What Grad Schools Can Do for You

If you're interested in taking a leadership role at your school or just need more creative tips for engaging your colleagues, you may find support from a nearby grad school. Dozens of universities nationwide that offer degrees in library science are involved in innovative partnerships with practicing school librarians. And the collaboration has been mutually beneficial: graduate students gain real-life experience in the work force, while media specialists get the assistance they need to spread the value of their hard work.

Make no mistake, the cooperation extends far beyond simply dropping by schools to observe media specialists in action. Students at the University of Hawaii and the State University of New York at Albany, for example, spend weeks planning with librarians, teachers, and even principals on ways to integrate information literacy, technology, and other essential library initiatives into the school curriculum. And the University of Texas at Austin has just completed a semester-long project that incorporates business strategies into the classroom. As a result, graduate students helped devise effective ways for media specialists to market themselves to the entire school. Even school librarians in small rural towns are no longer alone. Indiana University offers six online graduate courses on subjects ranging from information inquiry to electronic materials for children and young adults. To be sure, universities are also looking ahead, with many trying to replace retiring school librarians by offering attractive scholarships to graduate students and the PhDs who will eventually teach them.

Here's a look at some of the more inventive programs around the country that are certain to spark your interest.

Just three years ago, most Albany school districts wouldn't give Joette Stefl-Mabry the time of day. Now they're clamoring to be a part of everything she does. What did this assistant professor in the School of Information Science and Policy do to change their minds? She showed them that school librarians are indispensable teaching partners.

When graduate students sign up for her three-credit course "Technology for School Library Media," they get a dose of Stefl-Mabry's own take on collaboration—and it involves everyone from media specialists, teachers, administrators, and superintendents to various university professors and their students.

Each semester, Stefl-Mabry teams two of her library students with two undergraduate Web design students, and together they create multimedia projects for 10 outlying suburban and rural school districts. Just recently, one team created a professional development program to help teachers of grades 3–12 learn more about various library databases, while another group made an election Web site for third graders—complete with flash animation—that explained everything from the electoral college to election terminology.

How did Stefl-Mabry's students know that their projects actually helped kids learn? Using online tools, such as Rubistar (rubistar.4teachers.org) or librarian Kathy Schrock's assessment rubrics page (school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html), they created rubrics that tracked areas of proficiency. To ensure their credibility, the projects were aligned with New York state's curriculum standards and the American Library Association's (ALA) information-literacy standards—and they were all Web based so "students and teachers could use them 24/7, and media specialists could share them with other districts," says Stefl-Mabry. The response was overwhelming. Kate Foster, a sixth-grade teacher, says she plans to add a library student's reluctant-reader project to her classroom curriculum because her kids "were motivated" and ended up choosing a variety of books to read.

Indeed, it was initially difficult getting this level of collaboration off the ground. "School districts weren't aware of the skills and expertise of media specialists," says Stefl-Mabry. "But my passion has been to change that culture." A key reason behind her success, says Stefl-Mabry, is that her students don't come up with project ideas—they leave that task to the schools. "We asked them, 'How can we enhance your curriculum?' and 'Where do you need more help?'" And as a result, next semester the Albany Public School District and others have said they will take as many library students as the university has to offer.

As the semester came to a close last month, library students gave an interactive presentation of their 10 projects to the university faculty, including Peter Bloniarz, dean of the school of information, and Associate Dean Carol Doll, as well as everyone involved at the school districts. "I want everyone to appreciate the expertise of school library media specialists," Stefl-Mabry says. "They have their finger on the pulse of the school because they teach across curriculums. They're the gatekeepers of information, and we need to be sure administrators and teachers appreciate that."

About 90 percent of the media specialists employed by the Hawaii Department of Education are graduates of Violet Harada's school library media program. So this professor knows very well the value of partnering with media specialists—and she's spent the last decade taking full advantage of that collaboration.

