Collaboration/ Instructional Design

• Childhood and nature : design principles for educators by David Sobel (Stenhouse, 2008, 168p. $_____, ISBN: 9781571107411)

  In a post-NCLB world, educators and parents will be looking for alternatives. We thought we should bring this curricular focus to your attention as one alternative.  Based around nature mysticism, Sobel proposes a curriculum that centers itself in a union with nature in an effort to lessen man’s footprint. While the entire perspective may be a bit much for most, there are enough interesting ideas here for nature study so that the volume is worth examination.

   

• REFRAMING TEACHER LEADERSHIP TO IMPROVE YOUR SCHOOL by Douglas B. Reeves (ASCD, 2008, 204p. ISBN: 978 1416606661) In his latest book, Reeves places action research at the center of school improvement. He posits that teachers become leaders when they are testing ideas from research in their classrooms and reporting the results on Data Walls or science-fair type expositions. The key to school improvement, then, is based on evidence that our practices are effective based on increased learning.  This idea follows the ideas of Reeves in his previous book The Learning Leader (ASCD, 2006) where he categorized the successful teacher is one who succeeds and knows why. We could not agree more and recommend that the Experimental Learning Center of the Learning Commons (the library media center) be the center of such research activity that informs the faculty as a whole. When there is an atmosphere of collaboration in the achievement of excellence because everyone expects that there is a place in the school where experimentation is the central focus, then the likelihood that a positive attitude toward continuous school improvement is likely to develop and sustained across years and across faculty turnover or student demographic evolution. If the action research combines both the classroom teacher and one or more specialists such as the teacher librarian, then the focus of school improvement turns to ascertaining the impact of collaboration among the faculty. Such  a focus would go a long way in promoting the idea that everyone has a stake in school improvement rather than just isolated teachers in closed classrooms. For example, the theme of the school year through its action research could be on the impact of actual collaborative teaching and learning resulting in a data wall exhibition for the school board, parent groups, the news media, presentations at professional conventions, and to any other interested audience. What is leaned as a group becomes part of the repertoire of teaching strategies for the school. We named Reeves previous book a winner. And, while this one is a bit tougher read, its central message is well worth considering.  Highly recommended.

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• Instruction for All Students; 2nd edition, by Paula Rutherford (Just Ask Publications, 2008, 320 pp., $34.95, ISBN: 9780977779688)

  Need a bluffer’s bible? A one-page summary of several hundred major educational ideas and strategies? Well, here is your source. The author summarizes the central ideas and provides one or more publications to pursue the idea further. Is the coverage sufficient to understand and immediately practice? No. But it does offer a central kernel of an idea. The ideas are grouped in sections: In the news and influencing our thinking, Lesson & unit design, Presentation Modes, Active learning, Assignments, Assessment, Differentiation, Thinking skills, The learning environment, and, Collaboration. The one-page ideas include 21st Century Skills, Self-Assessment, Graphic Organizers, Task Analysis, Job-Embedded Learning, Technology Integration and a host of other ideas. So, why acquire this book? Simply to define a topic in educational jargon and pursue it. One can’t become well acquainted here, but it is a start. So, if you want to cram for a professional learning community discussion, here is a brief summary. Of course, to use the one page as “all I know about a concept” is not very wise, but at least it provides a beginning for further investigation. And, that is why we think you will find some interesting quick reading here. The book comes with a CD of the pages that can be used as handouts.  Recommended.

