To Collaborate or Not To Collaborate...That is the question!
Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the honour it is to work, play, explore, and live on the Ancestral, Traditional and Unceded shared Territories of the Katzie First Nation and Kwantlen First Nation.
To make it easier to follow, this Learning Log will be divided into two parts...in Part 1, I will discuss how I can foster Collaboration in my school community, the benefits and possible barriers I could encounter. In part 2, I will discuss how the benefits of integrating Indigenous ways of knowing into our teaching practice can help make learning more accessible for all students.
Part 1: The Elephant in the room: Collaboration
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You know that saying “I’ve seen it all, nothing surprises me anymore”? as a teacher, how many times a week do you think that? I know for a fact I say it at least twice a week! The truth is that I keep getting surprises from students, colleagues, parents, and the world around me. My biggest surprise as a TL was realizing how many teachers were not open to collaborating with you. Why though?
I had always imagined what it would be like to work with our school librarian as I had never had the opportunity to do so. However, this train of thought came to an abrupt stop when I realized that it wasn’t that I’ve never had the opportunity, but that I never made the effort or took the time to actually go in and ask for help. To be honest, I never truly felt welcomed in the library, we could only go in during our book exchange or if we needed resources, we could send an email and then our TL would gather books and bring them to our classroom…realizing this made me feel really sad and frustrated with myself because I did not take the time to go in and talk with our TL.
This is not to say that I have never collaborated with colleagues. In the past, I have collaborated with primary teachers and really liked sharing ideas. One of the best experiences I continue to have is team-teaching with my colleague next door. We share an accordion wall so every Friday we open the wall and do calendar with both classes; we also do LA together and SS. Then of course, 2020 happened and it is not until recently that we have had the chance to start joining classes again. We are starting small as we have noticed a bit of a change within our students, it seems that they are a bit more apprehensive to join other classes, I know this is solely because of the pandemic so we are slowly working towards learning to work collaboratively again. Usually what we did during those times was take turns teaching a group lesson and then students would go back to do the activity while both of us would help everyone, or we would meet with smaller groups. Other times I would take the grade 2s and she the grade 1s and we would do something with each grade (we both had ½ split classes).
Fast forward to a couple years ago, when I first started working at the library with my job share partner, being both new to the position and starting to take TL courses, we were very excited to see how we could start collaborating with our colleagues. I was surprised to learn that she felt the exact same way I did about previous years in the library. She also felt that she could not approach our TL and ask for help. Not only that, but we found out that a lot of our colleagues felt the same! This really made me sad because now I see how much we really missed out! I cringe to think about all that untapped knowledge we could have had!!
So we started talking and coming up with ideas on how we wanted our colleagues to see the learning commons. We wanted to create an environment that is both welcoming and inclusive, we needed to make our learning commons the heart of our school. We had quite the job ahead of us because we were in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic so getting together with people was just out of the question.
The first year we concentrated on trying to come up with a plan with admin as our school goal was to get everyone together again. They came up with the theme of “Our Stories Bring Us Together.” This gave us the opportunity we were waiting for…we wanted to make the library the place that could bring everyone together again…but how on earth could we do that? Where do we start? Oh, the questions and doubts sure pestered us…Our first priority was to make sure our school community felt welcomed and loved; everyone had gone through a lot in the past couple years, and we knew that SEL was at the top of our list. We wanted our learning commons to be not only a place for physical resources but a place with “access to activities and services to encourage and support, student, teacher, and community learning.” (IFLA, 2015). I am happy to say that in the past year and a half we have made our library commons a welcoming place…our teachers love coming in to have lunch there as we like to play relaxing music and dim the lights for them; we love having students come in to work on other projects or just to simply read on one of our comfy chairs; we have had classes coming together to work with their buddies as well as to find a safe space if they need to; we have ran Lego, Pokémon and reading clubs last spring and we are now in the process of planning other clubs like, cartoon club, mystery clubs, friendship bracelet making club, and a colouring/puzzle club. We are planning to open the LLC for tech support and are enlisting the help of our tech savvy colleague if what we are trying to fix is too difficult for us.
