Strategies for collaboration

Katy Golden

CO

Kabal, C. (2014). Strategies for successful collaboration. Retrieved from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/kriscia-cabral/strategies-effective-collaboration/

I really enjoyed this article because it's clear, concise, and written by a teacher about her experiences. She gives strategies about how to collaborate with a variety of specialists, not just media specialists.

This author encourages teachers and other educational professionals to "work smarter, not harder" through collaboration, and gives several strategies for collaborating. She encourages you to start by creating an actual document that serves as a working agreement for the entire year - this would be for a completely cotaught classroom, obviously- that clearly defines roles and responsibilities. While this might not be necessary for a single cotaught experience, it still might help to have clearly defined roles for the media specialist and classroom teacher. She also stresses the necessity to "communicate, communicate, communicate" and to connect with your students and coteachers in many different ways.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to coteach this fall and will definitely be using some of these collaboration strategies as I do!

Co-Teaching Without Boxes or Boundaries

Paslay, Juliana

CO

Stein, E. (2017) Co-Teaching Without Boxes or Boundaries. Middleweb. Retrieved from https://www.middleweb.com/33987/co-teaching-without-boxes-or-boundaries/ I found a bunch of articles that gave tips on Co-Teaching. This one was my favorite. I like that it focuses on very specific issues instead of more general obvious ones.

An Example of Co-Teaching

Mary Fobbs-Guillory

CO

Ainsworth, L. (2016). Teacher and teacher librarian collaborative inquiry. Teacher Librarian, 44(2), pp. 28-31.

This article gives a detailed account of a co-teaching experience between a 5th grade teacher and a teacher librarian in Canada.  The class was studying Inuit culture and the skill of questioning.  The article documents the process of the professionals planning the lesson together and then teaching the class in two groups.  This method is also called Station teaching because the students rotate from being taught by one professional to the next.  The teacher librarian created a short video on challenging vocabulary for students to view ahead of time and posted it to the class blog.  The teachers taught how to ask questions and provided them with question builder frames and rubrics.  They read books, facilitated discussions, and provided artifacts and art prints from the local museum for the students to analyze and develop questions about.

This article gave a very detailed account of the lesson, I felt as though I watched it.  It gave me a full picture of what co-teaching looks like and how fun and powerful it can be.

Co-Teaching: How to Make it Work

Martinez, Evelyn


Peery, A. (n.d.). Co-Teaching: How to Make it Work. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/co-teaching-push-in/

Summary:  This is a good article describing the elements required for successful co-teaching.  The advice offered is basic but offers a good starting point if co-teaching is new to you.

Link to article: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/co-teaching-push-in/

MOREILLON, J. (2016). Making the Classroom-Library Connection. Teacher Librarian, 43(3),  

8-18.  Retrieved from:  http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?

url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=113222008&site=ehost-

live&scope=site

This article discusses how classroom teachers are often unprepared or unknowing of how to collaborate with librarians.  This makes it difficult for teacher-librarians because classroom teachers often feel uncomfortable with collaboration. This article discusses some of the issues that are experienced by classroom teachers and teacher librarians and it also discussed some possible remedies to these issues.  This article explains possible options that can be offered to teachers to help them understand what the teacher librarians can offer their classes.  It includes information on how the librarian can provide workshops to help teachers learn to work in tandem with the librarian.

Effective Co-Teaching Strategies

Did you know there are four approaches to co-teaching? I didn't. I thought there was only one way and it was #4. This article I found on Teach Hub.com, Effective Co-teaching Strategies by Dr. Richard Villa. He describes the four collaborative teaching approaches and he has a cool chart which describes how the co-teaching approaches are similar, how they are different and what the potential problems are with co-teaching.

The four approaches are:
1. Supportive co-teaching - where the one member of the team takes the lead role and the other member rotates among students to provide support.

2. Parallel Co-teaching - where support personnel and the classroom teacher instruct different heterogeneous groups of students.

3. Complementary Co-teaching - where a member of the co-teaching team does something to supplement or complement the instruction provided by the other member of the team (e.g., models note taking on a transparency, paraphrases the other co-teacher’s statements)

4. Team Teaching - where the members of the team co-teach along side one another and share responsibility for planning, teaching, and assessing the progress of all students in the class.

Check it out! Effective Co-Teaching Strategies

Changing Roles of School Librarians.

