I was interested to read Judi Moreillon’s recent post about professional learning communities.  Education is a complex endeavor, and as school librarians we belong to several communities of practice including the practices of collaborative teaching and learning in our schools.  What makes these communities of practice into learning communities for the participants?  Etienne Wenger, a major theorist regarding communities of practice discusses three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination, and alignment and suggests that an effective combination of these three can transform a community of practice into a learning community (1998).

Engagement is the work of participation. Quite simply, in a school I think of this as “showing up” and taking part in activities that are focused on student learning including planning meetings, professional development, and committee work.  It means being visible in the school: in hallways, at parent nights, in classrooms and all those spaces in a school where learning is occurring. In short: not just the library.  Wenger talks about engagement as identity work, or “gaining a lived sense of who we are” (1998, p.192). We develop this sense through our work and through our interactions with others.  In a learning community, members engage with each other through listening, speaking, and doing together.

Imagination is the process of moving beyond the present moment and seeing future possibilities and potential.  When a school librarian and teachers plan together and envision what students will know and do differently as a result of instruction, they imagine outcomes for the work of their collaboration. Together they take the raw materials of curriculum, resources, and knowledge of learners and learning to create something new.  Imagination is creative and playful and requires engagement and alignment to ground it in practice.

Alignment connects us to a broader purpose and allows us to coordinate our efforts. Content standards allow us to align our efforts as school librarians with those of classroom teachers.  A school librarian’s knowledge of content standards, the school’s mission, and even the textbooks that teachers use helps to align our efforts with the overall goals of the school and community.

Wenger sees these three modes of belonging as necessarily supportive of each other.  Alignment without imagination is blind allegiance. Imagination without engagement has no real application in the world. Engagement without alignment has no focus.  In combination, these three modes of belonging are particularly powerful. For example, imagination combined with engagement leads to a reflective practice.

Professional learning is about shared membership in a community of practice. Our responsibilities as members of a learning community involve interactions with our colleagues that are engaged, imaginative, and aligned with a shared purpose.  A community of practice framework allows us to coordinate our efforts as we engage with each other.  Collaboration is work but it can also be imaginative and playful.

Wenger, E. (1998).  Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.  New York: Cambridge University Press.

As I have been working on my fall course which focuses on collaboration and the instructional role of the school librarian I have been reading a great deal of articles on this topic and one that popped up in my ScoopIt headlines about a month ago drew my interest. It was this post on Forbes called the 12 Habits of Highly Collaborative Organizations. While speaking from the business point of view I saw the parallels in these elements that could certainly be applied to school librarians. Additionally I like that it is from a leadership perspective and how we can get others to buy into collaboration.

1. Focusing on who benefits from the collaboration. I believe this is key when getting teachers to buy into collaboration – you have to stay focused on how their students will benefit from collaborating with you.

2. Strategy before technology. This is something we are all familiar with – the hottest newest technology being purchased with out any planning for implementation and use.  In the area of collaboration there is a wealth of new tools out there that can be used by school librarians, teachers, and students – but have a plan how will you use these tools, how will you teach teachers to use these tools and how can they be implemented and utilized in instruction to include students in collaborations.

3. Learn to get out of the way. Don’t stifle collaboration by enforcing too many rules and policies. Be open to spontaneous collaboration opportunities! The last thing a teacher wants to hear is oh yes we can work together on something but I’m going to need you to fill out this form and give me three days notice. Being flexible and fluid are characteristics of any good school librarian – collaboration opportunities may pop up at times you never expect them!

4. Listen to others! Educating children is a group effort and as the school librarian we are an important part of this process, but it is important to always remember that you are just a part – always listen to others and their ideas, suggestions, and feedback then integrate this into your planning and program.

5. Lead by example. As Empowering Learners (AASL, 2009) states school librarians should be leaders. Again I think by modeling good collaborative practices with other school librarians, administrators, and teachers we can help create a collaborative culture in our schools.

6. Integrate the flow of work. Teachers have a great deal on their plates and the last thing they want is “one more thing” they have to do. Make collaboration an integrated part of their curriculum and what they are already responsible for teaching. Show them that collaborating with you is not one more thing, but can help to ease their burden.

7. Create a supportive environment. Is your library a supportive environment for collaboration? Is it welcoming for teachers and are you approachable? Do you provide training for teachers to support them in their efforts with instruction? Do you provide an environment that encourages the use of new technologies for collaboration? Think about what sort of support and environment for learning that you provide as you start off this new school year.

