Supporting Teachers’ ICT Curriculum and Pedagogy: On-going Professional Development

As the teacher-librarian at my school, I fully feel that a large part of my role is to support the teachers and aides at my school. I have always felt that I am in a unique position where I have the flexibility to see and visit different learning spaces around my school while also welcoming and working in my own LLC. I love being able to bring new ideas and resources with me to work with all these groups so that we can all learn and teach better.

This Infographic made the rounds a few years back but it still so relevant…

(J. Murphy, 2013)

In order to respond to the needs of our school community, there are a few things I feel need to be in place.

Accessibility

The most important aspect of being able to support teachers in their development and learning is to be easy to get to. I always ask the teachers at my school to shoot me a message if there is anything that is needed or that they would like a hand to organize for upcoming projects. I often get emails or texts during the day which keeps me in the know of what is happening. Being accessible means that the teachers feel comfortable and able to reach out to me when they need to. My library space is also always open for them to come in and peruse materials or to talk things out.

*A note about the “Professional Collection”: I used to have a section in the library for teacher resources and a parent section as well. Due to district and administrative policies, I am no longer able to offer those. I feel it is a real loss since we have new staff nearly every year, it can be difficult for them to get started or have materials at the ready right away. Having a central area for resources with someone at the helm who knows what is available is invaluable, in my opinion. I would always have a welcome back session at the start of the year to highlight and remind teachers of what amazing resources we had so that they would be utilized to their full potential. Housing professional readings and journals were also useful because I could see what was being circulated and it would give me a good indication on where to offer service.

 

Listen, listen, listen some more

The biggest part of my job is to pay attention and know what is happening in the classrooms so that when the students come to me in the library I can support or enhance their classroom learning. This can be great when a teacher lets me know ahead of time – at one of my past schools, my admin availed me to year plans at the start of the year so I could see at a glance what fell where. Other times, I have created surveys so that I can track monthly happenings. My district is on MS Teams so creating a Form to send out to teachers would be an easy method of surveying their needs. Beyond these more formal methods, simply listening (okay I may be a bit of snoop) when I walk down the hall or in the lunchroom, I often hear conversations that can alert me to trends that I can support. For example, a quick conversation with our pro-d chair where she said there were a lot of teachers going to outdoor learning sessions is leading me to create a Collection of books and resources to ease that transition.

 

Curating things that matter

There is SO much information out there! Thinking back to June and the amazing and fantastic resources flying at us left, right and center, I recall how overwhelmed so many teachers were. Our district had an amazing IT team who worked hard to put tools in place for us but there were daily emails from them, from our admin, from district resource teachers sharing helpful things but also too many things. Not all of it was relevant to my teachers, our level or our school. I became a gatekeeper of sorts, weeding out what was needed and helpful. Likewise, I do the same for many of the subscriptions we have to educational sites or organizations. I peruse them and offer highlights of useful items to teachers for their grades and interests.

Advocating

The best thing I can do to help them meet the ICT professional needs of the staff at my school is to advocate for them. In my position, when I work in different classrooms and with every teacher, it becomes quite apparent where deficiencies lie. When I see inequity of tech equipment because a teacher was new to the school and did not know what was available, or that there is one classroom where the WiFi connection is truly deplorable, or seeing that moving more of our teaching online is really tough for a lot of my peers – I speak up. I ask for more tech and facilitate acquisition, I tell them that it isn’t normal to be constantly dropped from Zoom meetings and get IT to investigate, I ask for time and organize after school sessions to work with the teachers who could use some time acclimatizing to online apps and tools.

Going forward…

I know this year is not the norm. I know this year is not what I am used to. I know this year is very different and that my school needs me to operate differently. I know I can’t fully offer all the services I was offering before. I know I need to be patient and kind to myself and know that I am doing my best while working with the constraints placed upon me. It is hard and I have been frustrated but I know that my colleagues are all feeling it too. I have really made it a point to focus on the present and the half of the school I currently service – it has allowed me to get to know those teachers better and I think in the long-run, as I build these stronger connections, it will be beneficial to us all.

References

Murphy, J. (2013). I am a {social} librarian [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/connect/infographic-portrait-of-a-social-librarian