Supporting Teachers. How Can We Help?

     We all know our roles as Teacher-Librarian's have shifted dramatically over the last decade. As the importance of multiple literacies for our students becomes increasingly more significant, teachers themselves struggle to understand and incorporate the digitization of learning into their practice. Professional development workshops are available for those who specifically seek them out, but having a strong leader and user of technology and web 2.0 tools at a school based level is what will really help nurture a 21st century learning approach.
      As mentioned in previous posts this is a niche that can be filled by Teacher Librarians and ensure our positions are relevant and fundamental to our schools. I've tried a few things with my staff to help support their ICT goals, but have seen many more that I look forward to implementing in the future.

1. Lunch and Learns - I find as a staff we're often in all parts of the city on Pro D days, are constantly short on time during staff meetings and get caught up with prep and marking after school hours. I've discovered that lunch is often a great time for me to communicate with my colleagues about Library programs, new resources, or sometimes specifically new online tools. I'll invite teachers to eat their lunch in the library, show them a few new things and have some brief discussion.

 

 Photo courtesy of www.smithfreed.com

2. Supporting Pro D Topics -  I sometimes find Pro D tricky because on one hand I like to personalize my own development and bring ideas back to my staff that they wouldn't get otherwise. On the other hand, I find supporting what they're learning in THEIR Pro D is often easier when in attendance. Either way, it's important to assist our colleagues in their goals and help them find the resources to implement improvements to their practice. Often separate goals can compliment each other as well. For example my desire to utilize the digital creation of graphic novels in connection with a colleagues inquiry goals have made for an incredible collaborative unit!

3. Collaborative Days - In our district we're lucky enough that each school is given an allotment of collaborative days. As a school of 500 students we were given 18. These days are for teachers with a goal or program in mind to have the time to collaborate with each other to achieve it. It's a great opportunity for the TL to work together with colleagues, identify goals and correlate resources, programs, apps and activities that will help realize those objectives.

4. Webinars - This is something I have not done, but would like to do in the future. While doing research for this inquiry post I came across edtechteacher.org which seemed to have some great free webinars and other tools for supporting teachers with incorporating ICT into their practice. I can envision planning a webinar workshop where interested staff could participate together in the library and discuss how to implement ideas at a school or classroom level. Also on their website they have featured examples of innovative projects, for example this inquiry non-fiction project using ipads and the Explain Everything app.

5. Wiki's - I've seen several other Teacher Librarians use Staff Wiki's for numerous things and have always wondered how best to utilize one (please let me know if you have a successful one!). Whether it just be for a sharing of ideas, curating of resources or general communication I'd be very interested in implementing one for my school.

Lastly I think being open to the needs of your staff is most important. Whether it's ipads, social networking or presentation tools, listening to what your colleagues are doing or wanting to do and being responsive and an accessory to those needs is how we can best address broad school based success!