People Create Change

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

EdSurge is an organization that connects “the emerging community of edtech entrepreneurs and educators.” They recently published a graphic called “How Teachers Are Learning: Professional Development Remix.”

The graphic shows “old school” professional development, including all-day workshops, observations, and professional learning communities. (Personally, I wish they hadn’t included PLCs in the old school model…) In their new model, technology tools provide linkages to personalized professional development that meets the “just-in-time” needs of adult learners (teachers).

Lest we lose sight of the importance of the whole school culture, I believe this new model must be placed alongside an article published on EdSurge in April by Ben Wilkoff: “People Create Change Not Products.” Ben Wilkoff, who is the Director of Personalized Professional Learning for the Denver Public Schools, reminds us that it is the “people implementing tools that make or break it [professional development].”

I couldn’t agree more and encourage everyone to read his article. I know that while I have learned a great deal through technology tools, I have learned the most from coplanning and coteaching with colleagues in the same room, at the same time, working through challenges and sharing successes with real students in real time.

Technology-facilitated learning has a starring role in 21st-century education, but it can keep preK-12 students isolated from one another and educators isolated from colleagues. An individual learner, child or adult, simply cannot make the lasting changes we want to see in education and in the world that a collective of students or educators can.

If you believe that building a culture of collaboration can support people in making change, consider Ben Wilkoff’s current manifesto for professional development as you plan for the new school year:
•   Community over Content
•   Friends over Features
•   Conversation over Credit
•   People over Products

Works Cited

Edsurge. “How Teachers Are Learning: Professional Development Remix.” Edsurge. Web. 7 Aug. 2014. <https://www.edsurge.com/guide/how-teachers-are-learning-professional-development-remix>.

Quinn, Robert E. Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Print. (Image created with Microsoft PowerPoint)

Wilkoff, Ben. “People Create Change Not Products.” 16 Apr. 2014. EdSurge. Web. 7 Aug. 2014. <https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-04-16-people-create-change-not-products>.

Time for Collaboration

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) conducts research, helps guide public policy, and provides technical assistance for “national, state and local initiatives that add significantly more school time for academic and enrichment opportunities to help children meet the demands of the 21st century.” In May, 2014, they published a report called “Time for Teachers: Leveraging Time to Strengthen Instruction and Empower Teachers.” You can access the executive summary or the full report.

The study involved 17 high-performing and rapidly improving schools across the U.S. that are involved in a movement to expand learning time. “The expanded school days and/or years also increase learning opportunities for teachers, who have more time to collaborate with their peers, master new content, plan for and reflect on lessons, and hone instructional practices.”

Three themes emerged from their study of teacher development: professional culture matters; teachers are leaders; and the school is the locus of learning. If the school climate promotes professional growth, if teachers are empowered to lead through peer mentoring, coaching, and sharing expertise, and professional learning is embedded in practice, instructional practices will improve. “A successful teaching force spends time not only teaching, but also collaborating, planning, leading, and learning.”

Yes! To teacher leadership and job-embedded professional development as best practices to improve student learning.

Side Note: If you are looking for more real-world evidence, check out the article “Lessons from a school that scrapped a longer student day and made time for teachers.” After experimenting with a longer school day for students, the principal of a Brennan-Rogers School in New Haven, Connecticut, found that extending collaboration time for teachers was more effective.

Works Cited

National Center on Time and Learning. “Time for Teachers: Leveraging Time to Strengthen Instruction and Empower Teachers.” Web. 1 Aug. 2014. <http://www.timeandlearning.org/files/Time%20for%20Teachers%20%28FINAL%29.pdf>

Peralta, Paola. Social Media Marketing. Digital Image. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Web. 1 Aug. 2014. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social_Media_Marketing.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Social_Media_Marketing.jpg>.

RoganJosh. Clocks_1490. Digital Image. Morguefile. Web. 1 Aug. 2014. <http://mrg.bz/Bnee4Q>.

Building a National Culture of Collaboration

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

Thank you to the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) blog for putting the Building a Culture of Collaboration blog (BaCoC) in the spotlight last week. All of the BaCoC co-bloggers are card-carrying active AASL members who promote and model getting involved in our national association for school librarians. As evidenced in Melissa Johnston’s recent post about AASL’s new mission statement and leading through technology, we also promote the work of the association. This is one way to promote a national culture of collaboration.

AASL’s new mission statement is: The American Association of School Librarians empowers leaders to transform teaching and learning.

