co-teaching and collaborating and then have it taken away again. I had one teacher tell me that she got discouraged from being let down by making plans and then, for example, someone gets sick so the teacher feels they have to do it alone again. In this instance, I worked really hard to build this person’s trust in proving that I am reliable and now we do collaborate and co-teach.

Put yourself out there:

• Join leadership committees: I have been part of the Professional Development committee, Staff committee, and volunteered to be the staff technology specialist.
• Staff meetings: In each staff meeting, the Library is on the agenda to speak, I use this time to not only speak about what activities the library is hosting but also to remind the staff of the kinds of services I offer and constantly highlight collaborative services.
• Meeting with the administration: I believe it is important to advocate for the what is best for the LLC, the school and teachers. At times, even though it is not my specific position, I feel I am speaking on behalf of teachers mostly because I end up talking to everyone in the school. The following document I accessed through the Canadian School Libraries and think it will come in handy in support of Administrators should be involved in the LLC:

Leading the Way with the Library Learning Commons:Examples of administrative leadership to transform school libraries in Canada to 21st century learning commons centres

“Principals as Leaders: “At the school level, the principal is key in establishing and encouraging working partnerships among staff and students. The principal must provide the climate for co-operation, experimentation and growth. The Learning Commons has great potential, but only when everyone participates.” Together for Learning (Ontario School Library Association, 2010, p. 40). This chart makes connections between the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Leadership Framework and how the learning commons approach described in Together for Learning builds leadership capacity.”

The chart that is referred to above gives a great outline for leadership expectations for TLs and Administrators through the LLC.

Know your audience:

I try to advocate for technology use but I know there are many teachers that don’t feel comfortable or want to avoid screen time because they feel like students get enough at home. It is my belief that we as teachers are doing students a disservice if we avoid technology altogether but I cannot force a teacher to use technology with their class. As well, it would be nice if students throughout the school all received the same skills. Therefore, if teachers are hesitant, I make subtle suggestions, at inadvertent times, until I hit on one they feel comfortable with. For example, I have suggested splitting classes in half where I work with one half on technology and the teacher works on another activity with the other half and then we switch.

This article, Introduce Little Ones to Coding, Screen-Free, with KUBO | Tech Review by  Jessica Ralli, found at School Library Journal reminded me of the different coding activities that are screen-free. Although I am not familiar with KUBO, it sounds a lot like the other coding toys, that I also have access to through my district. This is another activity that might be best in small groups or as centers. It also made me think of physical coding activities that use the child’s body to work through coding skills. So if a teacher wants to avoid screen time with students, there are other ways to sneak the skills in.

At other times, I’ve told teachers that I am offering a program for a particular grade. For example, I informed grade 4/5 teachers that I organized Coding Quest with a guest expert to help out and told them the time it was happening and they all showed up.

Professional Development Strategies:

So far, I have mostly shared my professional development strategies to a few individuals at a time. For example, I think of one or two teachers who may be open and willing to try a new technique because it might fit with a unit I know they teach or fits with their style of teaching. However, it might be time to get out of my comfort zone and the comfort zone of some of the teachers at my school and make some changes!

I like the suggested strategies in the following article to ease into providing professional development to my wider community:

Building Inquiry Understanding with Classroom Colleagues.

Article by KRISTIN FONTICHIARO

One of my key interests and a goal as a Teacher Librarian is to implement a school-wide culture of inquiry-based teaching and learning. At my particular school, this is a big challenge as I find many teachers are reluctant to try this strategy either because they feel they don’t know how to do it or they are a bit stuck in their ways. This article has some good suggestions on how a Teacher Librarian can lead a professional development workshop on inquiry-based teaching and learning in a gentle, non-judgmental way. The author  calls it “Nudging Towards Inquiry”.

What I like about this article is that it gives specific strategies to use and incorporates digital technologies. It even gives a rough outline of how the workshop(s) could go. She explains that this could be done in short “lessons” in a series of staff meetings or one workshop on a professional development day.

