Guided Inquiry Design: Connecting and Collaborating

Hi everyone. It is school holidays here in Australia and we are enjoying some unseasonably good weather. Usually we get loads of rain and instead the sun is ready to play. Although the sunshine is calling me, I thought I would share the first of a series of posts about a Guided Inquiry Design project I have been working on.

You may remember my post about team work from a few weeks ago. I have been working with the Science teachers in a learning team to produce a program for Sustainability as part of their Year 9 curriculum.

In this first post, I wanted to share with you how I go about connecting with teachers within my school. I had read that this is often a challenge for teacher librarians and it is something that I have focused on in my first term at a new school.

According to Montiel-Overal (2005), collaboration has become quite a trend in schools, particularly with the current focus on developing 21 Century skills. Not only is it important for teachers to learn to work collaboratively in order to create connections between content areas, but it is essential that we model this and create opportunities for our students to do this too.

In fact, Wall & Bonnano (2014) identify collaboration as a key 21st century skill to ensure that students are able to contribute to the ever changing society (and workplace). With increasing demands relating to “results” and learning the content being thrown at both our students and teachers, it can be incredibly difficult to convince teachers (and students) that collaborative work is a good idea.

In relation to this particular learning team, I was asked to participate in a meeting where ideas were being thrown about regarding the upcoming project. As a new teacher, this was my first interaction with many of the teachers in the room and I used this as an opportunity to create a clean slate for how the library would position itself. It was also an opportunity to begin building trust, an essential part of having influence within schools.

In my past roles, I have been well known to the teachers within the school (in fact, many of them taught me as a student!). I believe that building relationships based on trust is the way forward for many teacher librarians. Becoming known as an expert in our field, that is, learning to think and inquiry, is the way forward.

Often, working with one teacher or faculty provides the stepping stone to working with others. Laying the groundwork with one teacher by building a relationship based on a mutual understanding of how each of you will contribute to the project will allow word to get around.

I am interested in hearing how you build collaborative relationships with staff. Leave a comment!