Yes! To the importance of keeping our focus on teaching and learning! One way to do that is for school librarians to engage in collaborative planning and coteaching with classroom teachers and specialists. Since the publication of Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (1998), AASL has promoted the school librarian’s role as an instructional partner: “The school library media specialist can provide strong and creative leadership in building and nurturing this culture of learning, both as a teacher and as an instructional partner… As an instructional partner, the school library media specialist offers a unique expertise in learning theory, information literacy, and information technology to promote learning” (60).

AASL recently released the executive summary from the Senior/Capstone Project’s Task Force. The task force surveyed high school librarians about their involvement in students’ senior/capstone projects. The graphs provided in the summary show areas of potential growth in terms of school librarians’ involvement in guiding, teaching, and assessing these projects. The task force identified six exemplars from high schools of varying sizes and geographic locations across the U.S. to serve as models for best practices. The report includes at table with contact information and links to four of the six schools’ projects.

Check it out!

Works Cited

American Association of School Librarians (AASL). Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Chicago: American Library Association, 1998. Print.

AASL Senior/Capstone Project Task Force. Executive Summary. American Association of School Librarians. May 2014. Web. 28 Jul. 2014. <http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslissues/advocacy/AASL_ExecSummary_SeniorCapstoneProjectTF_2014.pdf>.

Peralta, Paola. Social Media Marketing. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Web. 28 Jul. 2014. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social_Media_Marketing.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Social_Media_Marketing.jpg>.

Joint Professional Development Works

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

When the school year ended in Denton (Texas) Independent School District (DISD), the Denton Inquiry 4 Lifelong Learning Project (DI4LL) sponsored a two and a half day workshop with Dr. Leslie Maniotes, coauthor of Guided Inquiry Design: A Framework for Your School (Libraries Unlimited 2012). The workshop, which was funded by a grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC), was designed for preK-12 DISD school librarians to build on the book study they had conducted. School librarians were asked to invite their classroom teacher or specialist colleagues to participate with them, and most of the librarians who attended came with one or more colleagues. I attended as the DI4LL educational consultant.

Not since the heady Library Power days of the mid-1990s have I been as impressed with professional development that involved school librarians and classroom teachers sitting side by side to learn, to identify and solve curricular challenges, and plan inquiry learning lessons and units for student success. As a professional developer, I always ask if classroom teachers are free to attend the workshops I provide for school librarians. And the answer is always the same. The teachers are in the classroom or engaged in some of type of professional development at the time of the workshop so the school librarians are meeting separately. These are missed opportunities.

The DI4LL Inquiry Design Workshop is a testimony to why joint professional development should be the rule rather than the exception. Thanks to Dr. Maniotes and her workshop design that included blocks of time for teams to talk and collaboratively plan, all of the classroom teacher-school librarian teams left the workshop with plans for teaching standards-based inquiry lessons or units of instruction.

Building relationships and instructional partnerships during professional development activities can support educators in enacting their professional development learning in their daily practice. In fact, it almost guarantees it. With shared undersandings, vocabulary, instructional goals, learning objectives for students, and teaching strategies, educators can more easily enact their learning with a colleague who will coteach with them.

Professional development that supports coteaching works. It creates opportunities for school librarians to positively impact student learning alongside classroom teachers. There is no better way for the skills and expertise of two or more educators to improve educators’ teaching and students’ learning.

Congratulations to the DISD classroom teacher/specialist and school librarian teams and to Dr. Maniotes for facilitating their outstanding collaborative work. Thank you also to TSLAC for funding this joint classroom teacher-school librarian professional development opportunity.

Work Cited

Kuhlthau, Carol C., Maniotes, Leslie, and Caspari, Ann. Guided Inquiry Design: A Framework for Your School. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2012.

Inquiry Summit II

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

Along with school librarian leaders Liz Deskins, Violet Harada, La Dawna Harrington, Paige Jaegar, Mary Keeling, Annette Lamb, Rebecca Morris, Olga Nesi, Rachel Wadham, and Joyce Valenza, I had the privilege of participating in the second annual Inquiry Summit sponsored by ABC-CLIO/Libraries Unlimited. Sharon Coatney, senior acquisitions editor, facilitated the meeting, and her colleagues Marlene Woo-Lun, Kathryn Suarez, and Jen Psau provided support.

One of the activities in which we engaged was small group brainstorming to respond to three questions: 1. What are the best strategies for implementing inquiry learning in schools? 2. How do we train K-12 educators/administrators? What materials do we need? 3. How are the Common Core State Standards changing the need/intent to implement inquiry learning?

