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.