Enabling Inquiry Learning in Fixed Schedule: An Evidence-based Approach

Mulligan, Kristi

CO

Stubeck, C.J. (2015).  Enabling inquiry learning in fixed-schedule:  An evidence-based       approach. Knowledge Quest, 43 (3). Retrieved from             http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid  =a13fbf00-0ae8-471a-ad35-62ea68311666%40sessionmgr102&vid=14&hid=125

Summary:  As is the case in many K-12 libraries, librarians must adhere to a fixed schedule for class lessons and meeting times.  This causes challenge when it comes to collaborating and co-teaching over a full unit of instruction.  This article addresses the trial and error of one middle school librarian as she sought to overcome the inherent problems of the fixed schedule and such collaborative efforts.  The author chronicles the evolution of a process that she has developed for her site.  She offers insights into problem solving and solutions that have worked for her.

Evaluation:  This is a challenge for many librarians.  I appreciate the honesty with which the author shares her successes and her failures.  I believe that collaboration with classroom teachers on long-term units provides innumerable benefits to students.  Therefore, the suggestions put forward in this article are a genuine assistance to anyone struggling with their own fixed schedules.

Co-Teaching without Boxes or Boundaries

Alpers, Jessica

CO-Collaboration

Stein, E. (2017, January 30). Co-teaching without boxes or boundaries. Retrieved from https://www.middleweb.com/33987/co-teaching-without-boxes-or-boundaries/

Summary: The purpose of this blog post is to encourage teachers to “allow their thinking to be stretched and empowered” in the area of co-teaching. The argument is made that two teachers who are “in-synch” with each other will have a wonderful co-teaching experience. The advice Stein gives is to express the expertise of both teachers, make sure to co-plan, create a log, communicate with post-is and email, and be resilient.

Evaluation: What I like about this blog post is that it is concise but gives really good advice about co-teaching. Some educators are afraid of co-teaching, due to the fact that collaboration is required. But two experienced educators can create such a valuable experience for both themselves and their students. The advice Stein gives is easy to follow and helps create a path to success.

Standing on a Corner

Amanda Rude

IL, CO

HARLAN, M. A. (2014). Standing on a corner Retrieved from http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lls&AN=98973023&site=ehost-live&scope=site

This article explores the various  accessibility issues of rural schools and proposes possible interventions to address them.  These issues contribute to the problem of a growing digital divide between these students and students from more urban areas.  This article addresses the equity issues created by geography.  But, it is interesting to note that many of these same issues could be encountered by students from low-income areas as well.

Living in Interesting Times

Frey, Jennifer

CA

Woyshner, C. (2016). CHAPTER 1: LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES. Curriculum & Teaching Dialogue, 18(1/2), 1-10.

Summary:

This article is very current and addresses how curriculum can include current events and provide lessons on morality. Curriculum could cultivate citizens and shape and motivate them to be aware of social issues and act appropriately. The article also goes over a brief history of what has been the focus of curriculum over time which i found interesting.

Evaluation:

I found this article very interesting, I read it to learn more about curriculum and assessment but found it enjoyable too. I labelled it with a Z-Fun tag since it was an interesting perspective and also provided some history which I liked.

Nicole Ogden
CO and ET

Maniotes, L. K., & Kuhlthau, C. C. (2014). Making the Shift: From Traditional Research Assignments to Guiding Inquiry Learning. Knowledge Quest, 43(2-), 8-17.

Summary

Maniotes and Kuhlthau compare the traditional research assignment framework that librarians often work in and propose a more authentic method that mirrors the inquiry process. They articulate how one visit to the library cannot cover all that students need to learn in order to accomplish authentic inquiry. The authors provide six steps to transform the research process and also discuss how the teacher librarian can convince the reluctant content teacher.

Evaluation

The authors perfectly capture the situation that many librarians find themselves in where they are given a small slice of time and expected to teach a whole range of valuable skills to a class in a one time visit. They provide suggestions on how to encourage teachers to partner with the TL on an inquiry process. They also provide some clear activities and steps in the research process that the TL could immediately adapt for the classroom.

Connection + Collaboration = SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN A LARGE HIGH SCHOOL

Nicole Ogden
CO

Lankau, L. (2015). Connection + Collaboration = SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN A LARGE HIGH SCHOOL.Knowledge Quest, 44(2), 66-73. http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=llf&AN=110493163&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Summary

Lankau provides ways for a teacher librarian to reach out to colleagues and create relationships and opportunities for collaboration.  She is positioned at a large high school but her advice can work for any grade level or school size. She has many suggestions from how to plan meetings with different departments, introducing department specific technology and resources and how to get administration on your side. She also has advice for the TL who is just beginning to form these relationships.

