Assignment 2: Collaboration to Evolve Effective Use of Reference Resources

Teacher-librarians play a vital role in collaborating with other staff members to encourage and nurture professional development in order to create positive change. The Canadian Librarian Association outlines in their document Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada that one of five main standards of practice for a school library learning commons is “facilitating collaborative engagement to cultivate and empower a community of learners” (CLA 8).

(Image from CLA Leading Learning 8)

One of the best approaches to facilitating and cultivating collaboration and new learning (with the goal of ultimately empowering a community of learners towards positive change) is the Concern Based Adoptions Model. This is because “learning brings change, and supporting people in change is critical for learning to take hold” (Loucks-Horsley 1). This model places a strong emphasis on being people-focused and takes into consideration the individual needs of the learner. This model points out the importance of attending to where people are at and addressing self-concerns because “we know that teachers need to have their self-concerns addressed before they are ready to attend” (Loucks-Horsley 1). This requires some organizational, priority-setting conversations that stimulate concern about specific student learning outcomes and create interest in exploring ‘new ways of doing’ in order to achieve goals.

In relation to effective use of reference resources, I chose to collaborate with two different teachers at two different grade levels (one intermediate grade 6 teacher and one primary grade 3 teacher) to have discussions about current learning outcomes for their students and also where they felt they were at in their own professional development as educators. I kept the conversation geared positively towards achieving goals with their students and thankfully both teachers were very receptive to have these discussions.

For both teachers, I will describe their current situation, their past experiences and methods, and then attempt to design an approach that will take each teacher to a higher level of integration, application, and embedding of these reference resources into their practice. In using the Concern Based Adoptions Model, I need to reflect on these conversations and consider which stage of of concern (see images below) each teacher is operating at in order to know how to design the best approach moving forward.

(Image from Loucks-Horsley 2)                                     (Image from (Loucks-Horsley 5)

Teacher A – Grade 6 – 20+ years classroom teaching experience, in two separate schools.

Current Situation: Teacher A is teaching in a gr. 5/6 classroom of 26 students, 11 of whom are ELL students and 3 students have designations (one autism, one physical disability, one learning disability). The teacher has expressed concern with the student’s writing output, mostly for her 21 grade six students. Her 5 grade five students are in her words, quite “high achieving students academically” and she felt were possibly placed in a 5/6 split class for this reason. Her concern lay within the subject area of Language Arts, more specifically in writing, in relation to the curricular content areas of “language varieties” and “sentence structure” (BC Curriculum Language Arts 6) and the curricular competency of “the ability to assess and refine texts to improve their clarity, effectiveness, and impact” (BC Curriculum English Language Arts 6). Curriculum link here.

Past Experience and Methods: Teacher A has presented infographics to her students of ‘juicy’ words, as well as meaningful, exciting adjectives, synonyms and creative phrases. The students each have a personal thesaurus in their desks that they were asked to purchase with school supplies at the beginning of the year, yet she says they are not being used consistently during writing times. She has shown them how to use their thesaurus and has had lessons breaking apart sections and examples of very good descriptive writing on the classroom BrightLinks board, alongside breaking apart and correcting  poorly written samples of writing. She noted that she is seeing more and more language in the student’s written work that resembles texting, such as ‘thx’ and ‘cu later’, and that the language in their written work overall has lessened to simple adjectives like ‘good’ or ‘ok’ or simple descriptions like ‘it was nice’ or ‘they had fun’ etc. She would like to see her students engaged in using their thesauruses but explained that “after showing them how to use the tool and even giving reminders during their writing blocks, they just don’t…and I feel like I’m nagging.”

Design and Approach for Collaboration and Support: In speaking with teacher A, she is clearly a well-organized, thoughtful and reflective teacher with a lot of experience who cares about the learning growth of her students. Her expression of concern wasn’t narrowed to just thesaurus use, but she was able to focus in on this as a good starting place for embellishing written work. She seemed to be operating at the consequence level of “How is my use affecting learners? How can I refine it to have more impact?” (Loucks-Horsley 2) as she was already teaching the use of this reference tool. This teacher was implementing practical teaching and also reminders to apply this teaching, but as for it affecting the learning outcomes for students, they weren’t applying the resource tool at all. This left her feeling like “Is it worth it? Is it working?” (Loucks-Horsley 5).  She was however, extremely receptive to collaboration and support with the two of us together.

This is a teacher who is very involved in other volunteer areas of the school, consistently working with admin. and other teaching staff. It did not surprise me that she was someone humble in her teaching and keen to collaborate. She is someone who I view as an “employee [who has] attain[ed] the collaboration level and work[ed] at that level for two years or more, they know its value and, given the opportunities and time to maintain and live out that disposition, will continue to seek and give collaborative support among their colleagues” (Loucks-Horsley 9). However, with a major turnover in staff during the past few years, this teacher also expressed that she was starting to sink into more isolated teaching, noticing that “when expectation and collaboration of a formal mentoring relationship is [eventually] withdrawn, the daily press of the work will easily overcome the desire to reflect and grow” (Loucks-Horsley 9). She felt that the positive mentorship relationships that she had built earlier on, had either moved on to other schools or retired and there wasn’t the same reciprocity of interest for collaboration in the school now as before (whether it be mentorship for her or mentorship from her). Her thoughts mirrored Loucks-Horsley’s idea that professional development for change can be squelched if is is not nurtured, fostered and reciprocated, and thus the sheer amount of work as a classroom teacher (including mental effort) can easily overtake the desire to create the time for this.

