Technology: one kind of collaborative compost for educators

image source:  Wikipedia

Our final two book club discussions focused upon the final chapters of The Collaboration Handbook, which explores how technology is often an ideal starting point for collaborative initiatives between teacher-librarians and classroom teachers. To fully extend our blog title metaphor, technology serves as powerful “compost” for nurturing collaborative initiatives that grow our students’ learning, especially in context of B.C.’s new curriculum.

Chapter 10 outlines examples of what cooperation, coordination, and collaboration might look like in the context of using as wikis, blogs, and podcasting and why the teacher-librarian fulfills an essential role as a “pioneer [in] opening ideas for our teachers to explain their curriculum, through collaboration and the tools of the new technologies”  (118).

Prior to reading the examples, it’s worth revisiting terminology to understand the continuum of instructional partnership as outlined in The Collaboration Handbook:

·      Cooperation:  “loose and little advance planning”

·      Coordination: “planned gathering to meet learning needs of students

·      Collaboration: “comprehensive joint planning between the teacher and teacher-librarian – team planned, team-taught, and team-assessed”

Although the examples of Web 2.0 provide useful illustrations of collaboration in context of technology, the examples are limited to a handful.  Moreover, since the publication of this book, there are a myriad of new Web 2.0 as well as newer Web 3.0 technologies to consider.  Still, however, these limited examples led our group’s discussion towards this question:  what tools do we already apply through our different libraries to foster instructional partnerships? Are there are handful of additional technologies upon which we might focus our efforts?  And to what ends?  What competencies, skills, or content-specific learning in our students?

Given the explosion of apps, software, hardware and platforms such as GAFE and Chrome extensions, there is almost too much choice, and it becomes easy to be overwhelmed, having to evaluate whether or not technologies will truly transform our students’ learning.  Moreover, as access to certain tools might vary among our schools and classrooms for different reasons, there is merit in focusing upon a handful of technologies, rather than trying to tackle many. 

A natural fit for teacher-librarians are tools that are embedded in our school libraries:  the ERAC subscriptions to databases and ebooks, and of course, our library catalog.  All of our elementary, middle, and secondary schools share access to these resources, which are not only portals for information, but also resources for teaching students skills that align with core competencies outlined in B.C.’s new curriculum.

The core competencies -- communication, thinking, personal and social -- embed information skills (finding, using and evaluating information), digital literacies and digital citizenship skills in the learning standards, not only in Humanities but also in Sciences and Applied Skills.  As teachers across subject areas are charged with responsibility for addressing these core competencies, the teacher-librarian  can suggest specific tools that can build these competencies, and identify specific skills that might be taught in a particular teaching context.

How do core competencies align with databases, ebooks, and the library catalog? These technologies are places to begin discussions about the differences between popular and academic sources, authoritative and reliable sources of information, citations and ethics of information use and digital ethics surrounding communication. For example, databases are tools for showing students how to explore possible inquiry topics, narrow topics to a focused inquiry question, and gather and organize information into well-organized notes and working reference lists.   

Beyond the usage of library technologies, however, must be a broader vision for technology in the school so that the conversations do not become about any tool itself – whether the catalog, a database, ebooks, an app, blog, wiki, or a Google Classroom.  This bigger vision must include conversations about what it means to be “information literate” and “digitally literate” and what our standards will look like at elementary, middle, and high school – not only in Humanities, but in Sciences, Fine Arts, and Applied Skills courses.

This vision might also extend to a more specific plan for specific skills that students should master at each school level through the use of technology. What entry skills pertaining to information literacy and digital literacy should students have entering middle school?  High school?  What exit skills should all graduating students have by the time they leave our schools?   These are conversations that have already begun amongst teacher-librarians through this book club and  through school-based work teams, they are conversations that must continue  and develop with teaching colleagues and administrators to gain traction.

Teacher-librarians aren’t the only voices and catalyst for meaningful use of technology; every year, our school district’s gallery walk showcase of learning grant projects illustrate many examples of teachers and administrators who are exploring the powerful and transformative effect that technology can have upon our students’ learning.  However, a teacher-librarian’s unique vantage point into seeing different grades levels and subject areas affords a unique perspective into perceiving the possibilities for a coordinated, actionable vision with schools and between them. How powerful could it be to build opportunities for an ongoing conversation about digital citizenship between an elementary, middle, and high school in a family of schools? 

