Collaboration has been proven to be imperative in improving educational practices but are you really collaborating or just cooperating? Do you want to collaborate but no one else is coming to the party. Take the lead, get your principal or supervisor on side – do it better.
Step 1. Visible goals, Visible planning: Class teachers should know what the school library and the teacher librarian are there for. Preferably they should be involved in the goal setting. This doesn’t have to look the same at every school, rather it should fit with school goals and the school community.
Step 2. Lighten the load: The TL should, with the support of good executive planning, go to the class teachers when they are planning and/or meeting. Be prepared to be flexible if you cannot be physically present in these meetings. Teachers can share their planning with you via email or shared drives. Then, in the spirit of lightening the classroom teacher load, ask what they need, revisit/remind them of library goals and, having already looked at the classroom teacher’s term overview or yearly scope and sequence – suggest where you might collaborate. The classroom teacher is overloaded – they will appreciate you taking the lead, acting like the expert that you are.
Step 3. Share the responsibility: You are not just helping to teach skills and content – you must also be part of the assessment cycle – student self-reflection, formative and summative assessment. Make this part of the planning process with the classroom teacher. A google doc is an easy way to collaborate on assessment.
Step 4. Reflect together – make time both during and at the end to discuss what worked and what can be improved on. Again, don’t overburden anyone – this can be done via some kind of electronic messaging – at our school during the Covid-19 lockdown we started using Microsoft Teams for this purpose.
My experience as a TL collaborating with class teachers: In 2020, when collaborating on research/inquiry type student learning I was only successful with step 2. I tried for step 3 but it failed because I did not do step 1 or step 4. In other words, while class teachers support my work in the school library in theory, I think they still saw it as separate to their work in the classroom. They agreed to a research recording proforma that I made and showed them, students used this and took it back to class to inform their writing but then they must have forgot and made up their own proforma. I didn’t have the guts to ask them why. I also showed them my assessment rubric but they had one too and didn’t want to refer to mine as well as theirs for reporting purposes. Again, I didn’t have the guts to ask why. So, my goal, with the support of my supervisor is to add in steps 1 and 4 and try, try again!
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