Lo, P. & Chiu, D. K. W. (2015). Enhanced and changing roles of school librarians under the digital age. New Library World, 116(11/12), 696-710. DOI: 10.1108/NLW-05-2015-0037

Lo and Chiu conducted research that explored the changing roles of school librarians under the digital age. Their research methods included qualitative analysis of interviews within three secondary schools that were conducted on three separate occasions. These face-to-face interviews were of importance to this study because it allowed for unexpected responses and discourses to emerge. To clarify answers, the researcher initiated follow up questions to verify immediately their responses against the researchers’ understanding. This study concludes by offering advice for becoming a successful school librarian under the digital age. Findings indicated that interdisciplinary instruction across the school communities was an important aspect of the librarians’ success.

Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting, and Learning

Andrighetto, Kourtney

Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning. Educational Psychologist, 26(3/4), 369.

CA, ET- Project-based learning

Summary

Educational theories, curriculum development, and assessment are shifting from teacher centered to student centered, project-based learning instruction. Project-based learning has gained much attention in the field of education due to self- directed learning methodologies and opportunities for students to engage in problem-solving and evaluation. This article provides an overview of project-based learning theories and how it contributes to learner motivation and relevance in the 21st-century. The authors note that in order for project-based learning to be successful, the selected topics must be high-interest and valuable to learners. In addition, project-based units must be structured to allow students opportunities for activity, creativity, and interaction with technology. When students are moving, doing, and collaborating, high-yield learning will take place.

Evaluation

This source provides an in-depth explanation of project-based learning theories and how technology integration may boost student learning. For teacher librarians, the discoveries in this article highlight opportunities for co-teaching and unit planning with classroom teachers across content areas.

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.

Implementing Learning Commons

By: Amy Bush

Implementing Learning Commons

Kolod, L. & Ungar, B. (2016). A collaborative journey: The learning commons. Teacher Librarian. 43(4).

This was a very interesting article about how a school library went through reconstruction to become a learning commons. Kolod and Ungar discuss the process that the school went through including; grants, planning, physical transformation and curricular change. This article also addresses the importance of co-teaching and how it is an intricate piece of this school’s learning commons. I highly suggest reading this article because comprehensive and concise. 

Co-teaching defined

Matthew Hill

CO

Friend, M. (2007).  Co-teaching defined.  Website.  Co-teaching Connection.  Retrieved Oct. 19, 2016, from http://www.marilynfriend.com/basics.htm.

Summary: 

In this article, Marilyn Friend, one of the foremost proponents, practitioners, and scholars of K-12 special education co-teaching, gives a very brief description of the fundamental elements of co-teaching.

Evaluation:

I liked this very short page because of the simplicity and clarity of its descriptions of what co-teaching really is, something that up to the moment I read it was not very clear to me.  It makes explicit the most common and appropriate setting for co-teaching (inclusion classes in K-12) and makes this statement regarding a fundamental "rule" for co-teaching: "Two or more professionals with equivalent licensure and employment status are the participants in co-teaching.  Co-teaching is based on parity.  When paraprofessionals or other adults assist in classrooms, the contribution is valuable, but it is appropriately considered support rather than co-teaching."  From my perspective as a librarian in higher education, it says to me that co-teaching is not appropriate at the university level unless the librarian has an equivalent degree of education with the co-teaching professor, something that does not always occur.  Furthermore, even if there is an equivalent educational level, the greater experience of the non-librarian in teaching and the potential for a lack of subject knowledge on the part of the librarian make it a shaky proposal at best at the university level, and something that should be occasional, exceptional, rather than the rule.

The co-teaching professorship: Power and expertise in the co-taught higher education classroom

Matthew Hill

CO

Ferguson, J. & Wilson, J. C. (2013).  The co-teaching professorship: Power and expertise in the co-taught higher education classroom.  Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly, 5(1), pp. 52-68.  Retrieved Oct. 19, 2016, from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ942564.pdf.

Summary:
In this article, Ferguson and Wilson discuss their experience co-teaching "an undergraduate reading methods course" for pre-service teachers.  They describe their experience organizing, planning, and carrying out the course, and address some of the two big issues that people in co-teaching experiences often encounter, id est, the fear of losing control or power over the class, or losing ownership; and the fear of looking bad in light of the expertise and experience of the other teacher.  They describe their methodology and experiences in detail and are very self-reflective about the whole process.  They came away with a very positive experience of co-teaching at the university level.

