Assignment 2 ramblings

It is quite difficult to consider where to go with this assignment, there seems to be so much with it that it can be difficult to know where to begin with it. I know it is meant to be a vision for the next 3 years and how to implement it. But it seems like a big job, multiple readings to consider - it seems like a whole semester assignment rolled into 4 weeks, especially to do a good job on it.

I am unsure how to proceed, I keep thinking I should use the information from Balnaves' (1996) Appendix C readings but again, with such a variety provided it is hard to look through and consider. I might try and look at that now and see how it goes. Let's start with the Guidelines for strategic planning (p.85). The first point talks about taking the time to what makes sense in my school:

What are the prominent issues?
This is a hard one, being part time and trying to get the library back on track last year and on top of all its own issues I suppose there wasn't much inclination to consider what else was happening or not happening in the school. This year, we have a new LST teacher and Curriculum Coordinator so that is a bonus on what is happening, there is a bit of a renewal process going on in regards to previous expectations. I think looking at this aspect, I am trying to see how the library can be an integral part of the teachers' teaching. This links to issues in whole school approaches I suppose, I haven't been involved in whole school approaches that have been formulated and so the library isn't there in it. Also the school is up for school renewal this year, I am hoping I can be involved in this to look at the library and its role. One area that the LST is taking an avid interest is Reading and Spelling and sees this as an issue, one other area that I see an issue is with the information process procedure, using something like the NSW ISP. One final one is forming a whole school information literacy document for teachers and TLs for the Catholic Schools. This is a year by year document that will allow teachers and TLs to see what needs to be covered to match with ICTs and ACARA. There are issues with the DLP and teachers having their planning on it and the time management of it. Also I am the information specialist and I have expectations of helping maintain the system, I would like to consider more PD in this area to do a better job. Literacy is a concern too, in a broad sense and the role of the library in promoting literacy - I would like to do a better job in this.

I am not sure if this is what they mean about issues but this is what I see at the moment as concerns in my school, there are some big ones but some little ones too.

What do I personally wish to achieve?
1. further collaboration with teachers to work with them in their units
2. using the library to promote literacy for the students
3. whole school information literacy document, linking ACARA, ICTs and information literacies together.
4. leadership within the school - a realisation of the TLs knowledge and abilities in helping affect policy in the school.
5. more specialist knowledge of the information system - technically.

What terminology and style of approach are appropriate?
 This is something that needs further research, I am trying to work more with the principal and I need to look at the idea of leading from the middle I think as Donham (2005) talks about, there is a need to think about transformative leadership but perhaps looking more a the leadership capabilities (Wizenried, 2010; Davies and Davies, 2005) than the style of leadership needed. I think I need to consider that some of the ways will change with what I am hoping to achieve, for example with the collaboration, I am taking a whole school view with trying to get planning sheets set up and giving these at staff meetings or in pigeon holes but then actually talking with teachers individually about what they are wanting, if the library can help either through resources or through team teaching. I can also look at providing leadership in how the TL can help them. The library to promote literacy is for me, my staff and the principal to consider with promotion to students and teachers and the community through the newsletter. So all of these things need to be considered in regards to terminology and style.

What amount of effort is justifiable and can be resourced?
This is key, I only work 9 hours a week and need to consider what I can actually do in this time considering there are lessons to do, meetings with my staff, buying/resourcing discussions, meeting preparations, and because there is a lot of work coming in from other classes this is quite time consuming at the moment. Generally most of what I have to do can be resourced fairly effectively with minimal outlay, there would be some with PD, that would have to be discussed with the principal but the effort is the concern - what is justifiable, what is worth doing? I think the information literacy program, the collaboration are definitely worth it. I think discussions about the others and trying to allocate certain time frames would be worthwhile to achieve this.

So this covers the first consideration of what makes sense in the school - what I can do and what is justificable. Now I need to address the core elements of strategic planning and this is the big component.
I think I will need to do up some surveys for  staff, students and parents, I will need to discuss this with the principal and see what I can feasibly do in the timeframe for this assignment.

Information Literacy - the beginning

Whist doing the initial readings for information literacy from Langford, L. (1998), Abilock, D. (2004), and Herring, J. and Tarter, A. (2007) I thought to myself it seems very familiar, fairly self-explanatory. I kept thinking back to teaching English and Science, having to write my assessment pieces from scratch, identifying what I wanted the students to achieve, did my task allow that? Then scaffolding it in steps so the students could see the different parts and when explaining it, working through the different phases as they did the task to make sure they were doing what was expected. Then I also remembered the students that had difficulty, that they required more scaffolding, more structure to achieve it and remembered the basic questions - what are you looking for? what do you know or need to know? Where do you need to be at the end?

Then I remembered doing this exactly with my Year 12 English group on Frankenstein. I think it seems that some students 'get' the process without being told the name of it, but as a teacher (or teacher librarian) we need to be aware of it for the students that don't know. Looking at my schools we have a large ESL population, a lot of these students wouldn't know the process, or where to start, even our learning support students would need to know the steps but we mustn't forget that other students will need the process when they do come up against something that is new and different and they think they don't know where to start. So explicit teaching of a process is important - what process? that is something that needs to be decided considering all the different ones out there. It is a process that needs all staff to be on board with and doing in all subjects across all year levels and not left to the TL to teach it during their library lessons.

Action Research and Collaboration

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.