According to The Collaboration Handbook, these conversations would be labeled as cooperation, the first step towards the more powerful models of working together, coordination, and collaboration.   Coordination might include a clear articulation of expected information and digital skills that students will have been taught upon leaving elementary, middle, and high schools.  Collaboration might then evolve into co-teaching initiatives between levels of schools.

Technology is a unifying talking point among all of us as teaching professionals, especially when there is a broader learning goal such as digital citizenship.   For this reason, the teacher-librarians of school district 61 will begin a professional reading club group focused upon this learning goal in the 2017-2018 school year.  Our hope is to open up additional conversations between teachers, teacher-librarians, and administrators, potentially preparing the ground for cooperation, coordination – and, ultimately rich levels of collaboration.


Contributors:  Darinka Popovic, Metthea Maddern, Jane Spies, Lindsay Ross, Geoff Orme,  
Colleen Pommelet, Wendy Burleson

Written by:  Wendy Burleson

Cultivating collaboration: the roles of teacher-librarians and administrators






Victoria High students cultivating our school's garden

Chapter 7  of The Collaboration Handbook explores building a culture of collaboration – and specifically the  influence of teacher-librarians and administrators in cultivating it.   The chapter delves into this topic in a direct, forthright way that prompted rich discussions among our March book club group long after school -- and past dinner time!

When one considers the effort it takes to nurture a plant, what it the ideal approach that nurtures the far more challenging task of nurturing collaborative teaching relationships?

In my fifteen years as a teacher-librarian (TL), I perceive the parallels between plants and my teaching experiences.  From my perspective, plants are essential in the library learning commons for adding vibrancy to a learning space just as different teaching styles and levels of experience (from student teacher/novice to the experienced/”master” teacher) add vibrancy to a school’s culture of learning.   Moreover, just as individual plants require unique, specific tending, so do teaching partnerships.

As a TL, I feel lucky to learn from co-teaching with many of my colleagues, or at least at the sidelines, by observing them teach in the library. Still, however, one of the ongoing and central challenges of being a teacher-librarian is growing those collaborative roots and nurturing the offshoots – those inquiry projects that grow and develop over time.  Yet often that growth can be hindered by a high turnover of staff on particular years due to retirement, a teacher's move to another school, or a change in the administrative team.

Chapter 7 of The Collaboration Handbook occasionally affords a rather cynical yet honestly articulated perspective upon the challenges of collaboration, as they pertain to teacher-librarians.  Not only is the chapter titled “Overcoming Roadblocks to Advocacy,” but it also includes a range of pointed assertions from a few TLs about the nature of those roadblocks (p. 90):

• “Our teachers HATE meetings . . .we hate change.  My vision (as a teacher-librarian) of collaboration is change.”
• “About half of the teachers realize that the librarian actually tries to support the classroom learning and reinforce skills taught there.  Any programs initiated by the librarian are met with resistance from half of the teachers and supported by the other half;  resources that are shared by the librarian are used by a few, but only seen as valuable to most if they are recommended by a ‘real’ teacher.”
• “The teachers simply aren’t able to take the time to plan it or willing to give up their ‘unofficial planning period’ to do something collaboratively.  It really isn’t the teachers’ fault;  they are completely overwhelmed.”
• “The real problem is our school culture . . . teachers for some reasons are not willing to use the librarian as a resource. It is the culture of the school and the teachers’ beliefs.”

Our March book club attendees acknowledged the reality of certain "roadblocks" in some of our school settings – namely lack of planning time.  Elementary TLs with and 0.3 full-time equivalent (FTE) certainly lack the time to collaborate in the ways that a middle or high school TL is able to with a 0.6 to 1.0 FTE.  

Nevertheless as a group, we spent more time discussing ways of facilitating collaboration – small steps we are able to take as TLs despite the reality of our individual FTEs – as well as ways in which we might be able to engage administrators in building the culture of collaboration.  Chapter 7 devotes a significant chunk of text to the latter.

First, there are practical, actionable ideas that are working well in our Greater Victoria school libraries. These ideas are being initiated by many of our teacher-librarians.