Evaluation

This article is a wonderful resource for Teacher Librarians who are in their first years at a position. There are very concrete suggestions that the TL can adapt to connect with their school staff and build opportunities for collaboration. Lankau also provides best practices for just getting started.

Re-Envisioning the MLS The Future of Librarian Education

Aubree Burkholder

CO

Bertot, J. (2016, January). Re-Envisioning the MLS The Future of Librarian Education. Retrieved from http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2016/01/re-envisioning-the-mls-the-future-of-librarian-education/

Summary:

Exploring the future of public libraries requires us to consider the future of public librarians—and how they prepare for a dynamic and evolving service context.  Public libraries are in transition, bridging the print, physical, digital, and virtual worlds. Taking this into account the article suggests that there are things that both Professors and MLIS students should be doing differently throughout their degrees that will help prepare for the continuously changing library field.

Evaluation:

I enjoyed this article because I feel that it is very apt information for any student currently pursuing their MLIS degree to understand that they will need to be very forward thinking and socially advanced when working in public libraries. 

Political Ethics: Keeping Your Library Neutral

Aubree Burkholder

CO

Hart, A. (2016, October). Political Ethics: Keeping Your Library Neutral. Retrieved from http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2016/10/political-ethics-keeping-your-library-neutral/

Summary:

Librarians like everyone else have opinions about politics and it can be very tempting to express those opinions in the workplace, but this is never a good idea.  Even if a librarian does not outright verbally express their opinions about politics, these opinions may still come through in various ways such as bias book displays. This article explains the librarians’ responsibilities to public and ethical codes that need to be followed in order to best serve the community.

Evaluation:

I very much enjoyed this article because I feel that the political frenzy that is gripping this country at the moment makes it exceptionally difficult for librarians to refrain from expressing their opinions to the public. I feel that this article gives necessary tools to librarians to help them overcome this. 

Taking Your First Job: Where the Rubber Meets the Road and Starting Off: Where Not to Begin

Brandt, Alisa

Akers, A. (2016, July 14). Taking your First job: Where the rubber meets the

    road [Blog post]. Retrieved from Knowledge Quest website:

    http://knowledgequest.aasl.org/taking-first-job-rubber-meets-road/

Akers, A. (2016, August 10). Starting off: Where not to begin [Blog post].

    Retrieved from Knowledge Quest website: http://knowledgequest.aasl.org/

    starting-off-not-begin/

CO
IL

Anne Akers wrote these two blog posts about a month apart this summer and they both offer excellent advice to library students as they land their first school library jobs.

When asked by a former student after being hired for a perfect school library job, Akers is asked where to start? Entering a new library can be overwhelming and full of many projects from weeding to hanging up posters. Aker suggests not making any dramatic changes right away until you have the lay of the land. She recommends starting with small, easily accomplished tasks that give a sense of accomplishment. She also suggests setting the tone and vision of the library by posting the mission statement at the Standards for 21st Century Learners in prominent places in the library. All of her suggestions start with people and relationships.

In her follow up blog post, Aker explains further why she said to NOT start with the collection but instead to prioritize relationships. She says that to start those critical early days establishing yourself by focusing on the collection reinforces a certain stereotype (guardians of books) and does not build relationships. Schools need librarians who will be teachers and part of what takes place in the classrooms.

Evaluation: These two posts are so important for establishing how teacher librarians are perceived at what we can all do to change the stereotypes of libraries and librarians of yore. It means having a vision and confidently displaying it through the library environment and the actions of the librarian. I believe this is useful for librarians starting their first job and seasoned librarians who have been working in the same school for decades. Visions should adapt and while it takes a while to undo old visions, it is nevertheless an important task to take.

TED Talks Education

Karen Rogers

ET
CA
CO

TED. (2013, May 11). TED Talks Education. Retrieved July 13, 2016, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dilnw_dP3xk

Summary:  This video has a plethora of educators, Bill Gates, psychologists, and students who talk about educational theory, new ways of looking at curriculum and assessment, and how to improve our teaching.  The speakers talk about the importance of relationships, inquiry, perseverance, how to motivate students, and ways to help teachers improve.

Review:  The video is incredibly empowering and inspiring.  It encourages teachers to change their traditional mindset and take some risks in education.  It talks about the problems faced in education and ways to improve them.  It talks about the importance of building up student confidence and passion for knowledge being even more important than talent.  I think it is something all people in education should watch before starting the school year.

Miller, Olivia

CO

Husid, W. (2013). Collaboration: Make it happen in your school. Library media connection 31(4), 42-44.

