Collaboration is a big word in the school library world. It relates to collaborating with colleagues, collaborating with teachers, and encouraging students to collaborate. A lot of what the school library and school librarian brings to the table is collaboration. Taking an okay assignment or project and taking it to the next level. The school librarian that is able to offer innovative ideas for topics in the curriculum, co teach, and is able to effectively collaborate; is a true asset to the school.

 

     During my coursework at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, I was able to collaborate with a wide range of colleagues from classmates, to makers in residence and teachers in my school. LIS 654 offered all three of these collaborations. In the maker space lesson, I collaborated with other students in my class to create a maker space unit on the human body systems. Each member of the team chose on body system to create a lesson on. I chose the respiratory system. During this project, we met with a maker in residence at the UNCG maker space to discuss ways to incorporate the latest maker technology into the lessons. We also had to do a collaborative lesson plan, in which I collaborated with a fifth-grade teacher at my school. I sat down with the teacher to discuss the needs of the curriculum and how we could integrate our new green room technology into the weather unit. THen she taught the lessons on weather and I taught the lesson on green screen and we created a weather forecast for maps of the United States of America.

 

     In LIS 610 I collaborated with other school library students to build a collection and create a relationship-building opportunity for the community we were focusing on. I also collaborated with a classmate to create a nonfiction resource for the 400’s section of a library. All of these collaborations have their highlights and their kinks to work out. The great thing about collaborations is that they are always worth it in the end.

 

     During my LIS603 practicum, I also had to create a collaborative learning experience. During this lesson, I am working with fourth grade teachers to have the students research a famous North Carolinian and create a biographical poem about the person. The poems will then be collected and sent to a student publishing company called Studentreasures. A copy of the published book will be sent back to the classroom teacher and parents will have the opportunity to purchase the books if they would like. The teachers are relying on my to allow time for research and the collection of the completed poems, I am also responsible for contact with the publishing company.

 

     During my LIS 6093 practicum, I have also collaborated with the enhancement team to allow all of the students in every grade level to experience an author Skype session. The students love meeting authors and hearing about how they come up with their ideas, as well as the writing process. They also really love asking the author questions about their favorite things. I feel like it is important for the students to know that authors are real people just like them. My team has been very supportive of the collaboration and are always willing to help.

 

     I feel like the goal of a school library is always student success. If the staff in the building is working together to ensure they have what they need then it’s been a successful collaboration. It is also important to teach the students how to work collaboratively and what better way than to lead by example?