The Levels of Teacher and Teacher-Librarian Collaboration

The Levels of Teacher and Teacher-Librarian Collaboration: A graphic I adapted from Montiel-Overall’s findings.

          The ultimate role of a teacher-librarian (TL) is to help students learn and enjoy learning. They are the guardians, facilitators, and instructors of knowledge. They help students. Yet, to be most effective in helping students, they can partner with teachers to share their knowledge of resources, technology, research skills, and teaching skills, either in the library or in the classroom. They can also work with admin and teachers to develop across-curriculum planned instruction. Using Latham and Gross’s overview of Montiel-Overall’s findings, as well as her own, I have broken down four levels of teacher and teacher-librarian (TL) collaboration:

1.     Co-ordinator: The first, and most basic, form of collaboration between a TL and a teacher is the TL co-ordinating resources, activities, and events for a class. This can include hosting book fairs, doing STEM activities, sharing and displaying student work, showing where resources are and how to use them, and having time allocated for student drop-in use. The TL doesn’t necessarily even have to communicate with the teacher to provide this level of class help, which is why I encourage teacher-librarians to extend collaboration with teachers to the next levels.

2.    Resource locator: This next step actually requires at least some basic communication with teachers, either by the teacher approaching the TL to find resources (physical or digital) to either help them prepare a unit or to prepare a presentation of resources for students to use in a research project, or by the TL’s conversations with the teacher to discover whether they could help them in any way by providing resources. It is crucially important for TL’s not to assume a teacher will approach them for help, as not all teachers consider this option; TL’s will likely need to take the initiative by offering this support and may need to build trust with the teacher first; level 1 support will help build this trust.

3.    Co-instructor: This level requires even more communication with teachers, to the extent of working with them to co-develop a lesson, unit, or assignment. In this scenario, a TL’s technological and research skills are specifically utilized for goals planned, presented, and possibly even assessed by both the teacher and TL.

4.    Across-Curriculum Co-Instructor: This, the most advanced, level requires support and co-ordination with the admin (for allocated planning time and involvement) and participation with every teacher in the school. At this level, the degrees and levels of technological and research skills, planned co-instruction, and level 1 and 2 support are worked out across every grade taught at the school, and, naturally, the teachers and admin should extend this opportunity to clarify what curricular content is taught at each level for split-grade classes. TL’s may need to take the initiative in planning this with their admin. This level also requires an ethos of school-wide teacher/admin collaboration, trust, and commitment, which, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily exist in every school. At the very least, the TL can do what they can to slowly change this ethos through effective collaboration at levels 1 through 3 until the spirit of school collaboration catches on to allow this level to move forward (by leading by example).

References

Latham, Don, and Melissa Gross. “Collaborating for Success: Teachers and Librarians as Partners in Learning.” Voices From the Middle, vol. 24, no. 4, 2017, p. 64-66.

Montiel-Overall, Patricia. “Teacher and Teacher-Librarian Collaboration: Moving toward Integration.” Teacher Librarian, vol. 34, no. 2, 2006, p. 28-31.