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