For me, the responses to the first question were the most relevant to the topics we discuss here on the Culture of Collaboration blog. Those in the room seemed to agree that working within a coteaching structure provided the best support for inquiry learning. This structure allows educators to model the process with and for each other as well as for students. All educators involved must have a shared inquiry learning vocabulary that can best be taught, learned, and reinforced in coteaching situations. Educators must also share a value for the time that inquiry learning takes. Educators and students must have permission to experiment, fail or succeed, and try again with new evidence or in new contexts.

Our colleagues, be they librarians, educators serving in other roles, or administrators, must see inquiry in action in order to understand it and experience the value of this process. As school librarians, we must demonstrate the need for inquiry learning as a lifelong learning process that students can and will transfer to other learning environments and apply in their careers, family, and civic life. We must also help others value the lifeskills and dispositions that students learn and practice as they engage in the deep learning afforded by inquiry.

In Thursday’s post, I will share an example of an effective professional development opportunity facilitated by Dr. Leslie Maniotes earlier this month for the Denton Inquiry 4 Lifelong Learning Initiative. Please stay tuned.

Summer “Time”

Posted on June 24, 2014 by jelkaplan

As a teacher or teacher librarian, how often have you heard, “Oh you are so lucky, you have the summer off!”? Of course those are the folks who are on the outside looking in. Those of us in the trenches know otherwise. Summer time is just a different wavelength for many in the field of education. In fact, most teachers I have known, are juggling family time, recreational adventures, and personal professional learning in the few weeks between the wrap up for one school year in May or June, and the preparation for another that may start in the first weeks of August. The idea that educators are basking in a long summer hiatus is a pipe dream.

Even in the reboot and recharge mode, teachers are thinking ahead to the challenges of a new set of students, and how to meet their individual needs. Time without required meetings, committees, and assessments is time to reflect on the big picture. What has been successful and what needs improvement? That kind of time is precious during the crush of the school schedule, and summer provides an opportunity for R and R-and collaboration. As teacher librarians we have to make those connections with our colleagues.

In a recent AASL Blog, Brooke Ahrens asks, “When is the best time?” In her post, Let’s Get Together Thursday, (June 12, 2014) she shares the experience of working with colleagues in her district in curriculum and program planning just after classes ended for the year. As she says, working together beyond the constraints of standards and grades was refreshing, but mental fatigue influenced their progress. She wonders if August would be better, but realizes that time is problematic also. Collaboration and input are important, but what are some possible alternatives to make it happen?

During my years as a teacher librarian, I found that July was a great month for collaborating informally with my colleagues. I would sneak into school early a couple of mornings a week to get my book orders in, unpack books and supplies, or revamp a section of the collection. More often than not, a teacher friend would pop in to say hello. Then the conversation would segue to the upcoming school year and what the teacher wanted to accomplish, and how I could help. Without the pressure of a packed schedule, we could tease out projects that we could plan ahead. Asynchronous collaboration through Google and other social media applications make planning that much easier now.

My school district offered summer incentives for curriculum planning, and I often participated as a resource person in science, social studies, and language arts. College credit for curriculum work was available for participants. Laptops or other new devices were provided for developing curriculum units integrating technology. Stipends were offered for teacher leaders who trained others in a train the trainer model. When I signed on to take part, I often found that other teachers saw me as a true colleague, and I felt part of the team. I understood their challenges, and they understood mine because we had a chance to have deep discussions and share expertise. In mid summer, when most of the teachers had a few weeks to unwind, we found mental energy to be creative and innovative. That energy and planning carried us through during the implementation of our ideas in the next school year and beyond.

So, in July, take advantage of the summer mind of your colleagues. It may be the best time for initiating collaboration. Join a district summer work group if it is available. They usually only work for a week or so. See if any of your colleagues are lurking in their classrooms when you are at school, too. Laugh, chat, and make a plan. Send out some ideas for new books or resources via email, or your blog or website. Stay in touch through Twitter and Facebook. Find a new application that you can share. Screencast a tutorial or find one on YouTube. Cultivate your garden of ideas and invite your friends to the harvest.

Happy summer! And don’t forget your recreational reading!

References:

Ahrens, Brooke. (2014, June 12). Let’s Get Together Thursday-What is the Best Time? AASL Blog. (weblog) http://www.aasl.ala.org/aaslblog/?p=4688

Image: Microsoft ClipArt

Equal Access to Professional Development

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

Just as students deserve equal access to information resources and the services of a professional school librarian, classroom teachers also benefit from working with a professional school librarian. In “How some California schools are overcoming school librarian shortages” written for EdSource: Highlighting Strategies for Student Success (spotlighted in the previous post), reporter Lillian Mongeau quoted Charles Drew College Preparatory Academy 3rd-grade teacher Laura Todorow: “I feel a school librarian is a non-negotiable necessity in any school.”