Although teacher A expressed being at a stage in thinking she needed to refine her teaching of the use of the thesaurus and of her writing strategies in general in order to have more impact, this expression seemed like more of an introspective isolated approach to me than a collaborative one. Once it was suggested that we could brainstorm together an approach for collaboration and support, she was very receptive and wondered how we could relate to what each other was doing (collaboration stage of CBAM model). To me, this was a teacher ready and open to see how others do it. This was a teacher who was perhaps approached at a time when she was beginning to be resigned to isolated teaching but who’s desire for collaborative growth was still a pilot light just waiting to fire up. Ultimately, this teacher’s priority to see success in her student’s learning outcomes was never set aside.

We decided to meet during a lunch hour the following week where we could come to the table with ideas for engaging activities around using the reference resource of a thesaurus. I had done some activities in my own classroom previously, including a google slides Jeopardy game involving questions around synonyms, a set scavenger hunt though the pages of a thesaurus and a stand up sit down elimination game called Synonym Slam. I also found out during this second meeting that this teacher had access to a full class set of iPads quite regularly and so I was able to quickly show her how to access the built in thesaurus on Mac products, as well as use the critically reviewed and free app thesaurus.com. She agreed that something a simple as using an electronic device was always a hit for engaging her students. She also noted that a high number of her students were using their phones in her classroom (responsibly) with Google translate apps, (because there is high ELL student population in her class). This lunch meeting was coming to a close but we thought that at our next meeting, we’d explore further whether there is a way to highlight and search for synonyms within google translate. (Although we both agreed that expectations in writing for her ELL students were more focused on comprehension and sentence structure than language variety.)

Teacher B – Grade 3 – 12+ years classroom teaching experience, in four separate schools.

Current Situation: Teacher B is teaching in a gr. 2/3 classroom of 22 students, 14 of whom are ELL students and 2 students have designations (one autism, one behavioural). This teacher has a very challenging class behaviourally and is definitely experiencing burnout. She opened up about the behaviour needs of her class and we talked about this at length before discussing areas of learning or curricular goals. (She has students who are flight risks, children hitting, students refusing to do work and a huge trend overall in a lack of listening.) If I was to jump in right away to conversations about learning objectives, diagnosing learner needs, discussing motivation, technology needs, learning resources, formative evaluation, guided practice and independent practice (the critical components of the CBAM model, Loucks-Horsley 12-14) this would have been completely overwhelming for this teacher as she was clearly struggling. I appreciate that the Concerns Based Adoptions Model addresses that we teachers often make the mistake of “get[ting] to the how-to-do-it before addressing self-concerns” (Loucks-Horsley 1) because in reality “we know that teachers need to have their self-concerns addressed before they are ready to attend hands-on workshops [learning]” (Loucks-Horsley 1).

Aside: It was here that I see parallels in this model’s approach and the reference interview approach where Riedling and Houston suggest that the first three important elements are approachability, listening and discovering of what the student really wants [in this case the teacher], before searching and answering (Riedling and Houston 90). Both models seem to consider that “the deepest principle of human nature is the desire to be appreciated. By keeping in mind students [teachers] have the same basic need—to protect or strengthen their self-concept.” (Riedling and Houston 91).

When eventually moving into considering curricular learning, Teacher B mostly expressed concern about her eleven grade 3 students and their lack of independence during seat work times. Students were consistently coming up to her asking “How do I write this? How do you spell _____? Is this right?” and this was hindering the efficiency of their tasks as they spent most of their time waiting in line to ask their next question. This didn’t pertain to one subject area in particular but instead was across all subject areas when completing seat work. Although Teacher B will accept a bit of inventive spelling for grade twos, there are curricular expectations in grade three in relation to the content areas of “writing processes” and “conventions” (BC Curriculum Language Arts 3) and to develop the curricular competencies of “communicating using most conventions of Canadian spelling” and “developing and applying expanding word knowledge” (BC Curriculum English Language Arts 3). Curriculum link here.

Past Experience and Methods: Teacher B had displayed a large alphabetical ‘Word Wall’ in her classroom for the students to locate frequently used words for spelling. Each student has also been provided with an individual spelling journal, a lined book arranged alphabetically, where they could record the spellings of words on each page for future reference. Most student journals had few words recorded in them. Past methods of collaboration for this teacher involved going to other staff members for help in the form of ideas or strategies, yet she had not experienced any co-teaching.

Design and Approach for Collaboration and Support: In meeting afterschool with teacher B, she is clearly feeling overwhelmed with the behavioural needs of her class. Just like teacher A, she is a teacher who cares about student learning outcomes and the learning growth of her students. However, she is also finding the need to maintain good mental health and self-care. When mentioning the idea of possibly working together in a collaborative co-teaching way, she seemed to be operating at the informational level of concern of “I need to know more about it” and also the personal level of “How will this affect me?” (Loucks-Horsley 2). We talked about the use of student dictionaries as a reference resource tool for conventional spelling and also word meaning and development. Her high ELL student population was a contributing factor to the amount of questions she was receiving during seat work time.