This semester Harada's graduate students joined forces with Karen Muronaga, the school librarian at nearby Lincoln Elementary, who taught them how to become a curriculum partner. Working closely with the tech coordinator, Muronaga showed library students how to collaborate with teachers in each grade level to design and implement lesson plans that incorporate information-literacy skills. One unit designed for fifth-grade students studying the 50 states began in the classroom but ended up in the library with Muronaga introducing various print and electronic resources. In another instance, Harada's grad students teamed up with Debra Miura, the media specialist at Waipahu Intermediate School, to update and expand the school's technology. "Only with direct communication does theory come alive for students," Harada says. "Working with media specialists in the field is a valuable lifeline for our graduate program, and it gives relevance and meaning to our teaching." Harada's classes are cross-listed with the university's department of education, making her lessons available to future teachers and administrators.

Harada has also spent the last seven academic years volunteering her time at two local schools. This semester, she and a graduate student helped design several assessment tools to help Muronaga and teacher Alice Yip at Lincoln Elementary better evaluate their teaching strategies by analyzing students' notes. And Harada knows the importance of professional development. A few years ago, she partnered with Hawaii's Department of Education (DOE) and the Hawaii Association of School Librarians (HASL) to develop a two-year program that taught 25 teams of K–12 librarians and teachers from Oahu, Maui, Molokai, and the Big Island ways to integrate library and classroom instruction. Thanks to a $1,750 leadership grant from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), the project kicked off with a three-day summer retreat in Honolulu, where the groups began planning collaborative units. The teams spent the first year implementing their lesson plans, and then shared them with other schools at an HASL conference the second year. It was truly a collaborative effort, with the DOE providing all video conferencing and other means of communication, and HASL taking care of registration, logistics, and travel expenses, Harada says. The partnership went smoothly, partly because Hawaii—with 265 schools—is the only state that operates as a single school district.

In another partnership with the DOE and HASL, Harada most recently developed an online and print advocacy tool kit for Hawaii's school librarians, equipped with various studies by researchers such as Keith Curry Lance and Ross Todd on the link between school libraries and student achievement, pamphlets on how to promote the school library, and a DVD about the power of school libraries called Libraries Link to Learning. Also included are ideas for collaboration gleaned from graduate students' practicum experiences. "The intent is for library media specialists to share [their knowledge] with stakeholder groups in their own communities," Harada says. "The DOE already wants to share it with the board of education and the superintendent's leadership team."

One of the main reasons why Daniel Callison and his colleagues at Indiana University at Indianapolis have spent more than 20 years collaborating with local schools is to "raise standards for school library media service." Callison's staff can boast helping school districts choose their various software and databases and working closely with two local media specialists, Lesley Preddy and Kym Kramer, to keep on top of the best practices in the field. "We learn so much from practitioners and they learn from us," says Callison, who spent seven years as a high school media specialist. "It can be quite enlightening."

But Callison is now focusing on a troubling problem: the need to recruit doctoral candidates to teach future library media specialists. As the university's director of school media education, Callison is well aware of the dire shortage of professors who specialize in this area. "Out of the 54 library schools accredited by the ALA, I would be surprised if over half have full-time faculty devoted to school library media education," he says. "A lot of these classes are offered by adjuncts, not the tenured faculty that develop the graduate curriculum, guide the program, and recruit students." These figures are unsettling, considering that as many as 80 percent of library schools nationwide offer school library media classes and up to 40 percent of students in those schools are studying to become media specialists or youth services librarians, Callison adds.

Thanks to the help of a $75,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Indiana University hosted a conference in 2002 to help recruit potential doctoral candidates who already have their MLS and years of experience as media specialists—and the response was gratifying. After advertising the event through AASL, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and other local and national professional organizations, more than 40 candidates nationwide applied for 22 available slots. "Out of the 22, about half are now in doctoral programs studying to be future professors in school media," says Callison. As a result of Indiana's success, IMLS has awarded similar grants to pay for full scholarships at Rutgers University, Syracuse University, and the University of Texas. All of the schools are currently in the process of recruiting more candidates, and Indiana has already awarded five additional scholarships to students who will begin their PhDs in January. "Because of these fellowships, I can say that by this time next year, we'll likely have another dozen [candidates]. And the hope is that in three years, there will be a good dozen to fill positions."

