The author, left, co-teaching a class.
Collaboration. It’s a word that’s always thrown around in professional development discussions. The concept sounds simple enough, and I thought I had a handle on it. Turns out, I never really understood how to best collaborate. When I was an elementary school librarian, I asked teachers to meet with me. We discussed what they were teaching. Then I would go back into the library and plan future lessons for the students. Later, I would present these lessons in the library, without the presence of the classroom teacher. I considered this effective collaboration at the time. A new opportunity I learned that my district, which did not have secondary teacher librarians, was redefining that role, renamed research technology specialist—and I was one of the first teachers hired. Currently, an additional such position is posted for the 2016–17 school year. A research technology specialist is only required to have teaching certification and experience with research and technology. A MLS, though recommended, is not mandatory. With that new position, I moved from a fixed-schedule library, where I had classes come to me on set days and times, in an elementary school, to an office beside the library at a combined middle and high school. Most of the time, though, I’m co-teaching lessons in classrooms. The library itself is on a flexible schedule, with teachers scheduling sessions at their discretion, and is staffed by a classified professional. This new staffing structure required that I integrate the research and technology skills into the curriculum and work closely with staff during this process. This new position expanded my views of teaching, thinking, planning. I began to rethink how a 21st century librarian should collaborate. Collaboration feels very different without predictable library classes containing the same students. My challenges soon became clear. Identifying likely partners Gary Hartzell’s Building Influence for the School Librarian: Tenets, Targets, & Tactics Lists (Linworth, 2003) recommends building good working relationships with the following: new teachers, veteran teachers new to your school, teachers whose assignment has been radically changed, and teachers taking part in school-wide change. In order to establish relationships, I ate lunch with the staff and was sure to be present in the hallway. I asked teachers in person if I could observe them and their classes in action. (Emails did not get much response, probably because of the number of emails teachers receive.) Finding out what research projects were planned To find out more, I accessed curricula online. Being able to review the curriculum for all subjects helped me narrow down what research projects were being conducted in my school. The curriculum’s scope and sequence gave me the short version of topics. Also, I asked students what research projects they remembered from previous years, to help narrow down specific teachers to speak to in person. What then? I had a list of possible staff members to collaborate with, and a good idea of the research projects in the pipeline. But I wasn’t sure what to do next. I decided to begin by introducing the resources available to students in our district. I asked the teachers on my list for one period of class time to teach a lesson. I wound up hammering out a co-teaching arrangement with both the humanities teacher and the world history teacher. I would rotate, spending half the class period in humanities and the second half in world history. While the classroom teachers were the authorities in their respective subject areas, I could bring my expertise in best practices for researching and creating the projects. As Stacy Cameron, coordinator of library and media services at Frisco Independent School District in Frisco, TX, said in a webinar, “Co-teaching is a deeper level of collaboration. Each member of the co-teaching team brings her own level of expertise.” A tech tool smooths the way The teachers and I began analyzing technology tools available to our district in order to be able to communicate outside our face-to-face meetings. At first, we shared a resource where we kept important documents (meeting minutes, emails, calendars, directions, PowerPoints). But we wanted to be able to edit each other’s documents and leave comments on each other’s lessons whenever it was convenient for each of us individually. Our planning needed to be able to continue even when we couldn’t all meet up. Microsoft OneNote's ability to have multiple people working on different aspects of each lesson in the research process solved that problem of continuity. The lessons’ transitions flowed from one skill to another, making the lesson easier for the students to understand. OneNote also allowed teachers to differentiate the lessons for each class and student based on individual needs. Co-teaching models Every teacher, research project, and lesson is going to lead to a different form of co-teaching. If you and the classroom teacher discuss a co-teaching model and classroom management expectations before you start teaching, the lesson will run smoother. Here are the seven models of co-teaching from the Teacher Quality Enhancement Center at St. Cloud (MN) State University:We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing
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Belinda
I would like to correspond with the author, Tara Jones. Thank you!Posted : Mar 09, 2016 06:42