The Teacher
I am excited about working with Jeff Garver, the high school language arts teacher in our small K-12 public school. Jeff is an experienced teacher of over 16 years, and is very knowledgeable about the 8th-12th grade language arts benchmarks and standards, and the language arts area of our School Improvement Plan. He and I talk easily and share ideas back and forth, but this will be the first in-depth collaboration we will have done in a formal way.
The School Library Media Specialist
I have been a K-12 school librarian for 24 years, except for one year in a self-contained third grade classroom. My position is not really full-time librarian as I have always taught one or two other classes a day as well, such as elementary or middle school language arts, and elementary and/or middle school computer classes (as specials). I wear several other hats as well...RIF Coordinator, Secretary for the Technology Committee, and have served on the Child Study Team. I received my BS in Education from CMU in Dec. 1982 with a Major in Library Science (K-12) and a Minor in Reading (K-9). I am currently taking class six and seven towards a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science at Wayne State University.
Reflections
I will admit up front that I have mixed feelings about the upcoming collaborative unit plan assignment. I feel excited about it, but at the same time a bit intimidated as this will be the biggest collaboration unit that I would have attempted, especially when it is a large percentage of my grade for a grad school class. I want to do a good job, not only for a grade, but for Jeff and for our students.
One thing that I admire about Jeff is that he is willing to try new things. For example, when I first approached him about doing this collaborative unit with me, he astonished me when he immediately said that he would, even though I could not give him any details at that time. He said that he was impressed with some other things that I had done and knew that whatever we worked on would be something great that he could use with his students. So now, I live in fear of letting him down!
Another thing that I am concerned about it is the time factor. Today (June 5) was the last day of school for our district, so you would think that it wouldn't be such a problem. But he has two children that he will need to take care of during summer vacation, plus he is starting a college class in the evenings beginning on Monday. I am taking two grad classes as well, plus serving as the church secretary, and volunteering in my school library. We are both busy. Maybe that will help us to stay focused and on task, though, since neither of us will have time to waste! One of my strengths is organization, so I will make sure that we have the paperwork (forms, etc.) that we may need in order to smooth the planning.
Jeff is very comfortable with technology and so am I, but in bouncing ideas off each other we discovered that neither of us is very familiar with video production, which we may like to try in this unit. We will have to see what comes of this idea, but I like knowing that we will both be growing and learning new skills as teachers right along with our students.
In a very informal preliminary brainstorming session at the tale-end of lunch the other day, we tentatively decided that we will probably do our unit with the 9th grade class in mind and it will probably be the Romeo and Juliet theme. He is not satisfied with this unit in his curriculum and would like to revamp it. The hope is to create this collaborative unit to be used this next school year, so that is exciting as well. It is wonderful to know that the time and energy that we put into it will create a product that we can actually use this next school year, instead of it just being an assignment. He said something about teaching the collaborative unit around Valentine's Day, which I think is pretty fitting considering the theme! It will be a long time to wait, though, to be able to truly assess the value of what we come up with.
It is my hope that this collaboration project with Jeff will encourage other teachers to try some collaboration projects as well. I have collaborated with a few other teachers, but this project is on a larger scale. The collaboration experiences that I have had as the SLMS have all been positive, so I am looking forward to this project and the challenge. Here's to a unit that will excite and challenge our students as well!
