Inquiry Post #3: Teaching the Teachers and ICT

Supporting Teachers' ICT curriculum and Pedagogy: On-going Professional Development

Image: Irish Computer Society https://www.ics.ie/news/view/1727 

One of the most important jobs as TL is to teach teachers as well as students. One of the best ways to do this is through collaboration. But how do teachers know that the teacher-librarian wants to collaborate with them when the teacher-library doesn’t always have a platform for informing the staff about opportunities.

What can the TL do to make a difference in this area?

A.   Provide instruction and ideas in casual ways.

A teacher-librarian is a teacher first. In the case of ICT the teacher-librarian often must focus on getting teachers to be comfortable with and able to use technology. (This is a stretch for me since I am working on mastering much of the technology myself.) For this to work the teacher-librarian has to be seen as someone they are comfortable working with. I try always to casually frame the introduction to new technology in a “we are in this together,” “let’s figure it out” kind of way.

In the hallways, I might suggest an app I learned about or I send an email with a link to something that might enhance the curriculum in a class. I also include an invitation to work with me to figure out how the technology will fit into their course.

B.   Provide support for ICT in more formal way.

I sometimes have the chance to share information at the staff meeting and I use these opportunities to introduce staff to a new app or another technology idea. I always close with an invitation to anyone who wants to work with me.

During Professional Development days I have worked on different sessions. I prepared a BreakoutEDU game to introduce our staff to the SAMR model.

Duckworth, Sylvia. BreakoutEdu Sketchnote.  https://cooltoolsforschool.net/breakoutedu/

As well, I ran a session highlighting 10 apps to improve literacy. I continue to look for opportunities like these to share tech information with my colleagues. I have asked my administrator if it is possible to put me on the agenda every month. Next year we are going to a new format for staff meeting to take place. Students will have a late start to school every Wednesday and our staff meetings will take place one of these Wednesday’s every month. At least one of the other three late starts is designated for professional development. I am going to volunteer to provide a monthly session focusing on technology.

I think that two barriers to teacher’s experimenting and using new (for them) technology in the classroom are fear of failure and lack of time. Teachers fear appearing incompetent and losing the respect of the students. If something goes awry in their class, staff don’t want to be seen a lacking in skill.

As well, teachers often have ideas but no time to learn the technology and plan to implement it in class. I am happy to go into the class, do the tech piece with the students and work out the problems as they surface. This provides the teachers with a learning experience without risk and works around the time crunch issue as well.

C.    Broadcast success, in other words, share your successful projects.        In my previous course in the LIBE degree program we learned about advocacy. An important realization for me was that part of advocacy involves broadcasting the ways in which you, as teacher-librarian, can collaborate with teachers for student successes. It feels like bragging to say with whom I worked and how successful we were in a specific project. But I recognize that this is one of the ways that teachers can see what types of things the TL can work on with them. At our latest staff meeting, I shared information about an infographics project I worked. I also posted it on Instagram, talked about it at a program area meeting. I am now working on a similar project with another teacher.

D.   Our new staff calendar publishes which staff are attending Professional development sessions. In order to improve our professional development section in the library, I have encouraged staff to make a list of resources that they would like the library to buy so that they can continue with their learning and so that other teachers can have access to new ideas. I plan to continue this process. 

E.   And finally, a number of teachers have expressed an interest in learning over lunch hour or after school (maybe). I think this will be a great opportunity to meet some of the professional development needs of the staff.