Librarian Interview: AASL Standard- Collaborate
Introduction
For this interview, I spoke with Ellen Scott, the librarian at Blythewood Middle School. Our discussion focused on the shared foundation Collaborate with an emphasis on the Share and Grow domains. When choosing which competencies to focus on during our interview, I had a hard time choosing between these two and decided to incorporate a little bit of both into our discussion. Our conversation focused on her current implementation of these competencies as well as her plans for future application. These competencies focus on the student's ability to receive feedback from their peers, consider diverse perspectives, and recognize their responsibility for actively contributing to group learning. While these competencies are similar to the one I discussed with Christine Baker at Jackson Creek Elementary, I wanted to be able to compare how this concept is implemented at the elementary and middle school levels.
Interview Recap
I think most of us can agree that middle school is an interesting time in child development. I chose these competencies because I was interested in seeing how you could get middle school-age students to care about their contributions to their learning and be receptive to feedback from their peers. Ellen and I discussed that, at this time, most of the students that she sees are not very receptive to this type of feedback, and when the students do work collaboratively, they each think that their way is the right way. Regarding the social responsibility of contributing to group work, Ellen has found that no matter what, you’re going to have some students who always try their best and some who unfortunately do not care unless there is a grade associated with the outcome of the project. She said that in most cases, she finds that students participate when doing group projects, especially when they are presented to the rest of the class at the end because none of the students want to be embarrassed by being one of the few who didn’t complete it. A great example of a group project that she conducted with some of her students was when she collaborated with a classroom teacher on an aqueduct project. The students had to work in small groups to create their own aqueduct, test it for effectiveness, and then set up a display of their project in the library. The students then walked around to view the showcase of projects and provided each other with feedback. In this example, she had high levels of interest and engagement because the project was very hands-on.
Ellen claims that some of the challenges with implementing these competencies are scheduling and teacher collaboration. Since, at the middle school level, she is on a completely flexible schedule, she often has to reach out to the teachers to ask them for opportunities for collaborative work that are not capitalized on as often as she would like. These collaborations are essential in her library space as they bring the students into the library to work during times that she otherwise wouldn’t see them. This also increases student engagement and ultimately helps them care more about the work they are producing because it is associated with their classroom learning. Another challenge is managing the student's attitudes and behaviors towards listening to and responding to feedback appropriately without the situation escalating. We discussed ways that we could possibly work on implementing more opportunities for encouraging participation and providing productive peer feedback in the future. One of the ideas that we came up with was similar to a college-level group project process where each group member has to provide their peers with an evaluation. We considered implementing a variation of this at the middle school level to see if it would help students care more about their own contributions, knowing that they would be evaluated by their peers at the end, and help them learn how to provide feedback to their peers so that they can all learn from this collaborative experience in a way that is reflective, respectful, and productive.
Getting students to truly care about their learning and to get along with their peers are two major challenges throughout education as a whole, but as information specialists, we can use our knowledge and skills to develop innovative ways to try to address these issues. My biggest takeaway from this interview was our discussion about the potential of group evaluations. This is something that I would like to try in my library setting to help students learn how to evaluate themselves and their peers in a way that is respectful and relevant to their work as scholars. After completing these evaluations, I could facilitate a reflective discussion within their groups to help keep the conversation under control and ensure that the students are actually learning something about themselves and the others in their group from the feedback that is provided. I think if this is scaffolded into routine practice and is heavily guided at first, the students would be able to handle this type of evaluative process, and it will help them better understand the importance of their contributions to group learning and how to provide and receive feedback from their peers. This type of evaluation or peer feedback form could be differentiated and applied across varying grade levels. The most important thing is that time for this aspect of the collaboration and inquiry process is protected so that the students have the opportunity to develop these skills.
This experience also showed me the importance of advocating for your library in terms of working collaboratively with classroom teachers. I am used to an elementary library setting where you see every class every week during the related arts rotation. However, at the middle school level, the only time you see your students is if they come in to check out a book, participate in some sort of makerspace activity, or if your classroom teacher brings them into the library for a lesson. Unfortunately, in any flex library setting, these competencies, along with many others, do not have as many opportunities to be implemented in the library setting without buy-in from the teachers, making it more challenging for us to fully do our jobs. By promoting opportunities for classroom collaboration, developing engaging group projects, and protecting time for reflection and evaluation, I will be better equipped to help my students develop the skills associated with these competencies.
Comments
Post a Comment