• Make the teaching visible; be seen “in action” –  a few examples include breakout boxes, a lesson about digital citizenship that a teacher witnessed in the library while passing through the hallway, creating spaces (on our web sites) around the evaluation of news and the 2017 buzzwords “alternative facts”.  It’s far more powerful for colleagues to see the “learning in action” than to talk about it at a staff meeting.
• Articulate collaborative planning around the curriculum goals of “see, think, and do”;  the language of the new curriculum (simultaneously exciting yet daunting) is a natural entry point for TLs with teaching colleagues.
• Take the library lesson to the classroom – student perception matters.
• Connect with student teachers;  make suggestions that can make their teaching lives easier (co-plan, co-teach, co-evaluate).
• Create fun, critical thinking activities to weave as “hooks” into lessons.
• Get added to teachers’ Google Classrooms helps TLs see the day-to-day workings of a class – and to be perceived as a co-teacher within the virtual classroom.
• Have conversations about learning;  the word learning is the hook, and all conversations about student learning (formal and informal) are a valuable form of advocacy.
• Consider aligning next year’s TL book club with a title some of our school administrators are reading in Greater Victoria:  Visible Learning for Teachers by John Hattie.
• Build and develop personal competencies:  The Collaboration Handbook highlights three essential attributes of a TL

1. Knowledgeable and flexible

2. Good interpersonal skills

3. Commitment to integrated information literacy and instruction

Second, however, there is the crucial role of the school's administrative team, particular that of the principal. Essential supports are outlined and illustrated with powerful examples of “winning administrators (p. 84-86), inclusive of school principals and district superintendents.

Essential supports of administrators, as articulated in The Collaboration Handbook, are three-fold:

1.  Articulate a clear school mission for learning -- what ALL students will know and be able 
to do (at least by the time of graduation).
2.   Establish a collaborative culture in the school.
3.   Work with the teacher-librarian to elevate the importance of the library facility and media program.

The last point is not augmented by a step-by-step guide, but is illustrated by concrete examples of administrators who have provided exemplary supports. There is an example of a Massachusetts principal who not only supports a robust budget allowing purchase of current print and electronic resources, but also visibly highlights the value of library research projects by “[making] it known to the teacher that he reviews [the] list (of which teachers use the library) at the end of the year.”

There is an example of a New Hampshire superintendent who includes information literacy, technology, and research skills by providing “the administrative and financial support that has allowed the program to move beyond a solid program of resources and services to one that is involved in instructional design and delivery throughout the district." This superintendent has also focused upon “including the library media staff in the development of the strategic plan and in professional development initiatives for the district, as well as providing high-visibility opportunities for library staff to communicate the role the library media program plays in today’s educational environment.” It's impressive that senior management recognizes and utilizes its teacher-librarians in coordinating the big picture of student learning.

There are certainly examples of strong administrator support within our own school district, and we spent time at our various book club meetings discussing those successes.  What’s clear is that there is no single way for administrators to cultivate or mandate library-based collaboration.  Our schools, teaching colleagues, and school cultures are truly an ongoing exercise in gardening -- finding the right means of nurturing not plants (although I highly encourage their beautiful and calming presence in school libraries) -- but of individual, unique relationships with diverse teaching colleagues and administrators in our schools. Some of this tending must come from the TL, but what's also clear is that other tending must definitely be initiated by the school principal and by senior management in the school district.

___________________________________________________________________

Contributors:  Rebecca Steele, Colleen Pommelet, Geoff Orme, Darinka Popovic, Metthea Maddern, Jane, Spies, Wendy Burleson

Written by:  Wendy Burleson

  

Growing our Assessment Practices: Roots and New Shoots

 

How can teacher-librarians collaborate on assessment?  This question guided the discussions in our most recent book club meeting of local teacher-librarians, culminating in further questions  as well as problem-solving in light of many unknowns  pertaining to assessment practices in British Columbia (B.C.) schools.

It’s clear that B.C.’s new curriculum is triangulated around Big Ideas, Competencies, and Content, but it is less obvious what assessment will look like.  The 2016-17 school year saw the elimination of provincial exams in high school Language Arts, Math, and Sciences; at the middle school levels, some schools have been supplanting letter grades with qualitative assessments.  

Regardless of specific assessment frameworks that emerge, teachers will continue to assess student growth across subject areas, and chapters 5 and 6 of The Collaboration Handbook provide practical and flexible starting points frameworks  for teachers co-planning assessment, recording, and assessing student work with the teacher-librarian.
 