Due to my flexible schedule as a non-enrolling teacher, I was able to ask come into her classroom during teaching time for our next visit and she was welcome to this observation time and camaraderie. I believe this was because trust was built during the first afterschool conversation by listening and empathizing to the demands of her classroom situation. This would support the idea that “teacher-librarians impact student learning and achievement by forming strong and positive relationships with members of the school community” (CLA 21) and the importance of “developing collaborative relationships within the profession to strengthen services to users” (Riedling and Houston 8).

While in her classroom, the relief of having two teachers present was palpable. Having two adults there during a writing block reduced the teachers classroom management needs and expedited addressing student questions. This allowed for us to converse as the students worked. (If only we could have two teachers teaching in every classroom all the time!) Although, there had been some alphabetization taught for both the word wall and student spelling journals, in observing her students using these tools I noticed that they started at the beginning of the alphabet and were counting forward each individual letter until they located the one they needed. Dictionaries aimed at young learners (preferably in her situation with illustrations to aid ELL students) were not present in her classroom. We talked about how this could be a helpful reference resource tool. We discussed teaching the skills of looking in the first half or second half of the book and then noticing if your letter is in the first half, asking yourself, “Is it near the front or near the middle?”. I also suggested a Flip and Find search race for tally points through printed dictionaries as a way to keep the learning fun at this age. I recommended the Young Canada Dictionary as a good printed reference tool to have a a class set of (or even half a class set of) in her classroom.

The technology in the room was limited to four iPads located on a shelf and used for independent reading groups (levelled books were uploaded onto the devices). I mentioned that these 4 iPads could also be available during seat work times for easy access to a language app. Although dictionary.com is a suitable app for older elementary students, Kids Picture Dictionary is a free app where words are accompanied by illustrations and example sentences, with the word and sentence also read aloud audibly. Something I like about this particular app is that it is designed without a search tool so that the children need to learn to use the alphabetized menu and the skills of searching alphabetically as they would within a paper dictionary. The audio and illustrations are nice supporting factors for her students to whom English is not their first language. Other ideas were also flowing during this conversation, such as a relay in the gym to run and place 3 word cards in alphabetical order (then move up to 4 cards or 5 cards etc.) or using recipe cards with a magnet on the back where the teacher has written numerous ‘p’ words with all letters in black except every second letter is in red (looking to the next letter when the initial is the same). We were able to brainstorm together while helping the students with their work at the same time and I think this approach worked well for this teacher who was quite exhausted to meet outside of class time, or to try to implement another ‘idea’ completely by herself. “With all the demands on teachers, it is often the case that …(especially with misbehaviours) they never have the time and space to focus on whether and in what ways students are learning” (Loucks-Horsley 1). This teacher seemed to be operating at the personal stage of concern in the CBAM model, asking “How does this impact me? What’s my plan to do it?” (Loucks-Horsley 5). She needed someone to climb alongside her in order to progress to the management stage. “If a person’s needs are addressed at the stage they are at, then they can move to new levels of practice” (Loucks-Horsley 7).

After exploring the Concerns Based Approach Model to support two very different teachers in different classroom situations with different student learning needs, I recognized that this was just the beginning and that along the way I would need to evaluate that the ideas presented with these reference tools were successful in helping better student outcomes. Also just as important for me to assess would be the teachers movement up the levels in the CBAM model as “the levels of professional practice and development attained by the employees who have been supported by a strong mentoring program [provides] terrific evidence that your program is effective”(Loucks-Horsley 8).  Check-ins using the chart below could aid in collecting data for this:

These were two individual examples related to the Concerns Based Adoptions Model. Through this experience it resonated with me that “the real goal of every mentoring program is not establishment of mentoring relationships, it is that those relationships help people to learn to work together better in collaboration, and through that, improve their own performance and that of the students” (Loucks-Horsley 8). It would be my hope to apply this model even further and as an entire school faculty, collaborating on whole school goals. “The deep and enduring value is realized when the whole school moves through the process together – participants supporting each other and building on each other’s thoughts and ideas to push further than each team member could individually” (CLA 4). In conclusion, this was a valuable assignment that revealed “the strength of the concerns model is in its reminder to pay attention to individuals and their various needs for information, assistance, and moral support” (Loucks-Horsley 2).

Works Cited

Canadian Library Association (CLA). Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for SchoolLibrary Learning Commons in Canada, 2014. https://www.seobrothers.co/resources/clatoolbox_files/llsop.pdf. Accessed March 8, 2024.

Loucks-Horsley, S. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model: A Model for Change in Individuals. 1996, https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/731/2015/07/CBAM-explanation.pdf. Accessed March 8 2024.

Riedling, A. M., & Houston, C. Reference Skills for the School Librarian:Tools and Tips. 4th ed., Libraries Unlimited, 2019.