Building a Culture of Collaboration Logo and What It Means to Me

[Judi Moreillon]

The three overlapping circles in the logo for the Building a Culture of Collaboration Group represent three areas in which, I believe, teacher-librarians have golden opportunities to make an impact on teaching practices and student learning: information literacy, reading comprehension, and technology.

These three areas can (and should?) be integrated into every curriculum content area - at all grade levels. They all involve skills and strategies that teacher-librarians can (should?) bring to the table when they collaborate with classroom teacher colleagues. They involve skills and strategies that students can master and transfer to other learning environment. They are tools for lifelong learners.

In your library setting, does one or more of these three areas dominate your collaborative work? Tell us about it.

[Lisa Hunt]

Information literacy and reading comprehension dominate my collaborative efforts. Until two years ago technology was in that picture, too. Recent administrative decision have moved technology into classrooms (and out of my media center) in an attempt to get the technology more directly into student hands. I am at odds with that thinking, but it's not my decision. I have revamped my teaching and now focus more strongly on the other two pieces.

I just submitted an article about students becoming library consumers. The article describes a program I created to teach students about using the information found in any book to support their reading. Reading is much more than just words, and I talk about that a lot in my library. Illustrations support stories, and research has shown that fluent readers make their own pictures/movies in their minds as they read. There is a reason for picture books. That's also why I love and use the picture book format with all students in my Prek-6 building. I hope to move to secondary soon, and I will continue that type of teaching with older students.

Every lesson I do in the library supports reading in one way or another. I believe reading and information literacy cannot be separated. You must have both sets of skills to become an active leaner.

[Judi Moreillon]

Lisa,
I totally agree with you that infomation literacy cannot be separated from reading comprehension. Knowing when to build background knowledge is a key piece of defining the task or question. Making notes and summarizing are ways to determine main ideas. And on and on...

Are classroom teachers using the technology in their classrooms? How are they using it? Do you also integrate online resources/reading into your comprehension lessons?

Thanks for sharing.

[Mary Ann Harlan]

Information literacy dominates my collaborative work. I wish I could help teachers understand that reading comprehension is more than decoding words, and that it means something different when dealing with academic/informational texts. It is a struggle to build collaboration and often I beat my head against a wall but I keep working. More and more teachers are beginning to recognize the role I play in information literacy, and I sneak the other 2 areas into that instruction but it isn't the focus of our collaboration.

[Judi Moreillon]

Mary Ann,
Bravo for your persistence! As I am familiar with your expertise with technology tools, I am quite surprised that your classroom teacher colleagues do not utilize your teaching in this area. Do you have a strong technology teacher at your school? Is there a lack of technology tools available to students at your school - or is technology ubiquitous? I'm trying to get to the bottom of this! This just doesn't make sense to me. Can you help me?

As to the lack of understanding regarding reading comprehension, there is currently a national focus on looking at adolescent literacy; reading comprehension is a big part of that. Helping classroom teachers make the connections between comprehension and information literacy skills is a very worthy goal.

I know you will not give up!

[Jessica Hogarth]

As a student in the Instructional Technology program, I know that this will be an issue for me as a media specialist. Our teachers frequently talk about how great collaboration with ms would be, but it seems like no one knows where to start. Also, the teachers who aren't into the idea of collaboration may not understand how their students really can benefit from info skills. Almost everyone seems willing to collaborate, but it isn't happening.