8. Measure what matters. There are many things you can evaluate and measure about your school library program, but are you looking at what matters? Collaborative experiences and how they impact student learning is what matters  – not how many books were checked out or how many AR tests were taken. Are you measuring what matters?

9. Persistence! I tell my students that collaboration is an every day effort. It is not something that is going to come easily and does require work and building relationships with teachers. You will not experience success every time and you will not get every teacher to work with you, but you cannot be discouraged – you must be persistent and keep on reaching out to teachers.

10. Adapt and evolve. No two words are truer than these two words in describing school librarians. We have to adapt and evolve as the needs of our students change and as our profession as a whole evolves to stay current and relevant.  Also in collaborating, adapt to what works for the teachers in your schools and evolve to utilize the new collaboration tools. Stay up to date and current what is going on in the profession and the world of education – this will allow you to anticipate change and evolve too.

11. Collaboration benefits the user. In our case collaboration should benefit our students. We all have different skills and areas of expertise – when we collaborate we can give our students the best of what each person has to offer. Also we can collaborate with others outside of our buildings to bring in experts in all areas and it has become increasingly easier with technologies such as Sykpe and Google Hangout to bring experts from all over the world into our classrooms. Think bout collaborating on a larger scale – what experts can you tap to provide authentic learning experiences for your students?

12. Collaboration makes the world a better place! Collaboration is an essential element of the school librarian’s world and will most definitely make a difference in how you are able to do your job. It also makes life easier for teachers, they may not know it yet, but as soon as you show them they will see how collaborating to design instruction and co-teach required standards can make things better for them and their students. And finally it is all about the students and their success and they can only benefit from collaboration – whether it is between school librarians and teachers, school librarians and other school librarians, or even with experts from around the world.

As you forge through into this new school year think abut these 12 habits and question yourself and your own practices. Just writing this blog post made me think about my own practices and maybe how I am not doing all I can to create a highly collaborative learning environment for my own students and I have already begun brainstorming ideas on ways to work on this.

References

American Association of School Librarians. (2009). Empowering Learners: Guidelines for school library media programs. Chicago, IL: AASL.

Morgan, J. (July, 2013). 12 habits of highly collaborative organizations. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2013/07/30/the-12-habits-of-highly-collaborative-organizations/

I love mathematics.  I’m not sure how many librarians would agree with me, and I often notice that we overlook math teachers in our collaboration efforts.  I was surprised one year when my principal asked me, as the school librarian, to focus my efforts on third grade math.  She also provided me with the suggestion that I send a word problem to the class ahead of their visit to the library to generate curiosity about what we would be doing in the library.  Our school had a mathematics focus that year for professional development and I attended with the teachers.  At one of those sessions, the facilitator suggested that students write their own word problems and he offered this familiar framework from language arts: character, setting, problem.  The proverbial lightbulb went off for me – here was my hook.  I could take the characters and setting from a picture book and write a math word problem that related somehow to the problem in the book.
I wrote the word problem on chart paper and sent it to the classroom ahead of their library visit.  Students brought their work to the library and I opened the lesson with a discussion about strategies to solve the problem.  “I don’t want to know the answer, I want to talk about how you got the answer.”  The discussions and activities that followed exemplified much of the second of the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner: 2.1.2 Organize knowledge so that it is useful; 2.2.2  Use both divergent and convergent thinking to formulate alternative conclusions and test them against the evidence; 2.3.1 Connect understanding to the real world; and 2.4.2 Reflect on systematic process and assess for completeness of investigation. I was often surprised when I asked students to explain their work by the kinds of divergent thinking that emerged.  Often students surprised me with valid methods that I had not thought about.  I learned from them, and mathematics became an exciting and collaborative area of exploration for all of us.
AASL has a crosswalk with the Common Core mathematics standards and the Standards for the 21st Century Learner.  I would argue that anywhere in the Common Core standards where you see “real world,” there’s a place for the librarian to build a connection with the mathematics in the classroom and the kinds of real world problems encountered in both fiction and informational texts.
When the learner is expected to organize or share their work, these are key information and communication skills found in the library skills domain.  We certainly see in the current interest in infographics the need for graphs and tables to visually present statistical information.  Mathematicians and statisticians must be able to communicate their work to others.  Librarians have also realized the importance of presenting data about our programs and our impact on our learning communities in a graphic and engaging manner.  In a recent VOYA article, Ryan Ireland shares how Greene County Public Library published their annual statistics as a graphic novel. The final product can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/greenecountycomic

Check out the article: Ireland, Ryan (2013).  Get graphic with stats.  VOYA 36 (3) 38-9.