However, despite all these wonderful changes we have made to bring our school community back together, there is still one issue we have yet to fully tackle…the elephant in the room I like to call “collaboration.” According to Loertscher et al, a Learning Commons should be “a common or shared space that is both physical and virtual. It is designed to move students beyond mere research, practice, and group work to a greater level of engagement through exploration, experimentation, and collaboration.” (Loertscher, Koechlin and Rosenfeld, 2012). Collaboration is key if we want to create a learning environment where ALL our students have a chance to be successful. Furthermore, the Canadian School Libraries Association says that one of our main jobs as teacher-librarians is “to collaborate with other teachers, to plan lessons, and help teachers to develop best practices and strategies.” (CSL, 2014).
So how can we start working towards implementing a collaborative culture in our school? I’m not saying that collaboration doesn’t exist at our school, because it does! Teachers have been collaborating with one another for a long time. But how can us, as Teacher-Librarians, plant ourselves in the middle of it without seeming too pushy or overwhelming our already overworked teachers? I have thought about it, and I think that our biggest barrier has been lack of communication between the Teacher librarian and Classroom teachers.
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How can we then help our school community overcome this barrier? I know that I was not the only one who felt that the library and the TL were off limits. To be honest, I cannot recall a time where the doors to the library were opened, even if a class was in there, the doors would remain close. I think there was an unspoken rule that we could not go in if there was another class even though there was more than enough room to have up to 3 classes working together. I still remember vividly when our classroom flooded and we were misplaced for a couple weeks…we had trouble finding places to go, teachers were quick to jump in and offer their classes during prep times, wanting to do buddies with us so the kids would have a place to go. We used the Collab room, the gym and even the admin’s office. Not once were we offered the library, even though the whole school knew what had happened. We sent emails asking to let us know if we could use a room, I believe that we visited every classroom in the school except the library. Now that I think back, I spoke with everyone but our TL. It’s like there was this bubble surrounding her and we could not cross it. This is why, our main focus has been in creating a welcoming environment in our Learning commons. Our teachers now know that our doors are always open no matter what. We have worked hard to create a sense of community in our learning commons and are very proud of what we have achieved so far. So now that we have started to break down this barrier of lack of communication, what else can we do to foster collaboration? How can we help them see that “when the school librarian is a partner for learning, the boundaries between the traditional classroom and library space become one shared learning space,” (Hamilton, 2011) that “the learning commons is a whole school approach to building participatory learning community,” (CSL, 2014) and that we all share the same goal of helping our students reach their greatest potential.
With all that in mind, I have come up with a few factors that can help us open the door to collaboration. These are: communication, flexibility, creativity.
Communication
The key element to a good relationship, whether it be personal or professional, is having open communication. We know that good relationships are built on trust and open/honest communication. Always have your ear to the ground to find out what is it that teachers need. Remember that the best conversations happen at the water fountain, during recess and lunch, after school or even in the hallways while walking back to class. Be a good listener, have an open door policy, and most importantly, DO NOT lie about things you can or cannot do. How can we build trust if we bite more than we can chew? We cannot tell teachers that we can do something for them and then not deliver. If we don’t know how to do something we tell them but also add that you will find out who can help both of you learn. Remember that as TLs we are not the masters at everything but merely the vessels of information. Teachers will appreciate your honesty and willingness to help. Furthermore, Betty Marcoux reminds us that “Teachers practicing communication skills with other teachers tend to be more likely to collaborate.” (Marcoux, 2007)
Flexibility
We know that teachers’ time is valuable as we often wear more than one hat at a time and need to be in many places at once. One way to help them be more opened to collaboration is by simply taking things off their plate. Offering to take their class for a block so they can have time for planning, going to them instead of asking them to come to you, planning around their schedule, offering to set something up for their class: a mini unit on research skills, or digital citizenship, etc. We need to show them that we are here for them and their students, that we won’t add to their already full plate, but help by taking things off of it. We need to remember that “successful collaborations are built on successful professional relationships that are built over time on trust, flexibility, creativity, understanding of best practice, knowledge of curriculum an assessment, good planning, and the willingness to share teaching, decision-making, and professional growth.” (Staenberg, 2009 via LLED 465: module 4).
