Section 20: Collaboration Questions

Where should positive teacher/librarian collaboration begin? Should it begin during student teaching? Should it begin at the beginning of a teacher’s career?

Where do we start [with classroom-library collaboration]?

Which teachers should we target first in order to experiment with the collaborative teaching process?

Also we still wonder what exactly the librarian’s collaborative part would be, what the information literacy skills are, and hope to see more examples of the process at work. Early on, we wondered if the technology collaborations might be what the IT specialist would do.

How can librarians effectively collect data on the results of their collaborative work?

Is collaboration really improving this lesson?

What is the best method for requesting evaluation from my colleagues and audiences?

How can teachers find the time needed to collaborate effectively with a librarian who is in charge of more than one school library? Is collaboration even possible in such a case?

How do we get our school principal to support and buy into our efforts to plan and co-teach with classroom teachers?

How should a librarian go about letting a school principal know about the benefits of collaboration?

Why would a principal not be in favor of teacher collaboration?

Considering this aspect of the teacher librarian [global perspective], it makes one wonder how many ways administrators could utilize this perspective to their advantage.

How do school librarians let administrators at the district’s board of education know how important it is to have all district libraries adequately staffed to allow for librarians to effectively collaborate with classroom teachers?

Should a principal ask a new teacher-librarian in an interview about collaboration? Would this change the potential for successful classroom-library collaboration?

What could a librarian or teacher do to change the opinion of a school principal who does not allow teachers and librarians to have planning time for collaboration?

How will the staff react to having the library “closed” if regularly away in a classroom? Could an unfortunate result be negative feelings toward the partnerships?

That seems almost impossible, yet just the word [collaboration] can cause many a veteran teacher to cringe in fear. Is it the fear of the unknown or of something new and different?

How could anyone whose true objective is student success not advocate these partnerships?

How can we, as librarians, encourage teachers to set aside personal feelings and work together for the benefit of our students?