School librarians align the library collection with curricula and provide engaging books and electronic resources that support teachers’ teaching. They coplan and coimplement instruction to integrate literature and information into the classroom curriculum. Along with classroom teachers, they model and promote the behaviors of lifelong learning.

The National Education Association image “collaboration is everything” is spot on. When classroom teachers and school librarians coplan and coteach, they provide job-embedded professional development for one another. Teaching together in real time with real students, curriculum, resources, supports, and constraint helps educators become more proficient at their craft. Having a peer to bounce ideas off of and problem solve with is a growth opportunity that every educator should experience.

However, in schools without professional school librarians, classroom teachers, principals, and students may be unaware of what they are lacking. For educators who have not experienced the job-embedded professional development benefits provided by collaborating school librarians, I highly recommend Growing Schools: Librarians as Professional Developers (Abilock, Fontichiaro, and Harada 2012). Chapters in this book written by library practitioners and researchers alike highlight some of the many ways school librarians contribute to school improvement efforts.

School librarians can help the school learning community reach capacity. Through providing on-site professional development through coteaching, one-on-one faculty mentoring, and ongoing faculty workshops, school librarians are positioned as leaders who can assist principals in achieving their school improvement initiatives and reaching their academic goals for their schools.

All educators improve their instructional practices through working side by side with colleagues. On-site, job-embedded professional development is a win-win-win-win model for students, teachers, librarians/specialists, and administrators.

All educators deserve this kind of support for their own professional development. With so much pressure on teachers to improve student achievement, having real-time access to professional learning with a school librarian is a social justice issue for educators as well as for students. As Dr. Lankes states, “The greatest asset any library has is a librarian” (29). A professional, 21st-century, collaborating school librarian should be a non-negotiable necessity for every school.

Works Cited

Abilock, Debbie, Kristin Fontichiaro, and Violet H. Harada. Eds. Growing Schools: Librarians as Professional Developers. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2012. Print.

Lankes, R. David. The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. Print.

Mongeau, Lillian. “How some California schools are overcoming school librarian shortages.” EdSource: Highlighting Strategies for Student Success. 26 May 2014. Web. 2 June 2014. <http://tinyurl.com/CA-lib-staffing>.

Equal Access to Professional Development

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

Works Cited

Abilock, Debbie, Kristin Fontichiaro, and Violet H. Harada. Eds. Growing Schools: Librarians as Professional Developers. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2012. Print.

Lankes, R. David. The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. Print.

Big Questions Need Answers

Posted on May 26, 2014 by jelkaplan

On April 5, 2014 Education Quality Standards were adopted by the Legislative Rules Committee of the Vermont Legislature. You may ask, “What does that have to do with me, or collaboration-the theme of this blog?” The bigger question is, “In my state, are there administrative guidelines for establishing school library programs led by certified school librarians that support state education statues?” The answer to this question varies across the country. You may be surprised when you start to do some digging. What’s happening in your neck of the woods? How can you find out?

A year ago, the draft document for Vermont State Board of Education, Education Quality Standards (EQS), omitted any language that pertained to school libraries, or certified professional teacher librarians. That’s when the collaborative team of volunteers from the Vermont School Library Association (VSLA) went into action mode. Last September in this blog, I posted some details about our plan to insert appropriate language into the document. It has taken time to work through the whole process, but we are delighted that our collaborative efforts have made a difference. Now public school districts using the EQS to meet state law requirements have guidelines for school library programs and staffing that are embedded within the big picture of educational programs and services in Vermont. The document itself reinforces a commitment to equitable student centered learning, and is quite progressive.

The takeaway from our experience highlights the power of collaboration, and the need for continued advocacy at many different levels. We have to be able to show and tell the value of a school library program for students. Recently on this blog, we have been focusing on ideas for collaboration, not only with our co-teachers, but also with our principals. The grassroots approach builds influence, acceptance, and support for our programs and our positions.

In Vermont, we have been asking the question, “Does your principal know what you do-really know and understand the complexities of your job?” Heidi Huestis, Professional Concerns Chair of VSLA, and I conducted a short survey of members to get a picture of existing job descriptions and evaluation systems in schools across the state. The results, based on responses from almost 40% of active members have led us to ask more questions. We will use this information and future surveys and other research to plan for advocacy as an organization.