Something else to keep in mind is that teachers have a way of doing things in their class and it’s NOT our job to want to change how things work for them. We need to adapt if we want to make things work. Just think, how would you like it if someone were to come to the library and tell you how to run things? I bet you would put your back up and refuse to listen! So how can we expect them to listen to us if we go in and tell them what needs changing? Something we can do is take a project they are working on and nudge it a little bit towards inquiry. Offer one or two suggestions, maybe word the questions being asked differently to encourage more exploration and discovery. Remember that our ultimate goal is to be known as someone that is easy to work with, not as the research police.
Creativity
Finding unique ways to help will certainly open many doors for us. We know teachers are busy, so let’s be creative in finding time to work together. Perhaps asking admin to provide coverage so you and teachers can get together, planning pro-d workshops on inquiry and offer them to teachers, maybe creating inquiry units for teachers and showing it to them. Refrain from putting teachers on the spotlight by asking them what they need, trust me, this will only overwhelm them as they have so much on their minds already and cannot come up with a list of things they need. Ask students what they are working on, create a choice board of multimodal resources and show it to the teacher…I personally would have loved having the TL come to me during my community unit and say “hey Karla, I hear you are teaching about our community in Social Studies, I have this fun choice board I think would be useful, take a look and use what you need.” Finding unique and subtle ways to approach our colleagues will certainly be beneficial in the long run.
I am hopeful that these factors will help us open the door to collaboration. We do need to keep in mind though that Rome was not built in a day. It takes time to build trust, so we need to be patient, creative and a little sneaky. Our students deserve it!
What do you think? Are there any other factors to consider? I would love to hear your ideas!
Part 2: Weaving Ways: The Next Step to Equity in Learning
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I find it super interesting (and sad really) that prior to starting my Teacher-Librarianship courses, equity, when it came to ways of learning, was not at the top of my list. I have always loved finding new activities for my class and now the Learning Commons, but it never really occurred to me whether or not I was seeing the whole picture when choosing what I thought was the right resource. Don't get me wrong, I always have the learning needs of my students front and centre; however, I would always choose activities and then adapt to what I thought would be a good fit for my most predominant needs in the class without really thinking if I was reaching out to the quiet student in the corner.
I got my first wake up call during the beginning of the pandemic when we all went remote. Not only was I not technologically ready to take on that task, I never really considered myself a tech savvy individual and this proved me right! I lost count of the many times I was ready to throw my computer out the window! My job share partner and I decided that in order to help our kiddos at home, we would do weekly read alouds on Facebook and record ourselves reading books and post them on our class website or upload them in my Youtube channel. Simple right? nope! It was very challenging trying to get the sound right, the correct high definition on the video, and, Lord help us, get it to upload without the sound lagging. I still have nightmares about it!
Now imagine putting myself in our kiddos' shoes, on the receiving end of our attempt at reaching out. I cringe just thinking about how much our littles and their parents must have struggled during this time too!
I was also blown away by the number of students trying to get one of our school assigned Ipads or laptops to take home because they did not have access to one. I was shocked by this realization because not only did they need a device to do their work, but some of our oldest laptops and Ipads were not even compatible to the apps we wanted them to use! Sadly, it was too late for us to have realized how much this rift affected our school community. Pat Franklin and Claire Gatrell call it "the digital divide." This term is used when describing "the different levels of technology access available for students (and their families.)" (Franklin and Gatrell, 2009.) This divide has been there for many years, but the pandemic really brought it to light for a lot of us. Furthermore, this realization has taught us that "we will always need to be observant in classes where factors beyond the school have given more privileged access to some over others; students who have daily access to technology and to the internet have had the advantage of opportunity to develop requisite digital skills and knowledge." (UBC, Module 5, 2022)
Of course this is only one piece of the education pie...there is the other more complex piece I will call "diversity of learning methods" that have caused some of our students to fall through the cracks year after year.
So how can we as educators help reduce this gap in the education system? How can we provide equal learning opportunities for ALL our learners? How "do we ensure that all our students have both equitable access to learning and a successful and optimally enriched learning experience?" (UBC, Module 5, 2022)
The BC ministry of Education, as well as other ministries across our country, have now started to implement ways to improve educational experiences for all the diverse cultural groups including our Indigenous community. One of the resources that has come to light is called Weaving Ways. This resource has been designed to provide support for educators to learn how to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing into our teaching practice.