Evaluation:
I chose this article because it is one of the very, very few articles that discussed co-teaching at the university level.  In reality it has many things in common with other articles that describe methods and case studies of co-teaching, including the need to learn to work very closely with the co-teacher, the absolute necessity of extensive planning beforehand, and the initial discomfort.  However, in my opinion it suffers from the same issue as all the other things I viewed or read regarding co-teaching in higher education: it was aimed exclusively at pre-service teachers, aka, student teachers.  I never once came across an article that discussed co-teaching in subject areas where the purpose was to communicate content rather than teaching to teach.  Without exception, the only other context I found for articles on co-teaching was K-12 inclusion classes, that is to say, where special needs students were integrated into general education classes.  So while Ferguson's and Wilson's experience was indeed unique in that it finally talked about co-teaching in higher education, it still does not address the issue of co-teaching content to university students outside of the contexts described earlier.  This is a serious gap and should be addressed if co-teaching is to gain any traction at all beyond pre-service teaching, and this does not even take into account the difficulties inherent in co-teaching with librarians, who may or may not have the same level of education or classroom experience as a professor.

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.

Creating Hybrid Spaces for Exploration

Subramaniam, M. M., Ahn, J., Fleischmann, K. R., & Druin, A. (2012) Reimagining the role of school libraries in STEM education: Creating hybrid spaces for exploration. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. 82(2) pp. 161-182.

Summary: This article examines the role of school libraries in STEM education from a sociocultural approach. The article stresses the need for school libraries to create hybrid spaces for STEM education and to maximize the roles school librarians have in that education. The authors propose that teachers and librarians take on an active role in STEM education through advising, collaboration, and technology. The authors further propose that librarians are in a unique position to create an environment for active participation for STEM activities which will further aid students in creating a STEM identity.

Evaluation: Though focused on STEM education, the takeaways from this article really stress basic elements of teacher-librarianship and library space. They stress libraries being active learning commons, collaboration with teachers and librarians advising students on resources and technology to provide transformative experiences for learning. 

Making the Classroom-library Connection

Moreillon, J. (2016). Making the classroom-library connection. Teacher Librarian 43(3). p 8-18.

Summary: This article describes the author’s experience with providing a workshop to pre-service teachers about collaboration and co-teaching with a teacher-librarian. The workshop was co-taught and featured small and whole-group sessions where preservice teachers were exposed to areas of teacher-librarian expertise such as copyright and fair use and a co-planning demonstration.  The author found that the majority of preservice teachers saw the benefit of collaboration with a teacher librarian and that efforts by teacher-librarians to reach out to these teachers would generally be well-received.

Evaluation: This article stresses an important element about co-teaching that is rarely addressed in the literature: teacher instruction. While librarians are taught about collaboration and co-teaching as fundamental to their careers, preservice teachers are not getting this exposure in their education. The author suggests that teacher-librarians reach out to teachers for co-planning, and that engaging new teachers in collaboration early can set the stage for more co-teaching. The author also suggests that this workshop could be given to education students and foster the idea of collaboration and co-teaching before teachers enter the school system.  

Are School Librarians Part of Your PBL Dream Team?

Debbie Gibbons

IL

Boss, S. (2013, October 28). Are school librarians part of your PBL dream team?. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-librarians-part-pbl-team-dream-suzie-boss

Summary:

The school librarian has an understanding of information literacy and digital citizenship, and also knows about students’ outside interests through independent reading choices. This combined knowledge makes them a key collaborator in all stages of project-based learning (PBL). In the planning stage, the school librarian can offer the classroom teacher specific feedback on project plans and offer literature connections and digital media resources. Mini lessons on smarter searching and critical thinking prompts to consider accuracy and reliability of sources will help guide student research. Access to Skype or Google Hangout can connect students with experts. The library or learning commons will be a laboratory for connected learning that encourages teamwork and creativity. And at the culmination of a project, the library can be a place to display student work.

Review:

This article was written for the classroom teacher, suggesting ways they could seek support from their school librarian. But as a media center teacher, I found the article an informative list of things I could do to foster project-based learning. It is sometimes difficult to find time to collaborate, but this article inspires me to offer support to the teachers by integrating computer lab and library curriculum with the classroom content.

