March 26th 2010 - Collaboration – “OUR WAY... A New Way into the 21st Century”

An area for me that I have been working on is collaborating more effectively with the needs of the teaching staff. Trying to enter into a collaborative relationship to share the responsibility for collection selection is a new and novel idea to the staff at my school. As a new Teacher Librarian, and a new teacher to the school, I am finding that I don’t do things “their way”. Too often you hear the words “At our school...” or “We don’t do it like that”. Well, I seem to have put a bit of a twist onto “their way”, and have created “OUR WAY...A New Way into the 21st Century”.
I have tried to make my way around to all Key Learning Area Committee meetings, to introduce a new way of gathering resources into the Library. It has “always been the responsibility of the librarian” to gather, select and acquire resources for the school without any or little negotiation of the teaching staff. I think the staff have enjoyed being able to have their input valued in the selection of valuable resources. They have made informed decisions and are using the resources found in the collection more, as they see the importance of their input. The staff has actually been more inclined to ask for help in finding resources for classroom activities. This is a gradual process. The staff is using the library as more of an extension to their own classroom.... FINALLY!
Now to get them to become more involved on RBL! Hee, hee, hee!