Creating a Vision to Guide 21st Century Teaching and Learning

Without a definitive vision statement and mission schools lack a guide for decision making. How do we know if what we are doing is working if we don't first have a statement of purpose against which to measure the outcome of our efforts? The library is a vital component to the development of a school’s vision because the library faculty are:

• Co-teachers with the whole faculty
• Curriculum development partners
• Professional development facilitators
• Resource curators
• Information literacy instructors

As more and more schools invest in and adopt 1:1 or BYOD initiatives, a rationale for those programs -- something more than “so we can teach with technology” -- is essential to progressive pedagogy and transformative teaching and learning. Of her own epiphany regarding the meaningful, purposeful integration of technology into learning opportunities, Jennie Magiera said, “I would have to be willing to depart from what I had always done or always taught. I needed to create a blueprint for a fresh classroom design with the power of my new tools in mind. By setting aside my preconceived notions of how my classroom ‘should’ look, sound, and feel, I was able to transform my practice from the ground up.” There are educators like Magiera reinventing themselves as part of maintaining the relevance of their pedagogy in a dynamic technological world. But this world requires whole schools, whole systems, to undertake this renaissance not as random individuals but as systems. Most teachers can explain their rationale for why they do what they do. Systems need a purpose (which is much more than a rationale), and educators need support and continual learning opportunities to evolve in pursuit of that purpose.

When the leaders of a technology implementation initiative are asked to evaluate the effectiveness of a new device roll-out, what should be the instrument of measure? Well, I think, the vision statement. The investment of time, finances, and human power in the tech initiative should have been made as a step toward fulfilling the mission, achieving the vision. So the vision is the measure of how well the initiative is going.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but don't save the examination for the deathbed. We want students to be reflective learners and we, too, must be reflective practitioners. And schools and districts must be reflective planners. Act with purpose: common, examined purpose in order to transform classrooms into the constantly evolving learning spaces 21st Century students (and teachers) need.

Magiera, Jennie. Courageous Edventures: Navigating Obstacles to Discover Classroom Innovation. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin, 2016.

Inquiry Update: Refining the Questions and Keywords

In my last post I wrote about our preparation for using the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) designed by the Right Question Institute to inspire and focus high school juniors for writing their research papers. They are writing this paper at the conclusion of reading The Great Gatsby; the unit essential question is: how does socioeconomic status affect opportunity in modern America? When I wrote my last post, we were collecting and reviewing possible artifacts to serve as a Q-focus for the classes. Ultimately, we chose to provide several and allow the students to choose which focus to use and with which students to work. Their Q-focus options were:

• the strategic school profile for a nearby high school that is very different than our school
• an expired green card
• a birth certificate in both English and Spanish issued in Mexico
• a photograph of five members of the St. Louis Rams entering the stadium with their hands up
• a data visualization of household income gap by race
• another data table about education levels among married black women
• data about health care access by race adjusted for income

We used these slides to explain the QFT protocol. They were projected around the room while students worked so they could refer to the directions as their groups collaborated on each task. As students sorted and rewrote their closed and open questions, they collected their questions on a pair of slides dedicated to their group's Q-focus. Here is an example from one of the four classes that used this process. All of this was completed just before the Thanksgiving long weekend. Today we returned to school and the students in all four classes working with us on this research paper submitted the current draft of their research question for us to review. Their questions address a vast array of current sociopolitical issues. Certainly they still need refinement, but students are beginning to narrow their focus to a topic of interest that is potent in the U.S. today. Here is a selection of the (unedited) questions the students are asking:

• How does affirmative action impact minorities? 
• Does gender affect a persons income? Why do blacks have a lower income than whites/ does race affect a persons income?
• How does race and wealth impact the type and level of education you can receive 
• How does geographical setting affect health care accessibility for adults?
• How might a persons socioeconomic status directly affect their access to quality healthcare?
• How can racial bias in the judicial system affect the way a case is treated?
• How does poverty impact the learning and culture of a school body as a whole in terms of absences, disciplinary actions, and Free or Reduced Lunch (FRL)?
• How has the Affordable Care Act impacted people with lower socioeconomical [sic] status?
• How does the justice system affect imprisonment of the lowest social classes?
• What causes the tremendous inequality in educational oppurtunity [sic] in America?
• Why are crime rates higher amongst the lower class?
• How does ones socioeconomic status affect the severity of their mental health?
• How does income inequality affect rates of incarceration for different social classes?
• How heavily does education influence the likelyhood [sic] of achieving a stable, lucrative career?
• How does race effect the odds of immigrants achieving well paying stable careers?
• "How do the living conditions and locations of adolescents contribute to their level of education?"
• How has the war on drugs affected people's ability to rise from poverty?
• How does the constant factor of social class diversity affect the quality of education in a child's lifetime?
• Why is the education gap in America growing? and how can we close the gap and have an equal education standard across the US?
• Why are there a lot of college drop outs
• How do the economic circumstances of ones birth dictate their potential, as opposed their talent and hard work?
• How does social class affect parenting?
• Does race affect the amount of college dropouts?
• How do financial issues lead to high dropout rates in college?