• A guide to co-teaching : practical tips for facilitating student learning, 2nd edition, by Richard A. Villa, Jacqueline S. Thousand, and Ann I. Nevin (Corwin Press, 2008, 213 pp. $_____, ISBN: 9781412960588)

  If you can get on Richard Villas calendar, you can probably get on anyone’s. This popular speaker with his two co-authors come from the field of special education, but they introduce the concept of co-teaching to the wider audience of teachers in this book. In their definition of co-teaching (that teacher librarians code collaboration), the authors say: “ Co-teaching can be likened to a marriage. Partners must establish trust, develop and work on communication, share the chores, celebrate, work together creatively to overcome the inevitable challenges and problems, and anticipate conflict and handle it in a constructive way.” They cite the benefits as follows:

  •    Two heads are better than one

  •    Opportunities to use research-based interventions

  •    Increased capacity to problem solve and individualize learning

  •    Empowerment of co-teaching partners

  •    Teacher-to-student ratio is increased leading to better teaching and learning conditions

  •    A greater sense of community is fostered in the classroom (and we would add, in the school)

  •    Co-teachers report professional growth, professional support, and enhanced motivation

  •    Increased job satisfaction

  They back up their clams with a few research studies reported in several special education research journals.  As with the teacher librarian literature, they see that there are various levels of co-teaching from cooperation through actual co-teaching where both partners are on the stage together. Thus we have specialists who are working with teachers who have special education students integrated into their classroom and they are trying to figure out how a specialist and a teacher can make a difference larger than they could make separately. That is why this book is essential reading for teacher librarians. How do others propose getting into the classroom? What are their techniques? How to they actually make a difference. Here is a work to compare their techniques with the teacher librarian set of strategies developed over the years. No, we are not in this picture, but we could be. It is a challenge all specialists face. Perhaps the most effective approach is to gang up together and do a frontal assault on the fortress. Highly recommended.

• Teamwork : setting the standard for collaborative teaching, grades 5-9 by Monique D. Wild,  Amanda S Mayeaux, and Kathryn P. Edmonds (Stenhouse, 2008, 176 pp., $_____, ISBN: 9781571107114)

  What does collaboration really look like, feel like, and how does it really work?  Three middle school teachers, who as a team, won the Disney Teacher of the Year Award, describe the formation of a dynamic teaching team that is able to make a major difference in their school. How does a team get beyond the business of the day, the barriers, and the mundane to really work together on the improvement of teaching and learning? This book is worth the read to ascertain how this particular team succeeds and their recommendations for the rest of us. No longer in the school together, I wondered how much involvement other specialists had in their success, because they really don’t mention the impact of either the library or the teacher librarian. Checking with their teacher librarian, I find that there is a bit of collaboration going on. One wishes there were more – more opportunities for all the specialists in the school to realize that even the best teacher teams can improve with the ideas from others. This book is worth reading because so many strategies discussed will work elsewhere with local adaptations.  Highly recommended.

• Making standards useful in the classroom by Robert J. Marzano (ASCD, 2008, 294p. $_____, ISBN: 9781416606482)

