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Standard 4.3 Comprehensive and collaborative strategic planning and assessment
Candidates collaborate with teachers and administrators to develop a library media program plan that aligns resources, services and information literacy standards with the school's goals and objectives.  Candidates use data for decision-making.

Artifacts:

• ISTC 702 SIP Presentation
• ISTC 601 Article Review
• ISTC 615 Article

• Practicum Secondary

            Several articles I read throughout the program have given insight into collaboration.  In ISTC 601, the article I read regarding collaboration was actually a study into a specific method for promoting and conducting collaboration.  The method what likened to a marketing model (AIDA:  Attention Interest Desire Action) and began with the librarians getting the attention of the teachers by promoting collaboration through flier distribution and emails to teachers explaining what the library has to offer in regards to print and non-print resources as well as technology.  The fliers did not work as well as the email and they next found that very few teachers are interested in collaborating due to lack of free time.  Those who were interested chose to collaborate through the benefits they saw in collaboration and how it would improve student achievement.

            An article in ISTC 615 discusses a way to collaborate; using a method the author calls the Motown Method.  The author connects the steps of the process to Motown artists, which is entertaining to read.  The steps are taking turns, co-plan, co-teach, and co-evaluate.  The artists are described and they are self explanatory, relying on the strengths of the collaborators to contribute their part to the collaboration.  The co-evaluation is to evaluate the teacher’s instruction rather than what the students have learned.  The points in this method seemed obvious to me, however I learned through my secondary practicum experience that not all teachers have the time to sit down and plan a lesson with each party doing exactly half the work.

            I described the SIP presentation in other standard reflections and feel it fits well in Standard 4.3 meeting a number of points within the standard.  The presentation discusses the use of data to explain how well the school is doing and the School Improvement Plan to show what goals they wish to reach.  It is explained that Natural Reader 9.0 will help improve reading through the device’s features and meets the SIP reading and technology requirements.  Students who use the technology will be assessed to see if there have been improvements in areas such as reading, grammar, spelling, etc.  The following year’s AYP scores will also be assessed to see how they are affected.

            Collaboration in my secondary placement was an interesting experience, as I have never seen so many people sign up to use the library.  Both the teachers and my mentor were too busy with teaching or in my mentor’s case, managing the library, to meet for long periods to discuss the collaboration.  Instead, collaboration was done during the period when the teacher came in to the library to sign up or through email.  My mentor would continue the collaboration through email and near the end of my placement, my mentor began using the wiki to collaborate with teachers.  I would collaborate similarly, discussing the lessons when the teachers signed up to use the facility.  In the future, I would use email to collaborate and see if I can schedule time when the teacher is free to meet maybe even discuss it briefly during lunch if they do not mind.