I am finding the information excellent in this subject and the readings are really inspiring to 'get motivated' in my schools. The problem I am finding is that being part time (and it feels like I harp on this all the time) I can't get into it effectively. One day a week in a school does not effectively allow relationships to form and true collaboration to occur - it takes a lot of hard work just to clarify to teachers what you can do for them but if you don't fall on a day that they have non-contact or if it is only in 1/2 hour blocks it is very difficult to find times to do it and do it right. I know there is the idea of principal support and I feel that technically the principals do support me but that there is so much else happening in the school and when others can work that sometimes it is not feasible to be changing the scheduling. Perhaps if I worked more frequently there it would be better. I do have that some teachers really don't see my potential in collaborating with them but see it as more work.
Harada (2004) really clarifed the Action Research side of things and I can see the benefit of it and hope to include it in my future lessons (at the schools where I have managed to talk to one teacher [starting small as Page (1999) indicated] and found some movement towards collaboration). But again it was with a kindergarten class where flexibility is able to occur quite easily but working to a curriculum where a number of Essential Learnings have to be achieved or where certain types of assessment need to be completed I still have doubts sometimes that it can work effectively across a school. Maybe it is the pessimist in me.
I will say that last week I did my first lesson with the Year 7s on a topic they were studying in class - basic collaboration at the planning level but a start. It seem to go well - it was mainly focused around refreshing students knowledge about our library database but I also introduced them to our Regional library online to look at different results. I will see how our lesson goes this week with some new pointers.
Having worked in a school 1 day a week for many years it took a long time to build relationships. It wasn't until I started doing casual days on their classes as well as my permanent 1 day that these relationships started to flourish. Leaving the school 1 year ago after 7 years was quite a difficult thing for me to do as I realised I had built up really strong relationships with people. Keep at it and you will break through one day without even realising.
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