  Of the hundreds of speakers every year at the ASCD national convention, few draw bigger crowds than Robert Marzano. Known for his What Works series of books that spotlight research-supported practices for teaching, learning, and schooling in general, Marzano’s extended view of education backed by a long career of experiences with top thinkers, makes him a major attraction. This year, he spotlighted his new book and its full first printing was sold out in a matter of hours. Making Standards Useful in the Classroom has some major practical suggestions. As Marzano traces the standards movement in the U.S., he notes the bloated curriculum suggests that it would take at least 22 years to deliver if it were all covered the way that it is laid out in the various standards documents. This is because the mathematicians tend to think that their subject is the most important one in the curriculum and so they want it all covered. This can be said of all curricular areas including the concerns of teacher librarians. His solution? Reduce the number of topics for a school year to a maximum of fifteen so that the current rush to cover would be replaced by more in depth studies. We could not agree more. The knowledge of the world is expanding rapidly and if we continue to try to cover everything, we are all doomed to failure.  The second thing Marzano does is to recommend a standardized rubric for measurement across the various content areas – a scale upon which all teachers could agree and learners could expect. His scale goes from zero to four with half-increments such as 2.5 or 3.5. The scale is appealing because at 3.0, a student has mastered the standard and gets the A. If the student scores above 3.5, that student has pushed into the excellence range, or what we would term the expertise to compete globally. Such a notion counters the current mediocrity of NCLB that only concentrates on students achieving the minimum at their particular grade level. These two ideas are exciting indeed, but only as far as they go. Some will argue that the power of letter grades is not covered well in his rubric scoring system because a 2.0 equals a C, a 2.5 is a B, and a 3.0 is an A – meaning that there is a very narrow range between 0-4 where normal grading practices are understood by parents and students. That one can be solved, we think, but there are two major issues missing for teacher librarians and the major ideas being pushed by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning. The first idea is “learning how to learn” (information literacy, media literacy, critical thinking, creative thinking, etc.) and the second is the explosion of information and technology. To be fair to Marzano, he does suggest rubrics for what he terms life skills including participation, work completion, behavior, and working in groups. But there is a world of learning to learn strategies that Marzano has never addressed in his interests or in his research. The same goes for the expansion of the world of information and technology. These two areas seem not to have come into Marzano’s radar screen.  This lack of understanding becomes quite amusing when he sets up rubrics for research in the language arts rubrics. By fourth grade, students who can use an encyclopedia article to extract information get an A, and excel with a 4 score if they can do detailed Internet searches. These two blind spots are major deficiencies in our opinion. If we cut the number of topics studied, then students need to build and reflect on their learning skills simultaneously so that they begin to understand that they know and can do a great deal about some topics but also have the power to learn and master anything they wish to learn. They are smart and they know how to learn. It is a powerful two-pronged thrust into global excellence. Thus, to teacher librarians, this book is half the story and thus a challenge to its author to expand his vision into the real world of 21st century information and technology systems. It is a challenge that many educators wish to ignore because they feel pressured to cover just what is in the textbook. So, consider carefully the Marzano proposals in this book. Teachers will surely have opinions about his recommendations. And, perhaps that is the sign of an engaging book. Is there such a thing as a half recommendation for a book? We will rate this one on Marzano’s own rubric as being 1.5: “Partial knowledge of the simpler details and processes but major errors or omissions regarding the more complex issues and processes.”

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• Deeper learning : 7 powerful strategies for in-depth and longer-lasting learning by Eric Jensen and LeAnn Nickelsen (Corwin Press, 2008, 312 pp. $_____, ISBN: 9781412952033)

  Every great teacher and teacher librarian has a bag of tricks in their head that usually work or that can be modified in a moment’s notice to adapt to  learners of various types and in various situations. At first glance, our authors are headed directly there and are right on target.  They present a model that pushes students toward more than surface learning. First, they suggest  that teachers begin with the standards statements, then build knowledge of the group you are working with, developing positive student engagement strategies, activate their prior knowledge, and then they provide a plethora of strategies for activating and thinking about what they are learning ending in evaluation.  Most ideas are for engaging students in text and we liked the many worksheets that force the learner to interpret and think about what they are reading and doing. However, these authors need a good teacher librarian who would introduce them to the world of information and technology adding strategies not only for various information types but also information literacy and so what activities as the culmination of what they know and how they learned it. So, if you need text-based engagement strategies, this is a book to purchase and study. However, for a collaborative tool that pushes kids into the real world of the Internet, film, and web 2.0, I am looking for something much deeper. Not recommended.

   

• Communities that learn, lead, and last: building and sustaining educational expertise by Giselle O. Martin-Kniep (Jossey Bass, 2008, 213pp. $_____, ISBN: 9780787985134)

  We have reviewed a number of books on professional learning communities simply because they hold the best promise of change within a school and, if teacher librarians are involved, then an opportunity to interject the library directly into a serious conversation. We have particularly recommended the works of the DuFours as the most practical guide to PLCs as they are known, but this one is particularly attractive because it provides not only practical advice for creating and sustaining PLCs, but also rubrics that help groups reflect on their goals, their organization, their progress, and the results. These rubrics or reflection pieces are spread throughout the text and then are collected in the appendix for easy use. The author has a great deal of experience as president of Communities for Learning, a non-profit located in New York. The writing is clear, sensible, and with enough practical suggestions that this is a must read. For folks who have experimented with and failed at PLCs, we still recommend this as a good read. What is the mechanism in your school to engage in serious conversation about teaching and learning? What ever that mechanism, this book would provide guidance on reflection on the organization and strategies for success. Sometimes popular  ideas like PLCs are tried and fail for various reasons, but the lack of conversation is no solution to anything. Bottom line: a must purchase and a good read.

