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Collaboration Station - 10.20.21

 Mark Twain said it best:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” (Twain, 2018)

As a novice librarian, it is most helpful to travel… to other libraries, that is.  During the time of Covid, we have been forced to remain in our little corners of the earth and may have become a bit stagnant.  I have only worked in my school librarian position under Covid conditions, so I have missed the influx of students trooping into the media center for a class; I have not yet joined a PLC meeting to hear what curriculum is being planned; I have had only two 1 on 1 conferences with teachers to plan research lessons.

Therefore, it was a treat for me to travel to a sister high school and interview an experienced librarian about collaborating with teachers to plan lessons for students. As Twain predicted, I acquired “broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things” – or at least views about what a busy and productive library looks like!  While I only interviewed Lauren, the library has two full-time media specialists.  Lauren had a great deal to add to my understanding of the Shared Foundation of Collaboration.  To remind our readers, the key commitment for collaboration is to “work effectively with others to broaden perspectives and work toward common goals” (AASL, 2018). To give me an idea of how she got teachers excited about utilizing her expertise and her media center space, she described for me her lockbox breakout lessons.  She was able to get one social studies teacher to work with her to build a lesson for students where the answers to research questions opened a locked box for prizes.The librarians gathered all the information the teacher wanted the students to know (the “common goals” idea from the Shared Foundation) and then developed clues (fact-checking with the teacher) that the students had to puzzle out to get the combination to the lock. The lessons were a huge hit.  Students worked in small groups, and the teacher and librarian circulated to give help where needed so students could be successful in solving the content mystery.  
Once the teacher grapevine was activated, numerous teachers sought out the librarians so that new lockbox lessons could be planned.  The planning sessions are vital to the success of the lesson, as the two librarians sometimes do not have the level of content knowledge needed to create the perfect clues.  Even on the non-lockbox lessons, Lauren says that the teacher-librarian team collaborates well before a lesson so the librarians can pull resources and determine the best approach to the topic under study.  
Also under the Collaborate umbrella, Lauren pointed out they strive to “[stimulate] learners to actively contribute to group discussions” (AASL, 2018).  This does tend to happen naturally in the group-work setting of a lockbox lesson, but she strives to see that happen in all her library lessons.  Once I left Lauren’s library, I was motivated by my travels and excited to build this kind of collaboration into my own practice… once Covid allows. 


American Library Association. (2018). National School Library Standards for learners, school librarians, and School Libraries.

Twain, M. (2018). The innocents abroad, or, the New Pilgrims' progress. SeaWolf Press


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