The six pre-planning questions afford one helpful starting point. What do we want the students to know, do, and understand? In the short term and long-term?  How will we know that they have achieve this?  What will the knowledge look like?   How does this new work fit in with what they already know, and how can we make the links explicit for students? What new experiences do they need to have to work towards new knowledge, skill sets, understandings, and attitudes?  What strategies and activities will provide these experiences?

These questions help to create a firm foundation for meaningful assessment that supports the Big Ideas, Competencies, and Content.  They address the role of content, but extend the discussion to the interconnectedness of this framework.

The subsequent section of The Collaboration Handbook outlines a list of familiar, tried-and-tested assessment tools including checklists, rubrics, rating scales, conferences, and learning logs among others.  Like the previous section of the book, it reinforces the importance of keeping assessment front and center, but also the importance of cultivating the connections among Big Ideas, Competencies, and Content  when planning for assessment.

How do and how can teacher-librarians  support planning for assessment?  We discussed the value of a collaborative planning template, and many teacher-librarians  already apply one in their schools.  However, even if one already has a template, there are some useful examples to consider from pages 60-63; they cover elementary and high school and address 21st century learning standards.

Our book club discussed the importance of keeping the template comprehensive but simplified from the examples provided (too many checklists can be overwhelming and perhaps discourage collaborative planning initiatives with colleagues) – and the importance of keeping the template aligned with the language of our new B.C. curriculum.  

We can seek templates beyond The Collaboration Handbook.  The B.C. Teacher-Librarians’ Association (BCTLA)  developed a Points of Inquiry Collaborative Planning Guide for Secondary Schools inclusive of inquiry outcomes and a Points of Inquiry Collaborative Planning Guide for Intermediate.  Both guides address content outcomes, learning activities, learning resources, and assessment.  Another useful source identified during our meeting is a site from the Surrey (B.C.) School district titled Library Supported Inquiry.  

We can share our templates with each other – and perhaps most importantly, with our teaching colleagues.  A planning template with assessment questions at the forefront illustrates how teacher-librarians provide instructional support from the planning and assessment stages of inquiry learning.

Bigger picture, we can also work with our teaching colleagues to develop a grade-level standard of assessment for a competencies related to research and information skills.  Page 71 of The Collaboration Handbook provides a comprehensive rubric that covers the development of research questions, the use of sources, paraphrasing, the accuracy and completeness of notes and in-text citations. Although this template may be best suited to high school research assessment, it could certainly be adapted to middle and elementary levels.   The book does not promotes  a one-size-fits-all planning template;  in fact, it invites readers to develop their own.

The long-term offshoots of collaborative planning around research and information skills?  At the school level, it may be the creation of an assessment continuum by grade level, perhaps one focused upon a particular competency such as note-taking, or more broadly, upon several competencies related to information skills, perhaps within a targeted grade.  At the district level, an assessment continuum might develop among families of schools.

These ideas beget questions without definitive answers:  How do we support this growth as individual teacher-librarians in our school settings and culture?  As a community of practice?  In a more structured, formalized framework within our district?  Regardless of how each of us might answer these questions differently, our book club agreed  that it is essential to keep assessment front and center in planning with our teaching colleagues.

Contributors:  Colleen Pommelet, Geoff Orme, Rebecca Steele, Metthea Maddern, Wendy Burleson

Written by Wendy Burleson 

Emerging Plantings & Room to Grow

 

Just as inquiry questions beget additional questions, the word “collaboration”  inspired companion words beginning with the letter “C” in our book club discussion of January 9.  The words continuum and challenge were recurring words in our conversations around chapters 3 and 4 of  The Collaboration Handbook (Tony Buzzeo) – and implicitly, the words cultivation and changeover of colleagues. Although we weren’t aiming for alliteration, these other “Cs” may help us approach collaboration in realistic, successful ways in our school environments.

What does successful collaboration look like?  The idea of continued growth.  Once the seeds of a collaborative initiative are sowed, this growth is nurtured and becomes something bigger than the initial initiative.  

For example, two Greater Victoria middle schools are  thinking full garden vs. single planting in their approaches to inquiry-based learning and digital citizenship.  At Shoreline Middle School, everyone is in “year one” of inquiry-based learning;  there’s a plan for scaffolding inquiry in subsequent years.  At Arbutus Middle School, the teacher-librarian and administrative team have a plan for teaching principles of digital citizenship from grades 6-8.  At the high school level, teacher-librarians are thinking of information skills, digital literacies and inquiry-based competencies by  grade level, looking at what students need in grade 9, and what they need as graduating students four years later.