Summary

This article gives good tips and techniques for approaching classroom teachers about creating co-teaching learning units, including starting out with smaller units, icebreaker lessons, and relationship building techniques. A good article for getting started with collaborative teaching if you don't have any teachers on board yet. The very first step Husid gives is to become a curriculum and Common Core expert so you can find spaces in existing curriculums where teachers might be open to supplementary resources. Also includes a very useful section on branding yourself as a professional educator and instructional technician; communicating to classroom teachers the skills and technologies you can bring to them and their students can help fuel excitement. Concludes by giving advice on "pacing yourself" and giving enough time to develop relationships slowly, integrate yourself further into multiple teachers' practices, and not take on too much too soon. This allows building of multiple collaboration units over time than can be tweaked and re-used in ensuing years, essentially your own library of instructional co-teaching units!

Review

I found this article very helpful for how to begin collaborative relationships. During our workshops many fellow students noted that it can be hard to get administrators and classroom teachers on board with collaborative teaching; this article gives a roadmap to slowly integrating and ramping up collaborative efforts. I found it useful from a beginners collaborative relationship standpoint, especially the advice about building an instructional unit library over time, starting small with LibGuides and Web 2.0 tools before launching giant collaborative projects right away, and making sure not to overwhelm yourself. I also liked the portions on being aware of how you brand and present yourself as a school librarian, making sure to communicate to teachers and administrators that you are an instructional professional with specialized skills.

How do we do PBL - Project Based Learning?

Gabrielle Thormann 

CO, ET, CU

Weyers, M. (2014). PBL Project Planning: Matching Projects to Standards.  Edutopia, retrieved from:  http://www.edutopia.org/blog/pbl-pilot-project-planning-standards-matt-weyers-jen-dole

This article is the third article of a series of articles about how to implement project-based learning (PBL) in a middle school.  Before discussing this article, it’s useful to mention the two previous articles and beyond:  a stream of articles comprises a journal of implementing PBL.  In Minnesota a group of educators started with a reflection on current teaching practices that developed into a District Strategic Plan.  The teachers took the plan to their administrator with their mission statements with one being: "Byron Public Schools will leverage real-world tools and skills to develop in students a passion for learning."  This particular public school is its own small district, and thus as part of a state mandate this public school partnered/”integrated” with other public schools.  It took time and steps to create the Project Based Learning program.  When they were ready, teachers introduced the program to parents and students.  Key points of the philosophy behind the program were presented.

This third article is useful in that failures are pointed to and rethinking begins. The success of a project based on kiva.org is noted, as two PBL sites and resources were used, and parent involvement and collaboration is spoken of.  Taking a glance at the next article, the focus is primarily on the development of real-world projects:  one again based on The Kiva Project, one on a local environmental nature center, and one entrepreneurial project based on a TV show format. 

By following the next arrows on the bottom of this article, one can continue seeing the development of their program.  I appreciate this series of articles as a journal and reflection of how teachers created and implemented a program they had never done before.

An administrator’s guide to co-teaching

Nicole Katz

CO - Overcoming Barriers, CO-Collaboration Strategies, CO-Collaboration Tools, Co-Teaching

Murawski, W., & Bernhardt, P. (2016). An administrator’s guide to co-teaching. Educational Leadership. 73(4), 30-34.

Overview

In this 2016 article by Murawski and Bernhardt, the authors have create 5 main concepts to help school administrator’s successfully foster co-teaching in their schools. “1. Provide many opportunities for professional development on inclusion, collaboration and co-teaching. 2. Establish scheduling strategies. 3. Partner the right teachers. 4. Supervise and evaluate strategically. [&] 5. Improve, increase, and institutionalize co-teaching practices” (p. 31-34). In other words, foster an environment where co-teaching would thrive by being that frontrunner manager and cheerleader.

Review

Developing a relationship with your fellow teachers is critical, but almost impossible if the school administrators are not on board with co-teaching or simply don’t value the school library/resource center/learning commons. In this fairly recent article, from January 2016, authors, Murawski and Bernhardt focus their attention and just that, administrators. From listening to my husband and his colleagues over the years, I have heard over and over about the lack knowledge or interest that many administrators have in Special Education students, often still living under the idea of special ed students being seen and not heard, and some even choosing to neither see or hear them. Which is an absolute crime to me and knowing how some administrators (because obviously – I hope- not all are like that) treat special education, I can only imagine their lack of interest in co-teaching. I like this article because the authors don’t even give the reader the option to opt out of co-teaching. Their attitude is, “Co-teaching shouldn’t be seen as a ‘special education thing’ but rather as a ‘best practices in education thing” (p. 31). 

Enabling inquiry learning in fixed-schedule libraries

Alison Dinicola

ET, CO, IL

Stubeck, C.J. (2015). Enabling inquiry learning in fixed-schedule libraries. Knowledge Quest, 43(3), 28-34.

