AASL Standards - Collaborate

I recently had the privilege of speaking with the school librarian Amanda Youmans about how collaboration functions in her library. The AASL standards for collaboration include collaborating with teachers and students and paint a picture of a vibrant, active library space. The reality, of course, is that things do not always go as planned. I have heard many librarians talk about how they are struggling to support collaboration, so I was excited to get Amanda Youmans’ insight into her experiences in an elementary school library.

She reiterated that in order to do collaboration well the librarian needs to plan effectively with teachers and then support collaboration with students. This involves having good relationships with teachers and planning lessons and programs that coincide with the curriculum. In her library, support in reading has been the easiest way for her to co-plan with teachers. She has been able to pull books that work best for student needs and provide services in the library to support the reading curriculum. Book tastings have become one of her favorite activities in the library, and they can encourage collaboration and exploration of many different topics.

She said scheduling is the biggest challenge she currently faces that makes collaboration difficult. She is often lacking a library assistant and cannot be fully available to support collaborative activities if she also needs to be handling the circulation desk. As I have heard other librarians mention too, scheduling time to plan with teachers is difficult as elementary teachers are overwhelmingly busy during the school day. While this may be especially problematic in some schools, this is the case in any education environment. Youmans’ suggestion is to utilize technology as much as possible to connect with teachers (and even students) virtually and show them what services are available in the library. This can lead to more opportunities for curriculum-based collaboration in the library space.

One other big change that Youman made when she came to her school was shifting to a flexible schedule. While she came under a lot of scrutiny from teachers for the shift, the change has allowed her to provide more meaningful opportunities for students. Kindergarten classes still have regular scheduled library days, but other grade levels are able to come in on demand. The previous checkout time schedule was not effective, and the new system better supports when kids need books. Circulation is up, and more students are visiting the library space. Flexible scheduling is a perfect recipe for collaboration!