The AASL Crosswalk with the Mathematics Common Core standards can be found at: http://www.ala.org/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/commoncorecrosswalk/math

This summer has been all about travel and collaboration for me. A few years ago I develop an interest in school librarianship on an international basis and began to question if there were similarities and differences in the experiences and practices of school librarians in different countries. These questions have evolved into a research stream that has taken me from Europe to South America and allowed me to develop new partnerships too.

In my observations in Germany I did find that school librarians there are struggling with many of the same issues as we are here in the U.S., including some related to collaboration. The absence of collaboration practices was noted and many of the school librarians interviewed spoke of struggles with convincing teachers to collaborate and the importance of principal support for collaboration. Additionally, many of the school librarians interviewed talked about trying to institute “media literacy programs to teach their students how to be safe online,” but a lack of time was a problem because teachers would not dedicate time for this. Many commented that teachers only see the library “as a book place” and not as a “teaching place.” Also several of the school librarians interviewed commented that most people who are school librarians in Germany think this same way and do not recognize their own teaching role as a school librarian (Johnston, 2013).

I spent last week in Florianópolis, SC Brazil, attending the Brazilian Congress of Biblioteconomia (which is like the Brazilian equivalent of our ALA Annual Conference) with Dr. Lucy Santos Green from Georgia Southern University. As I listened to various presentations, I again heard many of these similar struggles with collaboration. In the days following the conference Dr. Santos Green and I visited several local schools to observe and interview the school librarians and yet again we heard the same issues related to collaboration.

Collaboration was definitely a theme that ran throughout the conference beginning with IFLA President Ingrid Parent speaking in the opening keynote address. Several of her comments resonated with me as she emphasized that collaboration must be a focus of librarianship and that by “working together at the national and international level we can be smarter, stronger, and louder.” I strongly believe that as school librarians around the world struggle with similar challenges, it is important to examine the work of school librarians on an international level and collaborate as professionals to develop strategies and a course of action for addressing our common problems.

Me, Carol Becker – our new Brazilian collaborator and friend, and Dr. Santos Green

Johnston, M. P. (2013). Investigating an international exchange of best practices between German and American teacher librarians. School Libraries Worldwide, 19(1).

This summer students in two sections of our course Production of Instructional Materials, used a free IPad App, Videolicious to create quick video commercials on topics that ranged from how to use interlibrary loan to an introduction to the horror genre.  We were excited to see this app on the AASL Best Apps For Teaching and Learning list just released at ALA but we also knew first hand the limitations of the free app that we learned took lots of trial and error to realize a plan for combining video, still images, text, voice over and music.  Students collaborated ahead of time with a partner to create a storyboard for their video and then only had  a few hours on campus to pull it all together.  And wow! they did pull it together? Their videos were amazing and so much fun to view.  We talked about showing families how to use this free app on their devices or cell phones: think about the creative possibilities for students to share their learning!

The app clearly had its constraints and we had to remind students that this is a lot of what you deal with in the school library: learning to create something despite the constraints of time, money, and other resources.  This is what all artists have to work through: realizing an artistic vision despite the limitations of the materials or media chosen for the work.  As I think about this related to collaboration, I realize that we are also working with an idealistic vision of everyone working together to create learning opportunities for students.  We are also constrained by limited time and resources.  We have trouble finding enough time to plan together, or finding time in busy classroom schedules to provide adequate time for true student inquiry and creativity.  We find ourselves teaching students to use free apps on shared devices with filtered internet access.  And yet we believe in the vision and we persevere and some amazing things happen.

Finding a way to use the materials at hand to realize a vision doesn’t just apply to a two minute video assigned as coursework.  It’s a necessary frame of mind needed by those of us who hope to create a collaborative school culture.  The students who came to campus that afternoon with a plan knew where they wanted to go with their video.  They persisted through multiple trial and error attempts.  They worked together to find solutions that leveraged the materials they found around them. They learned from each other.  As school librarians, we hope they will have a vision, create plans in collaboration with others, persevere despite setbacks and limited resources, and continue to learn from their peers.

School librarians can create a culture of support, collaboration, and creativity with the teachers and students in their schools.  We are artists with access to a pretty cool palette of resources including those recently highlighted by the AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning 2013 and Best Apps for Teaching and Learning lists.  Give some of these resources a quick spin and be prepared to share them with your school communities.