Week Ten Reading

Bilyeu, Linda. (2009). Teachers and librarians collaborate in lesson study. Knowledge quest 38(2), Nov-Dec, 14-19.

I’m intrigued by the possibility of being involved in lesson study, because it is based on peer learning, it is an excellent pathway developing a sense of community and trust with your collaborators. I like the concept of shifting from “teaching as telling” to “teaching for understanding”. This is a worthy goal that can help all learners.

This is not an endeavor for the faint of heart though. The process takes a lot of time and commitment from participants to fulfill all of the Lesson study components (while strengthening the five key learning pathways as I see them fitting in):

Planning the lesson

• Increasing knowledge of subject matter and instruction through collaboration
• Developing a better understand of student needs

Teaching the lesson

• Strengthening collegial and personal learning structures
• “Posting the standard keeps the lesson focused, but equally important is reading the standard together as a class, revisiting it during the class, and finishing with it at the end. This makes the students accountable for the standard.” This tactic would make the teachers more accountable as well.

Reflection/assessment of the lesson

• Helping to develop strong motivation to improve practices

Reteach

• Connecting daily practice to long-term goals

The added bonus of developing a lesson study program can raise the visibility and importance of the media specialist as an instructional leader in the school and district. Yahoo!

Was this a lesson used in one classroom or multiple classrooms?

Bishop, K., & S. Janczak. (2005). Conducting effective staff development workshops. Library media connection. 23(7), Apr-May, 50-51.

Before endeavoring to teach a topic it is so crucial to be comfortable with the topic, its methods, computers, the Internet and other technologies. Reaching out to others to teach topics out of your comfort level is a great idea. Being a facilitator can be just as important, it’s never a good idea to pretend to be knowledgeable on a topic that you do not know much about.

Determining the topic could be achieved by modeling different topics available, e.g. survey teachers through a simple online poll to introduce them to different online methods for polling, quiz taking, etc. This can ensure that teachers are interested in the topic to be presented. If they are interested in the topic they will be motivated to take the class and apply lessons learned to classroom activity. Get teachers excited about learning, go beyond flyers and provide them with teasers of the technology to be taught and what will be the take-away of the session. Three words: “make and take”.

It is important to be as informed as possible about your intended audience; their time must be respected. This can be achieved by asking for assistance from others to make a lesson more effective. It’s hard to be everywhere for everyone. Collaborating within in a school district with other media specialists to develop media center sponsored professional development programs can do this; also modeling the value of media center program.

Anonymous evaluation of lessons taught is an extremely important component, letting you know how to improve upon the lesson or your teaching methods. Always follow-up with teachers, keep working with them. Help them to use the technology learned in their classrooms and encourage them to share their results with other teachers. That’s free advertising. Besides, there is no sense in teaching something that will not be used to help students.

Enough about refreshments already- although free pizza always seems to work at SI.

From Coatney: Staff Development: Teacher librarians as learning leaders

The first sentence of the conclusion resonated with me the most, “schools are places of growth for adults as well as children”. So true. We must continually educate ourselves, and as teacher librarians it is our responsibility to make sure we remain current with new technologies, methods and standards to keep our cohorts current through effective staff development workshops. We have a big job as learning leaders to facilitate the creation of a shared vision for student learning, to understand and apply learning theories, to be aware of current research trends, to engage students and our peers through inquiry, to promote teamwork to create learning communities and to model the behavior (at all times) that we wish others to exhibit.

We need to be the megaphone shouting down the hallways of our schools:

“Learning is not about test scores!”

“Accountability includes the actions we, the teachers, not just students!”

“There is no ‘I’ in teamwork”

Say it loud and say it proud.

I’m off to the basement nowL