Friday, July 21, 2006

Teacher and Teacher-Librarian Cooperation

Hey, teachers...!
Cooperation takes time.
Not cooperating takes more time.

If you have access to EBSCOHost, search for this article: Teachers and Librarians: Collaborative Relationships. ERIC Digest., By: Russell, Shayne, ERICRIE0, 20000801Database: ERIC

Now, since ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and disseminated, I'll put some key points here:

  1. "Assignments developed in partnership between teachers and library media specialists are known to be more 'authentic'-exhibiting a higher degree of meaning and significance" (Gross & Kientz, 1999).
  2. "...test scores increase as school librarians spend more time collaborating with and providing training to teachers, providing input into curricula, and managing information technology for the school" (Manzo, 2000).
  3. Administrative Factors: "The greatest amount of collaboration occurs when the media specialist has a flexible schedule and team planning is encouraged by the principal" (Tallman & van Deusen, 1994).
  4. Interpersonal Factors: "It is up to the library media specialist to take steps to change this by serving on curriculum committees, attending planning meetings, and sharing ideas for integrating the media center into the curriculum" (Bishop & Larimer, 1999).

Wouldn't it be sweet if we could do something about changing the statement in #4 by including teacher/librarian collaboration in teacher training as well as school librarian training?

Thursday, July 20, 2006

How the Teacher-Librarian Supports Teachers

As soon as Audrey Church's article, "Catch Them (Preservice Teachers) While You Can!" gets posted to the Teacher-Librarian Magazine Web site (Vol. 33, no. 4), you should read it! I modified her suggestions to fit my school and E-mailed a "How I Support Teachers" letter to our school's new Supervisor of Curriculum.