For years now, educators have started using differentiated instruction in their classrooms as a way of "maximizing student potential, not simply bringing students to an externally established norm on a test." (Tomlinson, 2008) We know that in order to help our students succeed, we must engage them in their own learning. If you are really interested on a topic, chances are you will be more eager to learn about it. This, in my opinion, is key to helping our students find their learning identity. That is why I have been incorporating Inquiry based learning in our classroom more often. As you know, IBL is the approach to learning that puts emphasis on the student's role in the learning process. Students are encouraged to explore material that interests them, ask questions, and share ideas with others. After reading more about Weaving Ways, I started thinking about the similarities I was seeing between IBL and Indigenous ways of learning. One of the readings this week that made me make the connection between these two schools of thought was the paper written by Kathy Sandford, et al called "Indigenous Principles Decolonizing Teacher Education: What We Have Learned." In the article, the authors point out the differences between Western ways of Learning and Indigenous ways of Knowing. As I read through the chart, I came to realize how Inquiry Based Learning is very similar to Indigenous ways of Knowing. Below is a link to the chart for your reference. Take a look at the Indigenous column...to me it's so clear that if we combine IBL and Weaving Ways, we would be able to make learning more accessible for all our students.
The table above clearly shows us how incorporating Indigenous ways of teaching can help the education system by providing educators with a lens to "think about different ways of connecting with learners, valuing their knowledge, and helping them to move forward successfully in the world." (Sandford, 2012)
Some of the similarities between Indigenous ways of knowing and IBL worth nothing are (UBC Module 5, 2022):
- Learning is emergent/student-centered
- Focus on Student and teacher interaction
- Students construct knowledge through gathering and synthesizing information
- Learners are guided to find their own solutions and to answer their own questions
- students have multiple opportunities for success
- Students work in pairs or groups
- Students get to choose learning activities and topics they are interested in
- Multimodal resources are used to allow every student to learn at their own pace
Something else that really caught my attention was the way Weaving Ways is structured into four interrelated quadrants of "which teachers can utilize to organize their thinking and approaches." (Weaving Ways, 2016). Let me explain my train of thought as to how each quadrant can help us make learning more accessible to students.
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Quadrant 1: Cultures of Belonging.
One of the questions students ask themselves from the moment they enter a new classroom is "Do I belong here?" We know the importance of creating a safe learning environment for our students where everyone feels that they belong and that they are free to make mistakes, learn, and cooperate with one another without feeling like they will be judged. We must remember that the first step for us as educators is to try to make connections with our students. Differentiated instruction is student-aware teaching, as educators we need to know what each student knows and can do at any given moment. Knowing this will allow us to create lessons where everyone will succeed. Weaving ways tells us that "students who have a sense of belonging and connectedness at school thrive in their learning, are more engaged, and attend school more often." (weaving ways, 2016) Indigenous ways of knowing teaches us the concept of "Wholeness: everything in the universe is part of a single whole, everything is connected in some way." (Weaving Ways, 2016) Using this sense of wholeness will help us create a community in our classroom where anyone who enters will be able to see themselves as being part of that community. Some of activities we can do to foster community are: explore diversity in our classroom, learn how to listen and respond constructively to other people's opinions, allow students to have easy access to multimodal resources that show different cultural traditions and genres, bring in speakers from various cultures, create inquiry units to teach about community, culture, the land we live on, etc.
Quadrant 2: Instructional Design
This is a key factor to consider if we want to foster equity and equality in our school communities. Our main focus is to be able to give all our learners equal opportunities to succeed, not only within the walls of our schools, but also in the outside world. How can we do that? For starters, educators are asked to provide "intentional and iterative efforts within their classrooms to understand the strengths and needs of students and to unfold learning experiences that best meet those needs." (Weaving Ways, 2017). Let's keep in mind that our students learn best when they are engaged, where there is freedom to be creative and to express themselves without judgement. Another benefit when teaching using Weaving Ways is that by embracing culturally responsive instructional designs, we share many cultural viewpoints which in turn give students the opportunity to explore outcomes from multiple cultural perspectives. Furthermore, this type of cultural designs foster an environment full of respect for all learners as we take away the biases that create this opinion of us vs. them. We must remember that learning to be respectful of everyone's opinions will help students and teachers "come to the understanding of where (everyone) is coming from...(We) need to open our heart, and our mind." (Weaving Ways, 2017.)