• How to coach teachers who don't think like you : using literacy strategies to coach across content areas by Bonnie M. Davis (Corwin Press, 2008, 214 pp., $_____, ISBN: 9781412949095)

  Instructional coaches, specialists within the school, and teacher librarians all have something in common as they attempt to collaborate with classroom teachers – locked doors. Davis is not thinking about teacher librarians, but writes eleven chapters that can be read/used as professional development conversations in any sequence. Her topics overlap teacher librarians concerns: moving from teaching students to coaching teachers; organizing to save stress, time, and mistakes; coaching teachers who don’t think like you; scheduling time for coaching; and, coaching teams of teachers to improve instruction. Davis assumes that a coach does not have a warehouse to tend as teacher librarians do, however, there are enough good ideas here to consider for collaborative strategies not already in the literature of teacher librarians. The idea occurs to us that if there are other specialists in the school who are having the same problem we are, then why not ban together as a professional learning community of specialists with concerned administrators and get a focused program of coaching going throughout the school that has a better chance for real change and impact on achievement. For this reason, we recommend the Davis book for ideas not only for ourselves but for other struggling professionals like ourselves.

• 75 outrageous ideas for librarians to impact student achievement : fun ideas to motivate students and inspire collaboration by Laurie Noble Thelen (Linworth Publishing, 2008, 89 pp. $_____, ISBN: 1586832328)

  Of the many definitions of the word outrageous, we suppose that our author means: highly unusual or unconventional; extravagant; or remarkable. Thus, sone approaches this thin book with high anticipation. As we read the various activities, we applied the question: “Are two heads better than one?” That is, would the combined efforts of teacher and teacher librarian be better using these activities than if either of the partners tried to do them alone? We also looked at the process of collaboration, asking: Does the information literacy goal for the lesson support the learning of the content objective? Does the assessment actually measure both the content and the information literacy skill to be taught? Does the learning activity actually match the objectives stated? Are the learning activities “outrageous?” Was there a “so what” activity at the end of the learning activity to stimulate higher-level thinking? And, finally, How likely would the activities contribute to achievement as stated? We think such questions should be emblazoned on planning sheets, posters, and into the minds and hearts of every teacher librarian. When given the great gift of collaboration, how do we actually perform? We did find a few activities here that were mildly interesting, but not enough to justify the purchase of this book. However, the purchase might be justified for a professional development session with teacher librarians at a district level. Take a copy of the book, cut it up and distribute pages to teams of teacher librarians. Using the rubric questions above, have the group critique and reinvent the activity they are to critique. Perhaps we could all gain better ideas of actually how we could contribute to teaching and learning. So, in a strange way, buy this book and then be outrageous enough to move beyond it as you test your own creativity and skill.

• Sustaining professional learning communities edied by Alan M. Blankstein, Paul D. Houston, and Robert W. Cole (Corwin Press, 2008, 203p. $_____. ISBN: 9781412949378)The editors have gathered a number of essays from prominent educators who have had a leadership role in establishing  and leading professional learning communities. A number of the essays concentrate on the sustainability of the PLC as it functions after the initial enthusiasm. Their focus is on achieving the ends the PLCs were designed to address.

• Leading professional learning communities : voices from research and practice by Shirley M. Hord and William A Sommers (Corewing Press, 2008, 103p. $_____, ISBN: 9781412944762)The authors describe professional learning communities for the novice reader: their why, how to set them up, their function, how they operate over the year, and what they should accomplish. For schools establishing or re-designing faltering PLCs, this would be a good basic work.

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