Indiana University is one of the fortunate few with three full-time tenured professors devoted to teaching youth services or school media, and to be sure, it's also doing its share to recruit school library students to its graduate program. The university convinced Indiana's Department of Education and the Indianapolis Library Foundation to secure $120,000 in special funding so teachers could become certified library media specialists. Over the last three years, the money has paid for books and tuition for 24 classroom teachers. "Now 20 of them are employed as school library media specialists at a nearby inner-city school," Callison says.

Indeed, Indiana's outreach efforts have been quite impressive. Take professors Annette Lamb and her husband, Larry Johnson, for example. They teach six online classes in school library media from, of all places, their motor home. One of the most unique aspects of their jobs is that they're able to meet school librarians both virtually and face-to face as they travel across the country. Currently linked to an Internet satellite dish near the entrance to Tennessee's Smoky Mountain National Park, the couple offers classes on subjects ranging from technology to information literacy, and they often engage in online chats with librarians who have ideas or need assistance.

One media specialist in Connecticut who stumbled upon their Web site (eduscapes.com) last fall felt new to the field and isolated. "Larry and I began an e-mail discussion with her about ways she might initiative collaborative projects with teachers," and that led to her involvement in the Connecticut Educational Media Association, Lamb says. The librarian is now involved in a number of state organizations and has made it her mission to help recruit more African Americans to the profession. "This is just one example of how the Internet has really made a difference promoting communication among experienced professionals, new professionals, and school library media programs," Lamb adds.

The folks at the University of Texas at Austin understand the difficulties that media specialists face when trying to collaborate with classroom teachers. That's why Barbara Immroth and Bill Lukenbill, professors in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, decided to take their cue from the business world—by teaching school librarians how to market themselves.

With the help of a $5,000 IMLS grant administered through Kent State University, Immroth and Lukenbill recently embarked on a research project involving a collaborative effort between seven graduate students and teachers at the nearby Round Rock Independent and Austin Independent School Districts. The premise of the study was simple: Is it possible for media specialists to use "social marketing"—a marketing approach that promotes socially beneficial ideas—to sell themselves? It was certainly worth a shot, since social marketing has been used successfully since the 1970s to change behaviors such as smoking, drug abuse, and contraceptive use.

The crux of the study focused on promoting better interactions between library students and teachers while collaborating on information-literacy projects. In order to do so, the graduate students had to achieve the four goals of social marketing: they had to attract attention to their services, generate interest, create a desire, and then get teachers to take some positive action in response to their services.

The graduate students, who were dispatched to three elementary schools, one middle school, and two high schools, initially got mixed results. Those who distributed random flyers advertising their services were less successful than those who sent targeted e-mails to select teachers with a history of collaborating with media specialists. The lesson? Using social marketing to promote partnerships in schools is a long-term process that's based on good interpersonal skills and a trust of the librarian's skills.

Generating interest in their services also proved difficult for some graduate students because teachers tended to place a priority on preparing students for standardized tests, rather than on visiting the library. As a result, Lukenbill says, librarians must market their "immediate and long-lasting value to teachers." Promoting an image of the media center as a comfortable and inviting place with an approachable staff that offers valuable services is one of many ways to generate interest, he adds.

It wasn't surprising that, if given a choice, teachers avoided teaming with graduate students. To create a desire, Lukenbill says, teachers must understand how library services will provide an immediate and future benefit. One way graduate students did this was by showing teachers how library services would make them better educators by exposing them to new information technology and print resources, as well as assisting them in planning and presenting new lessons. The study also proved that when it came to self-promotion, school librarians must always initiate action by bringing teachers ideas or offering them some direction. "We teach our students that they have to sell themselves to an environment that may be indifferent to their programs," Lukenbill says. "When the school librarian takes a proactive role to educate the faculty, it's always a more successful situation." The ultimate goal, of course, is that teachers will eventually initiate collaboration on a project.

The most important lesson of Immroth and Lukenbill's study is that it is possible to change teachers' behaviors and attitudes if they have confidence in school librarians and have had good experiences with them in the past. Although teachers may not fully understand the definition of information literacy, many clearly see librarians as a valuable asset, Immroth and Lukenbill say.