Quadrant 3: Pedagogy
Weaving Ways and IBL both share the importance of collaboration. A lot of our students feel very intimidated by their classrooms because they know that there are always certain "conditions" that must be met if they want to get good marks. That way of thinking needs to stop! Our students deserve a classroom environment where they feel safe, can take risks, make mistakes, and most importantly, know that the teachers are there to support them 100% in whatever they need. Some of the strategies that can be used in the classroom are activities that encourage discovery and exploration, exposing students to diverse ideas and opinions, and using multimodal resources; the latter is a big one as we know no one student learns the same, we need to make sure that we provide a vast selection of resources if we want all our students to succeed. The old idea of "one size fits all" needs to be revisited and scrapped off the curriculum.
Quadrant 4: Sharing through stories
According to Weaving Ways, "the sharing of stories is humankind's oldest form of teaching." (Weaving ways, 2017). People from all walks of life and cultures have relied on stories to pass on knowledge from generation to generation. In our classrooms, storytelling is beneficial because it "creates a climate that is responsive to the individual needs of the classroom while making connection to prior knowledge." (2017). Furthermore, some of our students learn best by listening to information instead of reading it. One of my favourite quotes from Weaving Ways "Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will be in my heart forever" (2017) reminds me of an Old Chinese proverb I learned a couple weeks ago while reading through our assigned weekly readings. It says "Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand." This is so true! When we involve our students, when they become part of the story, we open so many doors full of opportunities for them. Not only that, but a good story can certainly hook them and encourage them to dig deeper and explore.
There is nothing more I want than to be able to create a classroom and Learning commons environment where all my students , no matter their differences, have equal opportunities to explore, create and learn.
Including Indigenous ways of knowing and Inquiry based in our lessons will certainly close the gap in learning amongst all our unique and very special students. Teachers have the power to create change, to close that divide between cultures, and most importantly, to help our students reach their highest potential. Is it easy? of course not, but it certainly is worth it! Are you willing to take that challenge with me?
I would love to hear your ideas on how you plan to include Weaving Ways and inquiry into your lessons!
Until next time,
The Duchess of Bookington
References:
• Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortium (2016). Weaving Ways: Indigenous Ways of Knowing in Classrooms and Schools. Retrieve on October 4, 2022 from https://empoweringthespirit.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Weaving-Ways-Introductory-Document-10-09.pdf
• Empowering the Spirit: a collection of digital resources that supports teachers weave Indigenous ways of knowing in classrooms and schools. | NITEP - The Indigenous Teacher Education Program. (n.d.). Nitep.educ.ubc.ca. ( 2021) Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://nitep.educ.ubc.ca/february-01-2021-empowering-the-spirit-a-collection-of-digital-resources-that-supports-teachers-weave-indigenous-ways-of-knowing-in-classrooms-and-schools/
• Franklin, P., & Stephens, C. G. (2009). Equitable access, the digital divide, and the participation gap! Links to an external site. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 25(5), 43–44.
• Loertscher, D., Koechlin, C. & Zwaan, S. (2005). Ban the bird units! 15 models for teaching and learning in information-rich and technology-rich environments. Salt Lake City, UT: Hi Willow.
• Marcoux, B. L. (2007). Levels of collaboration: Where does your work fit in? School Library Activities Monthly 24(4): 20-24.
• Sandford, K., Williams, L., Hopper, T. & McGregor, C. (2012). Indigenous principles decolonizing teacher education: What we have learned. 18(2). In ineducation.ca
• Staenberg, L. & Vanneman, S. (2009). A Collaborative Conversation. School Library Monthly 26(4): 15-17.
• Style, E. (1988). Curriculum as window & mirror Listening for all voices. Oak Knoll School monograph. Summit, NJ. The SEED (Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum. Wellesley Centres for Women.
• Tomlinson, C. A. (2008b). The goals of differentiation. Educational Leadership 66(3): 26-30.
• University of British Columbia, Module 5, 2022
• What is a Library Learning Commons? – Leading Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2022,
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