Your Library at the Center of Professional Development
The Teacher-Librarian needs to be networked to educators via blogs, conferences, list-serves like LM-NET, and podcasts such as my husband's Shift our Schools in order to keep current on how to best leverage electronic and print resources for improved learning. Equipped with a good conference calendar, she attends and promotes regional as well as national and international conferences that address technology, libraries and teaching. She needs to train her library staff for the evolving needs of patrons and resources they need to use. But her role in Professional Development must reach much further to the entire faculty and learning community. If we're teaching for the Information Age, this is the Teacher-Librarian's hour!
Based on the insight she gains while observing the independent work of students and teachers who use her facility, she informally assesses needs as they evolve. This helps her in her collaborative planning role which provides "in the trenches, just in time" professional development for the faculty. These insights help her as she helps the school strategically plan for growth as a whole, and in her facility in particular. Thus she makes sure that developments serve and don't frustrate learning. Administrators can tap the skillful Teacher-Librarian for professional development as they ask her to provide teacher workshops, develop the professional collection, and coach colleagues for skills development. Busy teachers involved in graduate study have a partner in the library who will show them how to access online databases such as Ebsco for their expansive professional development journal articles. The Teacher-Librarian can help them save time by using the database's features that help build an online accessible folder of resources. They can help them learn about the tools we share with students for efficient work: Noodletools for electronic note-taking and making a Works Cited list, and Citation Engine, too. She's up-to-date on citation and copyright because her faculty need an in-house expert. The Teacher-Librarian who is involved in developing the professional collection for a school can make sure curriculum initiatives are well resourced and that the professionals in need of the materials will get them when they are brought into the collection. Our job is facilitating access. As a subscriber to ASCD's Smart Brief, the Teacher-Librarian knows which way the wind is blowing with changes in national legislation and in the boiler plates at various state departments of education. This helps her develop the professional collection and point teachers to definitive texts. She makes sure the library has the books of Marzano, McTighe, Art Costa, Fountas and Pinnell, Carol Ann Tomlinson and the rest. She's passionate about teaching and learning and she's current. |
Engaging Adult Learners
The "human touch" is so important to engaging colleagues in professional development. Teachers need to know that our work together is worth their time. My workshops and presentations to faculty and parents demonstrate the ways in which a selective and informed harnessing of laptops, internet resources and collaborative spaces (in clouds on the 'Net) encourage better engagement, thinking and work from students. They are constructed with imagery to illustrate points effectively, and with language that is learner-friendly and not “talking over heads.” (See my article on using images to evoke emotions and engage learners which appeared in Multimedia and Internet @ Schools.)
Whether I'm presenting at an international conference of Teacher-Librarians or Mandarin Teachers or addressing my own faculty, I am careful, at the beginning, to assess the level of understanding and the motivations of the audience and I adjust to the needs of the group. Above all, the presentation must be relevant and valuable to participants. With good planning, one can draw from a toolkit or resources to employ the best examples and tools to provide the connection learners will enjoy. We want them to see themselves and their curriculum in the workshop. Technology enhancements compete with other initiatives in a very busy school. Fully conscious of that, and the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, I make sure that the library's work with teachers targets multiple school initiatives at a time and always has a direct connection to the learning and curriculum outcomes being assessed by teachers in the classroom. Our faculty members are at different stages of developing comfort and ability to use new technology. I believe I serve our strugglers well by being an approachable person to whom they can turn for individualized and clear instruction at a pace they can understand. In partnership with our teachers who are excited but struggling, (or intimidated but being driven by the needs of the program) I teach or co-teach the lessons to the students that involve technology uses. I work to take folks by the hand, rather than push, drag or alienate them. And I only champion and select a high tech solution if it enhances learning. I do not want to be part of efforts that engage teacher time and energy or that risk frustration and turn-off unless it offers our students something qualitatively better than pencil/paper/scissors instruction. I believe I have a good sense of when those more hands-on and traditional methods still succeed for our range of learners with different abilities and learning styles. Generally, I'm about skilling teachers to increase their toolkits and offer their students a variety of learning experiences and choice. A number of milestone experiences have excited me about this field. They have been transformative for me, and demonstrate the powerful role that Teacher-Librarians in developing the whole school's capacity to teach in the 21st century. Those include: |