Teacher Librarian and Teachers Co-teaching on an Inquiry Cycle

Swenson, L. (2015). Extraordinary Deeds. Teacher Librarian, 42(5), p28-31.

ET, CO

This article offers a practical view of co-teaching from a teacher librarian in Santiago, Chile who sees eight classes a day in her library for mini-lessons and book check-out.  The author describes how she co-teaches, what basic theory is embedded in her practice, what co-teaching models she uses, then lists and describes the lessons she teaches, and finally reflects, evaluates, and offers many general and some specific insights as to her process she underwent, and what could have been and what is different as one co-teaches in varying situations.

Swenson subscribes to Loertscher’s and premises, Beninghof’s co-teaching models, and Eisenberg Big 6 model.  Lessons happen over time as an inquiry, constructed with classroom teachers, and embed language, library, information-seeking and acquisition skills, peer interaction, reflection and evaluation.  Throughout the article, research quotes are provided from librarians, other specialists and teachers, administrators with concerns and comments/evaluations.  Communication with teachers happens in quick informal meetings and by email, and lessons are listed on a communal website that parents can see.  As the article is short, focused, and also includes graphics that could be used for lessons, this article is a useful presentation/outline of co-teaching and collaboration.

posted by Gabrielle Thormann

When Reading and Coteaching Mix

Maricar Laudato

CO-Collaboration Strategies

Conklin, K. P. (2012). Making the case for coteaching—the evidence-based way. Knowledge Quest 40(4), 46-49.

Summary:
In this article, Kerry Pierce Conklin discusses how coteaching practices are vital to improving reading comprehension for students of all ages. She argues that when you mix the expertise of a content professional (the teacher) with the information literacy professional (the librarian), significant improvements in the student learning process take place. Conklin provides 3 different types of what she considers coteaching: "one teaching/one supporting," "parallel teaching," and "team teaching." The "one teaching/one supporting" is when one person teaches and the other person walks around to help answer any questions on the content. "Parallel teaching" is when the teacher and librarian each teach half of the students at the same time. "Team teaching" is when both the librarian and teacher share teaching responsibilities and work together throughout sections of the lesson. Conklin then goes on to mention findings that involve teachers recounting positive outcomes as a result of coteaching. For example, these teachers felt that their students all used high quality websites and showed an ability to draw conclusions as a result of critical thinking.

Evaluation:
I felt that this article fell a bit short of making the case for coteaching across all academic disciplines. I wanted to feel a strong conviction after reading the article that a solid argument had been made for why school librarians should be in high demand, but I didn't feel that. I do believe that Conklin's article, however, makes an excellent case for why teachers should work with her to boost the level of reading comprehension for all students. I was completely convinced that Conklin's strategy for improving reading comprehension through coteaching could provide the basis for her eventual tenure should she go that academic route. Where the article falls short is that Conklin goes straight to the outcomes of coteaching, the sound bites that PR executives like to pepper reports with, yet does not really delve into the intricacies of why or how coteaching works.

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). 

Repackaging Research: Rigor and Relevance for 21st-Century Learners

Nadine Loza
Jaeger, P. (2014). Repackaging Research: rigor and relevance for 21^st-century learners. School Library Monthly (1)31 pp. 5-7.

Summary: Jaeger begins her article with a quote from Zora Neale Hurston, “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poling and prying with a purpose.”  Jaeger is Coordinator of Libraries in Washington state.  Her article calls upon teacher librarians to take the wise words of Hurston to heart.  She advocates that teacher librarians take the lead at their school to “just say no” to research packets that do not require deep, rigorous thinking.  Jaeger tells her librarians and classroom teachers, “if your assignment is answerable on Google, it is void of higher-lever learning”.  To prove her point, she discusses key standards in the Common Core that compels teachers to create research projects that provide students with rigorous questioning and deeper learning.

Evaluation: Jaeger call to teacher librarians is valid and necessary.  Both teachers and teacher librarians should turn to the Common Core standards to revise their lessons.  The new standards call on teachers to create lesson that fully engage students in their learning.  Today’s students are rooted in technology and social media.  Educators must adapt to what students know.  The Common Core standards are a good starting place to help educators understand what will be required for our students to be college and career ready.