Clearly these questions still need refinement. We are pleased that students have started to branch their thinking into aspects of American society and historical issues that they were not able to consider before we introduced the QFT to them. Our next step is to help students begin generating keywords for searching our databases and print collection for information about their topic. We believe that once they start listing terms relevant to their question, they will begin to see the possibilities for refining and focusing their questions to better fit the constraints of a five page paper.

That is tomorrow's plan. We are going to ask them to examine the entire list of collected questions from the four participating classes and copy into a document any of the questions that they think explores the topic they are trying to research. Then the students will begin compiling a list of key terms that are related to their topic and their questions. We will provide them instruction on the value of key terms including how to use them in searches:

• Boolean Logic (and, or, not)
• Truncation and Wildcards (*, ?)

Then we will ask the students to resume compiling their lists and then revising their questions, ultimately choosing one question to sustain their research. Stay tuned to see how this unfolds.

For those of you interested in updates on the research project using Google My Maps, we are getting ready to introduce it so more on that will be coming soon, too!

Let me advocate for co-teaching

The principles of good teaching that informed my work as a high school social studies teacher for twenty three years are as applicable in the library as they were in the classroom. But, there is so much about being a librarian that is different than being a classroom teacher. Here is one of the biggest changes. I used to think that a class load of 125 students in a semester was a lot. Now I have 1300. That is a lot.

My advocacy meme... will it work?

So here is the challenge: I work with all of the students in the high school. I have a responsibility to those students and to the fidelity with which we implement our library media, inquiry-based, research curriculum. And to be successful, I have to work with students in the context of their classes with other teachers.

Without a specific course load of my own, my collaboration with my colleagues is essential to fulfilling my curricular mandates and achieving my curricular objectives. If I am successful, students will benefit in direct and indirect ways from the work I and their other teachers do together. First, students will experience an increase in teacher attention and feedback by virtue of my co-teaching. And, second, by supporting classroom teachers in the infusion of technology in their instruction and project-based learning, students will experience a more personalized implementation of the curricula. Adding a teacher to a classroom cuts the student-teacher ratio in half so more students will receive direct support for their inquiry work during class time.

Teacher-Librarian collaboration is also an essential way to help classroom teachers enhance their effectiveness. I can help with unit and project planning and resource collection. I can co-teach lessons on inquiry and research. I can support the classroom teacher's instruction during content examination, I can help create and analyze formative assessments, differentiate, re-teach where necessary, and re-evaluate students' progress. And I embrace what we can learn from the reflection and de-briefing after an extended collaboration to determine how to best meet the varied needs of the students as the year unfolds.

As a classroom teacher, I did not make use of the opportunities provided by collaboration with my library media specialist. As a librarian, I am committed to forging the relationships that will encourage my colleagues to open their classrooms and their time and their energy to collaborating with me. I am happy to hear how other librarians advocate for their library programs and encourage their colleagues to embrace the opportunities collaboration offers and how it empowers students.

My Journey from Social Studies to the Library

I came of age in the era when library meant a room, designated as silent space, which housed a collection of print texts. To me, today, library still means a collection, and media is the key word in the title Library Media Specialist. Whether the space is called a library, a media center, or a learning commons, all students and teachers can thrive intellectually in a space dedicated to collecting, displaying and distributing the widest possible array of learning resources: audio and video archives; video and podcasts; fiction and nonfiction texts; paintings, photographs, and sculptures; maps... the list of media can be endless. And the material can be tangible or digital and interactive. Thus a media program must reach out to all of the academic and co­-curricular disciplines to share the resources, time and space it can offer, to solicit what the evolving needs of the faculty, staff, and students are, and to maintain its resources and physical space in a way that is relevant to how people learn and teach.

I love to read and I love being a teacher. Those are only two of the reasons that I sought this certification. I embarked on earning this new endorsement because I also want to be able to extend the reach of my learning about the purposeful use of technology and the inquiry process. I thrive on collaboration with my colleagues and eagerly anticipate the opportunities for collaboration inherent in the position of the library media specialist. And, importantly, all of this new learning for this professional shift enhanced my work with students in my social studies classes. As the digital aspects of our lives continue to evolve, schools must sustain awareness of the pulse of technology and its educational uses to ensure that schools remain progressive and thereby vital elements of students’ educational opportunities and experiences. A school is well­ served by a media specialist who prioritizes and facilitates such awareness, who encourages teachers and faculty to live on or close to the information literacy cutting edge. I am grateful to have heeded a calling in a profession that not just allows me to reinvent myself, but demands that I do so in order to remain a vital and relevant contributor to the lives of my students and the work of my colleagues.