The idea of a continuum isn’t new (we’ve collectively discussed it for years), but perhaps  it’s at the forefront of our discussions given the challenges of new curriculum, and ongoing staff changeovers which complicate the cultivation and implementation of a two to four year continuum.

So what can we do, as teacher-librarians?  How can we grow a continuum of collaboration within our schools?  A few seeds of wisdom (and questions) from our discussions:

• Focus upon a few skills to tackle that will make a difference;  try not to overwhelm colleagues (or yourself) by working on too many things at once.
• If focusing upon an inquiry continuum, begin by helping colleagues frame inquiry questions as starting points for new units.
• Be proactive with student teachers;  it’s not a requirement in their education program so they won’t necessarily know how you can work with them in  the stages of inquiry learning, elements of digital citizenship and digital literacy, and information literacies.
• Remember that the work of a teacher-librarian is personality-based – and this reality shapes our collaboration with various teaching colleagues and what we are able to implement individually in our school settings.
• Could we use our school district’s enhancement grant funds in our district (2017-2018) to build a continuum?  (inquiry learning, digital literacy/digital citizenship)
• Could we use our school district’s enhancement funds to work with our student teachers?

As we peruse unit planning templates and assessment in subsequent chapters of The Collaboration Handbook, these questions and tips will help to guide us towards practical applications in our individual schools  – and long-range, hopefully towards a formalized continuum among our families of schools.

Contributors:  Wendy Burleson, Metthea Maddern, Geoff Orme, Colleen Pommelet, Darinka Popovic, Lindsay Ross, Jane Spies

Written by:  Wendy Burleson

Collaboration -- defined?

Collaboration:

NOUN

·        The action of working with someone to produce something:

1. Something produced in collaboration with someone:

·        2. Traitorous cooperation with an enemy.

When we voted as a community of practice upon this book option, I’m quite certain that all of us held the first definition in mind: teacher-librarians engaged in action-research with colleagues or perhaps more informally planning a lesson over coffee and chocolate (most definitely at Vic High Library!) – with the goal of producing a strategy to improve the learning of our students.As inapplicable as the second definition is to our intentions, it does cast a shadow over the concept of collaboration.  After all, since teaching can be such an individual and autonomous journey -- shaped by one’s personality, philosophy, background, knowledge base and skill set and passions, among other variables -- it’s not always a given that teachers wish to collaborate, have the time to do so (thinking of the four-block high school schedule with no semester prep.), or perhaps understand what full-on collaboration entails.

The Collaboration Handbook examines collaboration from a more detailed perspective than a standard dictionary definition like the one above.  Buzzeo defines it as a “continuum of instructional partnership” (4) with cooperation and coordination on the left, and  collaboration and data-driven collaboration on the right.   The introductory chapter asserts that “none of these levels is inherently less important than any other level” and acknowledges that  collaboration is “both organic and dynamic as work with different teachers and groups of students evolves and changes, moving fluidly between levels” (4).Nevertheless, Buzzeo challenges educators – particularly teacher-librarians – to consider their instructional programs in relation to The Library Media Specialist’s  Taxonomy (Loertscher, 2000), a ten-level process that represents collaboration from the levels of none (the library is bypassed entirely)  to the level of far-reaching, meeting the need of every student and teacher and shaping the planning and organization of curriculum.   The higher the number on the taxonomy, the closer the library program is to the optimum levels of collaboration at the right-hand levels of the continuum.As we approach this book individually and as a group of professionals, we will be self-assessing our library programs and questioning the possibilities in our own teaching contexts.   What are some of our best strategies for inviting teacher collaboration at elementary, middle, and high school levels?  What are some of the challenges we face in our individual teaching contexts?  How can we best collaborate with our colleagues to support the challenges of the new curriculum in British Columbia?

From this vantage point, talking about the iterations of collaboration casts light – rather than shadow – upon our teaching practice, and our discussions of The Collaboration Handbook will help to illuminate exciting possibilities.  We invite comments and discussions from colleagues in our school district and beyond.

Contributors: Nicole Aerts, Claire Atkinson, Wendy Burleson, Ben Koning, Metthea Maddern, Geoff Orme, Colleen Pommelet, Darinka Popovic, Jane Spies, Rebecca Steele

Written by:   Wendy Burleson