Standard 1: Teaching for Learning
1.3.2. Instructional Partner: Candidates acknowledge the importance of participating in curriculum development, of engaging in school improvement processes, and of offering professional development to other educators as it relates to library and information use.
Earlier this school year, I underwent what many educators feel is one of the most nerve-racking experiences anyone will face in the profession: I made a presentation to a large group of my colleagues during a county-wide in-service day. This in-service was on a day at the beginning of the school year when teachers want only to stay in their classrooms to prepare for the school year. As a result, I had a tough audience.
Yet, I knew the information in my presentation was important. I had spent a lot of time writing the research curriculum I was to present, and I was certain that the information contained within my presentation would do nothing but improve our county-wide research expectations. I had been asked to present to a group of English teachers, and English teachers, I feel, should be among the first teachers to understand and implement research expectations.
One year before the August presentation, the curriculum specialist for Media Services in Frederick County had invited me to take part in a cross-disciplinary curriculum-writing workshop. Over the workshop’s two weeks, we developed county-wide research expectations. Every discipline, grade level, and school in Frederick County currently interprets the cross-curricular research indicators differently. A junior in a science class at one high school in Frederick County may be able to construct an annotated bibliography while a senior in an English class at a different high school still struggles to find more than one reliable resource. Thus, the county research expectations desperately needed improvement. Through our curriculum development, we strove to align research expectations. By the end of the workshop we had developed a number of resources including a research skills continuum, research rubrics for both middle and high school, and an extensive list of linked online research resources with annotations.
I presented the new research curriculum materials to the English department chairs and literacy specialists in October of 2010. I was supposed to present to all English teachers during our scheduled in-service in January. Alas, snow hit the night before, so I was saved from my large group presentation. And, I cannot deny that because of the reprieve as afforded me by the winter snow, I breathed a small sigh of relief (and frost). However, the curriculum specialists for both media and English still felt that the new research curriculum was of extreme importance. And so, more than a year after we created the documents and compiled the linked resources, I stood up in front of three different groups of my peers and presented to them the work we had developed a year before.
From the summer before, when I had worked with teachers from across disciplines to create the materials, to my final presentation, I developed a sense of what was important to teachers. What had made this workshop experience so unique for me was that not once was I focused on how to improve research standards for only English; the materials we created were applicable to all curricular areas. As I continued to return to these materials throughout the year, first for my presentation to department chairs and later for both the cancelled presentation and this past August’s presentation, I had to learn how to interpret the materials that we created and present them to teachers as beneficial tools to help improve our students’ research capabilities. I applied the media curriculum to the English curriculum and provided the teachers with concrete examples of how to implement the new curriculum and provided documents.
Because of my developed awareness, the presentations were successful and, for the most part, the English teachers were receptive to the ideas and documents I introduced to them. As the morning wore on and I moved from the first presentation through the third presentation, I learned what elements of the process to stress and what documents were the most beneficial to a group of English teachers. By the last presentation, I garnered the most group participation, and we took part in a very healthy discussion about research project ideas and how to incorporate and apply these new tools to the project ideas.
Certainly the skill to apply media curriculum to various disciplines will become more natural after I become a librarian. However, the year worth of reflection and growth helped me recognize how essential it is for a school librarian to provide insight into professional development and its positive effects on school improvement.
Yet, I knew the information in my presentation was important. I had spent a lot of time writing the research curriculum I was to present, and I was certain that the information contained within my presentation would do nothing but improve our county-wide research expectations. I had been asked to present to a group of English teachers, and English teachers, I feel, should be among the first teachers to understand and implement research expectations.
One year before the August presentation, the curriculum specialist for Media Services in Frederick County had invited me to take part in a cross-disciplinary curriculum-writing workshop. Over the workshop’s two weeks, we developed county-wide research expectations. Every discipline, grade level, and school in Frederick County currently interprets the cross-curricular research indicators differently. A junior in a science class at one high school in Frederick County may be able to construct an annotated bibliography while a senior in an English class at a different high school still struggles to find more than one reliable resource. Thus, the county research expectations desperately needed improvement. Through our curriculum development, we strove to align research expectations. By the end of the workshop we had developed a number of resources including a research skills continuum, research rubrics for both middle and high school, and an extensive list of linked online research resources with annotations.
I presented the new research curriculum materials to the English department chairs and literacy specialists in October of 2010. I was supposed to present to all English teachers during our scheduled in-service in January. Alas, snow hit the night before, so I was saved from my large group presentation. And, I cannot deny that because of the reprieve as afforded me by the winter snow, I breathed a small sigh of relief (and frost). However, the curriculum specialists for both media and English still felt that the new research curriculum was of extreme importance. And so, more than a year after we created the documents and compiled the linked resources, I stood up in front of three different groups of my peers and presented to them the work we had developed a year before.
From the summer before, when I had worked with teachers from across disciplines to create the materials, to my final presentation, I developed a sense of what was important to teachers. What had made this workshop experience so unique for me was that not once was I focused on how to improve research standards for only English; the materials we created were applicable to all curricular areas. As I continued to return to these materials throughout the year, first for my presentation to department chairs and later for both the cancelled presentation and this past August’s presentation, I had to learn how to interpret the materials that we created and present them to teachers as beneficial tools to help improve our students’ research capabilities. I applied the media curriculum to the English curriculum and provided the teachers with concrete examples of how to implement the new curriculum and provided documents.
Because of my developed awareness, the presentations were successful and, for the most part, the English teachers were receptive to the ideas and documents I introduced to them. As the morning wore on and I moved from the first presentation through the third presentation, I learned what elements of the process to stress and what documents were the most beneficial to a group of English teachers. By the last presentation, I garnered the most group participation, and we took part in a very healthy discussion about research project ideas and how to incorporate and apply these new tools to the project ideas.
Certainly the skill to apply media curriculum to various disciplines will become more natural after I become a librarian. However, the year worth of reflection and growth helped me recognize how essential it is for a school librarian to provide insight into professional development and its positive effects on school improvement.