Earlier this month, we presented the findings from the survey at the Dynamic Landscapes Conference at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. Our presentation was titled-Under the Radar: Teacher Librarian Job Descriptions and Evaluations, and here’s a link to the slides, and the full survey is included on the resources page. We were especially pleased that Joyce Valenza, one of the keynote speakers at the conference, was there to share some ideas, too.

Job descriptions and evaluations are opportunities for starting conversations with principals and administrators. If you don’t have either, or if they are not updated, you are under the radar- not a good thing! If important stakeholders don’t know what you do, you are wearing an invisibility cloak. As Susan Ballard and others have said, “If you are not at the table, you may be on the menu.”

Resources:

Dynamic Landscapes, May 16, 2014-Under the Radar: Teacher Librarians Job Descriptions and Evaluations https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10BPsnIZC86WY17Bqodv3YHnEbXnaneZsRvZESkDccoA/edit#slide=id.g33504c028_034

Education Quality Standards, Vermont State Board of Education (Sections on staff and resources, 2121.2, 2121.3 and 2121.4) http://education.vermont.gov/state-board/rules/2000

Image: Microsoft Clipart

Professional Learning: Where Are the New Models? Part 2

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Judi Moreillon

To continue with discussion of the Educational Leadership “Professional Learning: Reimagined” issue…

In their article, Emily Dolci Grimm, Trent Kaufman, and Dave Doty share their experience of “flipped peer observation.” This strategy is teacher-driven, classroom-embedded, and puts the educator who is being observed in the driver’s seat “as the leader and primary learner in the observation process” (25). After the educator identifies the target curricular standard to be observed, she invites colleagues to a meeting to share her focusing question and provide lesson background. During the observation, the observers collect data related to the targeted standard, and in a post-observation debriefing the educator and observer team discuss the outcomes in terms of the teacher’s focus. In their article, Grimm, Kaufman, and Doty provide guidelines for these three components and share the positive results of this process for one particular teacher.

Privileging the teacher’s voice and her own priorities for professional learning are the foundations for the success for this strategy. The multiple perspectives on instruction and students’ practice are strengths of the process they describe. But I wonder how many school districts will support a process in which a team of teachers must leave their own classrooms in order to provide this kind of professional development for their colleagues. This may work in schools with shared planning time during contract hours, but this level of commitment is beyond what I have experienced in the districts where I have worked or observed.

State-certified school librarians who serve in schools with flexible schedules and paraprofessional support have the opportunity to coteach with peers whenever the need arises. A classroom teacher or specialist and the school librarian can coplan (during the classroom teacher’s planning time) and schedule time for coteaching in the classroom, library, lab, on athletic field, or whatever environment is most conducive to students’ meeting the learning objectives. Along with their colleagues, they can achieve the goal of job-embedded professional development that improves the practices of both classroom teachers and school librarians and the learning outcomes for students. Win-win-win.

Last week on this blog, Judy Kaplan pointed readers to a crowdsourced video: Principals Know: School Librarians Are the Heart of the School.

Dr. David Loertscher who teaches school librarianship at San Jose State University asked his graduate students to conduct a content analysis of the video in search of keywords and concepts that were most often repeated by the ten school administrators from seven different schools in six different states. Their findings: “professional development” was the activity most often ascribed to effective school librarians and valued by these administrators.

To quote Principal Paula Godfrey, Gale Elementary School, Tucson, Arizona, “Professional development happens as teacher librarians and classroom teachers collaborate together on projects for their students.”

To me that is professional learning reimagined. That is truly job-embedded professional development—in which educators work toward shared goals and learning outcomes for students and learn with and from one another in real time with real students, actual curriculum, resources, supports, and constraints of their actual teaching environment. This is an opportunity on which classroom teachers, specialists, librarians, principals, and administrators should capitalize in order to help all educators reach their capacity and all students to reach their potential!

Works Cited

Debra (Librarian) and Melody (3rd-grade Teacher) Coteaching Photo from the Personal Collection of Judi Moreillon – Used with Permission

Godfrey, Paula. “Principals Know: School Librarians Are the Heart of the School.” April 2014. Web. Youtube.com. 8 May 2014. <http://youtu.be/bihGT7LoBP0>.

Grimm, Emily Dolci, Trent Kaufman, and Dave Doty. “Rethinking Classroom Observation.” Educational Leadership 71.8 (2014): 24-29. Print.

School Librarian Leadership

Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy

Category Archives: Collaborative Cultures

People Create Change

Time for Collaboration

Building a National Culture of Collaboration

Joint Professional Development Works

Inquiry Summit II

Summer “Time”

Equal Access to Professional Development

Equal Access to Professional Development

Big Questions Need Answers

Professional Learning: Where Are the New Models? Part 2

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