Collaboration & Coteaching

This section gave me the most insight into the library profession. I discovered there can be a coteaching relationship with a school librarian and a classroom teacher. I firmly believe in coteaching, where two adults use their skills and expertise to parallel teach. The readings reminded me of my time coteaching in a kindergarten class and planning with my teacher colleagues. We would plan and collaborate lesson objectives, then we would teach together in one room. I never imagined this could be a role of a school librarian, and I am excited to see this as the definition of what a teacher librarian does in practice. 

Coteaching is detailed as a positive learning experience for the students and the readings further stated how coteaching can benefit students academically as well. Additionally, a team of coteachers can work together to teach a unit including support staff, site administration and other school staff supporting the coteaching team. Using the teacher librarian, classroom teacher, specialists and school administration as a team of teachers creates an optimal learning environment for students and builds positive school culture. This direction has to be purposeful, directed and driven by the school leadership and the district. 

I discovered how public libraries and public schools collaborate with one another. I wanted to research this idea of collaboration because there are very few examples of elementary school teacher librarians in California. In addition, there are few teacher librarians in schools with high needs. I was hoping to find creative solutions to this discrepancy as this is an equity issue that I believe is a disservice to many students. After reading about the positive repercussions about coteaching and teacher librarians involvement and the increase in academic achievement through coteaching, having more teacher librarians seems like a timely solution to current issues schools are facing with academic achievement and fulfilling social emotional needs for students. Having a certificated teacher librarian is not a reality for all students and all schools in California, and this is a social justice issue.

I discovered that California is ranked close to the bottom of school funding for libraries in the nation. There are positions in California for high school librarians, but usually elementary schools have library clerks staffing and running the school library. In 2021 - 2022, there were 621 school librarians in California. I was shocked by this low data point. In 2020, there were 94 new credentialed teacher librarians. The question I am still pondering in relation to this topic is: are there not enough credentialed teacher librarians or are there not enough positions for the teacher librarians to be placed into? 

I found some examples of collaboration with schools and public libraries in order to help supply resources for schools that are in low income, remote, or rural areas and communities. The toolkit provided by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) provides examples of how schools and libraries can collaborate for programming. Collaboration can take many shapes and range from easy to more in depth. Some examples of collaboration were: sharing resources, sharing online book catalogs such as Overdrive, field trips to the library, tabling at events at school, and holding book bingo events. 

My readings also highlighted the many difficulties that are faced when public libraries and schools collaborate. Kammer’s article highlighted the struggles that school librarians and librarians may face for effective collaboration. Public librarians may have more flexibility with their schedule than a school librarian. It was also noted that communication could be a challenge. Some teachers did not want to collaborate with public librarians and some public librarians felt it was difficult to communicate with schools. The barriers become evident in practice. Some examples of struggles with aligning the needs of the school with the needs of the public library were: having adequate staffing, budget constraints, open communication and ongoing communication, the physical overlap of boundaries, lack of time, and how to start the process.

The ideal relationship would be for the public library to support students by providing resources to schools that may be limited in resources and materials. This could help children gain access to books and give them unlimited pleasure reading and support exploration of multiliteracies.

There are many students who lack books at home, with a lack of access to purchase and visit bookstores and do not have a library within their neighborhood. Working on building more school and library collaborative infrastructure could help alleviate the "book desert." I hope to continue to research and discover more current and creative examples of collaboration with elementary schools and public libraries. The research states how beneficial collaboration and coteaching with teacher librarians benefits student performance. Why then do struggling high needs schools continue to not get certified teacher librarians to support them?