Summary:
This article discusses the process one school librarian went through to create a collaborative learning experience for fifth graders while being in a fixed library schedule. Carole Stubeck talked about how she had tried doing a stand-alone project with students and that it took several months to complete since she only saw her students once a week for a short period of time. After getting advise from a former library professor, she got in touch with a fifth grade teacher and an instructional facilitator to create a inquiry unit on the American Civil War. Carole and the classroom teacher developed a spiral collaboration model for their ISP (Information Search Process) allowing students to work continuously on their project without having to wait for the next library visit. "Action research is a continuous spiral of reflecting, planning, and acting." The overall assessment for the school librarian and her colleagues would take 3 years with each year a review of what worked and what didn't work with their ISP. Both the students and the teachers used Edmodo to discuss ideas, update progress, post questions and get answers, and submit assignments. Edmodo made it easier for Carole and her colleagues to review, discuss ideas, and follow students progress from a distance as their schedules didn't make it easy for them to meet. Once the project was done, Carole and her colleagues met to review the success and failure of the overall project. "[Their] greatest success was proving [they] could collaborate on a unit using Guided Inquiry despite the limitations of fixed library scheduling."

Review:
This article showed that if a librarian is willing to think outside the "fixed library schedule" a collaborative unit could not only be designed but implemented successfully. I found this article helpful in showing how as a librarian I don't have to be limited by a fixed-schedule to be able to collaborate with a classroom teacher to teach a lesson. I liked the idea of a spiral action plan; though the classroom teacher and the librarian wouldn't be in the classroom together, they wouldn't be teaching a lesson individually. The entire lesson would be continuous process of planning, acting, and reflecting both by the teacher and the librarian. I liked the idea that as one stopped the other one would pick up where the last one left off. Both were using their expertise but together. I highly recommend this article as many of us librarian are in a fixed-schedule environment.

Collaborative Planning

Reece, Madison

CO

Garderen, D. V., Scheuermann, A., Jackson, C., & Hampton, D. (2009). Supporting the collaboration of special educators and general educators to teach students who struggle with mathematics: An overview of the research. Psychology in the Schools, 46(1), 56-78.

Garderen, Scheuermann, Jackson, and Hampton (2009) argue “Collaboration, in theory, between general educators and special educators is grounded in the idea that each educator has a unique knowledge base and expertise that, taken together, can address any gaps the other may have” (p. 57). The authors realize that each educator has differing perspectives and emphases, and this may be a source of contention when trying to collaborate with other educators.

Collaboration requires a dialogue between staff members to continually improve student performances. Educators should work together to plan their curriculums in order to produce greater understanding among their students. Though Garderen et al. (2009) argue collaboration may be frustrating at the beginning of the collaboration process, the outcomes outweigh the differing perspectives educators may have. Due to an immensely diverse range of learning styles, it’s important for educators to collaborate successfully and efficiently. 

Collaboration and Coteaching

Posted by Karen Kotchka

CO

Loertscher, D. (2014). Collaboration and Coteaching. Teacher Librarian, 42 (2), 8-19.

Summary

In this article the author reviews some of the reasons why the library and librarians have been pushed aside as not being central to a school's needs and then relates the results of a research study designed to see how much added value to student success would be yielded by a true collaboration and coteaching between a classroom teacher and a teacher librarian.  Results of the study showed a much greater impact on student success for the cotaught lessons.  The author includes some tips and ideas for a teacher librarian to get started on the practice of coteaching with other classroom teachers

Evaluation

I thought the article was valuable to stimulate thinking and action towards making the library a more central part of the school academic culture and it also clarified some of the meanings and interpretations of what types of teachig are now going on in the library and how technology and virtual learning can extend the reach and impact of the library.

Piloting the Learning Commons

Whitney Fischer

CO

Reference:

Murray, E. (2015). Piloting the Learning Commons. Teacher Librarian, 43(1), 18-24.

Summary:

The author questions how to best serve the information literacy needs of students while adhering to the standards set forth by Common Core.  All too often, teachers feel frustrated that they are unable to teach students the current and relevant information literacy skills that students will require later in their academic careers due to benchmarks that have put in place by the government.  This creates a gap between what students need to learn and what they are being taught in schools.  The author recommends that librarians collaborate with teachers to take a more active role in creating curriculum that ensures that students are learning the skills they need to succeed.

Evaluation:
It is not uncommon to hear of the frustrations teachers experience due to the restrictions of Common Core, and I appreciate the author's solution of teachers and teacher librarians working together to formulate a curriculum that both satisfies the government and provides students with valuable information literacy skills that they will draw upon for many years to come.