Fontichiaro makes this important point: ” Do not use actual lesson
plans from the local school or district; few people are truly
comfortable having their work evaluated or poked by others.
(Even asking teachers to do a search for a “good” inquiry
lesson plan in their content area could backfire, because their
selection might be criticized by others. The school librarian
providing a neutral example will eliminate any finger-pointing among faculty.) Pushing back on a third-party lesson plan selected in
advance by the school librarian—and possibly even printed
with no identification—saves problematic reactions” (p.50).

Suggestions like this are good for a staff like mine and I definitely don’t want to be the person who offend anyone; I think that is a reason why I have been reluctant to offer official professional development.

How can I evolve and adapt the access to the “Professional Collection” to be more responsive to the personalized needs of the educators, staff, admin, parents, and other members of our educational community?

When I started at my current library, the Professional Collection was stored in a locked storage room on a high shelf; there were only a few current selections with most being very out-of-date. In beginning to remove the items from the catalog, I realized that most of the barcodes had been reassigned which means those resources were removed a long time ago so I’m  not sure why they were still hanging around! Once properly disposing of those items, there were not many left over. I moved the professional collection out of the back storage and into a closed cupboard with signage on the front so that it was easier for teachers to access but not for students. I then asked for staff recommendations for professional literature but didn’t get much feedback. In talking with another colleague, it seems like teachers just bought their own copies and then kept them stashed away, our question then was, why not share? So, I like the idea that a classmate in this course shared about having a professional literature exchange for teachers through the library. I understand why some people think that the idea of “The Professional Collection” may be out-of-date but I believe it often comes in handy as a starting point in some kinds of lesson planning.

My staff has also tried a professional reading book club that took place after school. It was fairly successful with many teachers involved. This was through the professional development committee; however, I was thinking of offering it this year with the professional development that I am interested in: Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani (grade level K-12) and Inquiry-Based Early Learning Environments: Creating, Supporting, and Collaborating by Susan Stacey (grade level K-3) (that I shared in the reading review A).

Since I am getting more online professional resources, networks and connections, these are things I can share with the wider school community. I would like to do this through a Virtual Learning Commons, I just need to create it first! I have tried to create one before but the format that was offered through my district was not user friendly for me. I want the Virtual Learning Commons to be used by all members of my school community so not only will I share resources for students but for teachers and parents as well such as including a Twitter feed and posting educational articles. For example, I would like to have a link to some sort of “Guidelines for creating good essential questions for inquiry”. In addition, some way for parents and teachers to give me suggestions or comments would be beneficial as well.

THE VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMONS:
This site has some good suggestions for creating a Virtual Learning Commons. I like how it suggests that it be a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons where students and teachers give input into what it contains because “if they help build it, they will use it!”.
It also give different templates for how to design a Virtual Learning Commons for different school levels so I looked at the template for elementary. It give good suggestions for elements, links and tabs to include.

 

Plans for implementation in the coming year:

A large goal of mine in offering professional development is encouraging more teachers to collaborate with me.

Currently at my school, we are not given release time for collaborative planning which makes it difficult to carry out collaborative lessons. Therefore, in the coming year, I will be advocating to my administration for more collaboration time with teachers.

My challenge for next year will be offering specific professional development workshops whether on a pro-d day or a short series in staff meetings.

Finally, I plan to develop a Virtual Learning Commons whether that be a blog or website.

References:

Coding Quest | The Learning Partnership. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from https://www.thelearningpartnership.ca/programs/coding-quest

FONTICHIARO, K. (2015). Building Inquiry Understanding with Classroom Colleagues. School Library Monthly, 31(5), 49–51.

Leading the Way with the Library Learning Commons – Canadian School Libraries. (2020). Retrieved 30 July 2020, from https://www.canadianschoollibraries.ca/leading-the-way/

Pikrepo: Royalty-free HD learning photos. (2020). Person writing learning lessons post [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.pikrepo.com/fphft/person-writing-learning-lessons-post

Ralli, J. (2018). Introduce Little Ones to Coding, Screen-Free, with KUBO | Tech Review. Retrieved 30 July 2020, from https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=introduce-little-ones-to-coding,-screen-free-with-kubo-tech-review

The Virtual Learning Commons – learningcommons. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from http://www.schoollearningcommons.info/the-virtual-learning-commons

TemplateVLC Elementary. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from https://sites.google.com/site/templatevlcelementary/