HIT Teacher Cooperation with Assignments Pt 2

[Brian Ralph <bralph@ZETA.ORG.AU>]

4.  We do several things to work with teachers at Middleton High (9-12).
We  ( 2 librarians and a clerk) ask that any long term assignment .be given
to us and we keep teacher assignments in a red notebook on the circulation
desk.. If a studentcomes in to do research and forgets his assignment sheet
, we have a copy.  We started that at the beginning of a school year and
announced it a t a beginning faculty meeting.  Acutually the faculty likes
to look through it also.  It gives them good ideas and they know what other
grade levels have chosen to do and also their fellow teachers.  Also, I am
considered a department head and therefore attend department meetings with
all other curriculum areas.  That helps me know what is going on and gives
me some status with the rest of the faculty. Oh yes, our red notebook  is
there so that when a class signs up for the library for a class period, we
have a copy ahead of time for theiractivity.  It has really helped.
Sometimes, I look up the schedule of faculty members, and try to pay a semi
"social " call during their planning time.  This helps them know my
philosophy and I know theirs somewhoat more than I did.  Our faculty knows
by now that I also love kids...but hate "babysitting".
We also offer a list of mathematicions ( or similar) or a biographical
assignment for a math class.  I have been accused of doing the teacher's
planning for them...but I think this makes for good library use and good PR

Pat Rogers
5. I presume you saw the Comment article by Maureen Nimon in Access Vol.10 No.1
March 1996, pp.9-11 which looks at CPPT. The latest issue of Emergency
Librarian also had an article on how teachers actually go about planning,
and how full scale CPPT may not fit in with this. Sorry I don't have the
reference here.

On a personal level, I have found the most effective way of ensuring I know
what is going on in a secondary school of 900 students, is to attend faculty
planning meetings and then 'feeding' any teacher nominated to co-ordinate
research assignments with resources and ideas for the assignment. I am
fortunate that our school is heavily into common assessment tasks so I only
have to plan with the one teacher who is in charge of that unit. It often
means that I know more about the research task than the teachers of the
other classes who have been handed the assignment by the coordinator and
they are thus happy for the Teacher Librarians to introduce the assignment
and co-ordinate the process.

With 6-8 classes for each core subject assignment I also find it important
to co-ordinate the library bookings at the time of planning and let teachers
know when they have been booked into the library. Otherwise I find we do not
start the lessons early enough to fit everyone in, and the assignment is
thus deemed to be a failure because students don't have access to the
resources required.

If a research task is successful, interesting, relatively straightforward to
mark, and seen as relevant to staff as well as students, there is a strong
chance it will become 'written' into that course for subsequent years. This
makes resourcing easier, and means TLs and teachers need only to fine tune
assignments rather than planning from scratch each year. In other words,
it's worth the initial effort to produce professional looking assignment
sheets, notemaking sheets, bibliographies etc. If you can save teachers
work, their interest level will rise.

Pru Mitchell


6. I am a teacher librarian at both the senior and junior campuses
of Thornbury Darebin S.C., Thornbury, Melbourne.
 If you can answer this question you will win the Nobel prize.
 I was also a teacher before becoming a teacher librarian, and
never used the library before. I also have teachers walking in
 with assignments I've never seen. They seem to think that any
information they might want is a) sure to be somewhere in the library
and b) quickly and easily accessible. This still happens in my junior
library after years of attempting to get that liaison you are talking of.
Only at our last faculty meeting we were discussing this. We are
fortunate to have a teacher librarian who is also a TL4,
in charge of VCE. She has some influence. She is going to
 formally raise this problem in the Curriculum Committee, decisions of which,
  float down to faculties and which can make binding policy
 on the school. I think this is really the only way to do it
after years of trying. You do have to get someone with authority
in the school well and truely on side.
Jenny Campbell.