Abilock, Debbie. (2002). Ten Attributes of Collaborative Leaders. Knowledge Quest, 31(2), 8-10.
“If you believe that teachers should learn what you know, then you should learn from them. If you believe that students should love to read, then you will read voraciously. If you believe that you are essential to student learning, then you will spend more time on teaching and curriculum development than on processing and shelving books.”
In the article, Ten Attributes of Collaborative Leaders, editor Debbie Abilock compiles a list of practices that are essential to being a collaborative leader. The quote above jumped off the page at me. As a library science student, I have gathered so many suggestions on how to do my job well. We are learning about the several roles we will be filling and the complex task of getting everything done, and it does seem overwhelming to me at times. I love this quote because it reminds me that we will be much more successful in the task of collaboration if we actually spend our time on our top priorities.
If someone asked me what is most important in my personal life, I would probably respond that my faith, my family, and my friends are most important to me. However, if someone actually took a look at my day they would see that most of my time is devoted to cleaning the house, cooking, and checking Facebook. It’s easy to lose your priorities and devote all of your time to the checklist of items you need to get done.
From the discussion board posts and readings, it seems like it is very easy for the library media specialist to forget what their priorities are and get busy with the day-to-day tasks of shelving, processing materials, and keeping order in the media center. If we remember that we need to be learning from teachers, teaching students, helping with curriculum design, and staying up to date with our reading we will have no problem becoming leaders in collaboration. When we spend our time working on what is important to us, I believe the rest of our job will fall into place.
Reading Response #2
Farwell, Sybil. (1998). Successful Models for Collaborative Planning. Knowledge Quest, 26(2), 24-30.
“Both the principal and the library media specialists were enthusiastic about the Library Power program and its potential to improve library service in the school, but they all considered the lack of planning time to be the major obstacle to the total success of the project."
Sybil Farwell, an elementary media specialist in the Miami-Dade County, highlights successful media specialists who have used collaborative planning to create interactive and memorable learning experiences for the students. As she discusses a program at another school she stated the two biggest challenges; lack of time and the conflict between grade level planning and individual teacher planning. I think the solution to these problems lies in the above quote where she highlighted that “both the principal and the library media specialists were enthusiastic about the Library Power program and its potential to improve library service in the school.” This school’s program was a great example of how important it is to have the principal on your side when trying to implement collaborative planning. Only the principal can encourage and carve out time for collaborative planning to take place.
In the school highlighted, the principal spent money from the school budget to pay for substitutes to come in and allow for a two-day grade level planning session in every marking period. The principal believed in the media specialist at this school and stated, “She [the library media specialist] is part of everything. Her input is constantly asked for. You know when you do webbing? She is the one in the middle.” Nancy Larsen talked about how important it is to advocate within your school building, and this article proves her point. I took a class from Dr. Larsen last spring, and she impressed on us that the library media specialist and the principal are in a unique position in the school because they are the only two people who see all of the students. Where teachers want their students to succeed, the library media specialist and the principal are working to make sure every single student in the school succeeds. By working together, the library media specialist and the principal can help to make this happen through collaborative planning.
Farwell highlighted some of the great projects that came out of collaborative planning in her article. She talked about a media center that housed a “cosmos” created by students complete with planets, meteors, and constellations. The students even recorded facts about space for other visitors to the media center so they could share what they learned. Another school library specialist helped to highlight the Hispanic culture in the school by celebrating Hispanic Heritage month. The media specialists and the teachers created a unit on biographies and the students read several different biographies and created a “Hispanic Hall of Fame”. Successful collaboration highlighted in this article are inspirational to me as a library media center. When I am facing the difficulties of collaboration in my media center, I will remember the potential I have to create an engaging learning experience for my students.
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