Collaboration is such a key component of school community and I believe it is vitally important that teachers and teacher librarians collaborate and team teach effectively to support all the learning needs of the students. I think in the past collaboration with teacher librarians has been seen as just simply asking the librarian to help students find relevant resources for classroom learning, although this is changing and the role of the teacher librarian is and should be seen as two teachers working together to support and promote learning for their students in a collaborative manner.

In such circumstances what would be an appropriate response from the teacher librarian? From your reading so far, can you build a convincing argument

for collaboration between the teacher librarian, principal and teachers at a school that you know?

We encourage children to work collaboratively in their learning so we should be setting the same example as staff, by working collaboratively and effectively to support student learning in a variety of areas. We as staff can work more effectively and efficiently when we collaborate as we are able to bring a wider variety of skills and knowledge to the task.

As TLs we need to be able to show staff what will be achieved when we collaborate. Many teachers from my experience just want to get their work done as quickly as possible and sometimes the thought of having to explain your thinking to someone else can slow you down. We need to develop ways that teacher and teacher librarians can work together effectively and potentially work together virtually to achieve the same results. As a teacher and a TL we need to take small steps before we can collaborate as desired. This can be as simple as offering assistance to teacher to locate research on a task or to support student learning in the classroom. This will hopefully then lead to team teaching experiences between all staff.