This year our assistant principle scheduled all specials including library on a very fixed and tight schedule. The teachers are already complaining that there is no time in the library schedule to come in for collaborative learning with the librarian. Last year the library had classes in for several weeks working on projects, this year it looks like mostly mini-lessons. Clearly, the teachers love collaboration and have now recognized how valuable it is to their students' learning. I think a lot of collaboration also depends on the administration of the building. Without their support, it's hard to get a schedule that allows the flexibility for collaborative learning.

A school needs to have strong support and outlook to change. So many successful models already exist for any school willing to re-create it's library to become a PLC. Collaboration is key to build upon what is already working instead of "reinventing the wheel."

I think that when a plan is set to create a collaborative PLC a number of things must be present to make it a success. I first think that there needs to be a willingness and a flexibility to do things that may be uncomfortable or inconvenient at times. It's unfortunate that the school that I currently work at, the current librarian has no desire to make a strong collaboration with the teachers within the school. I think that to make it a success, there needs to be the outreach by the librarian to get the collaboration started and then build relationships on that to make a PLC.

I think the most important aspect to a successful collaboration and ways in which schools can build on them is all in the modeling. When students see how collaboration can work when it is done correctly, or other staff for that matter, then it becomes easier for them to know when it is not happening correctly and steer it in the right direction. Obviously the most important place for this to start is with the the teacher librarian who can really motivate teachers to jump on board. I know a lot of teachers really don't recognize how useful it can be, especially with the constraints that many feel standards based education has placed on teaching. But I do think that teachers can be shown just how positive collaboration can be, and it can only move up and on from there.

The success of a professional learning community would come mostly from sharing what works with each other. When I am looking for ideas on a lesson plan I go straight to the internet to see plans listed on the subect I want to teach. I want to see what others have used. Soemtimes my best lessons have come from someone else's ideas. Of course modifications must be made to match the dynamics of a class. So, if there is a way to list successful lessons for others to use, to me, that would be the most beneficial.

The most logical place to begin collaboration would be between teachers. That's where it started in my school about five years ago. This led to collaboration between teachers and the school librarian, and we are now seeing collaboration between teachers and counselors and between students and counselors. Last year, our school even began collaborating with leaders in the community. This certainky has not been the norm in most of the schools in our district, but we are slowly seeing them following the lead. The only reason that we seem to be a bit ahead of tghe game is that our principal, many years ago, pushed us down that path. Many were resistant at first, but we quickly came to see how effective collaboration between teachers and between teachers and our school librarian could be. It only made sense to expand collaboration further out into the school. Collaboration with the outside world, giving students more hands on, student driven opportunities, is what we are building towards.

The concept of the media center as the hub of the school is a new one for the elementary school where I work, but the teachers are actively changing their teaching to take advantage of the positive effects of collaboration. We are hoping to be authorized as a PYP school in November, and our PYP coordinator moved her office to the library this year. It has been a wonderful change. Teachers meet in small groups with the PYP coordinator every week, and the media teachers can be called in to meetings at a moment's notice. As a result, everyone seems to have a better sense of what everyone else is doing. This year, more than ever before, I notice teachers working together even in their own rooms to develop and improve their PYP planners. The "closed classroom" is becoming a thing of the past.

I think to have a strong and lasting PLC or professional community within a school there needs to be a strong leader behind the scenes. I currently don't work at a school, but I think the teacher librarian should be the main motivator. However, I have noticed that school library staffs are very small. Usually there is a teacher librarian and a clerk. I think that if library staffs were larger then there would be more time for the teacher librarian to organize and develop the PLC. I think that if a school lacks a PLC it’s because the teacher librarian does not have enough time to dedicate due to too many responsibilities.

Schools can build on collaboration in a library by including the Teacher Librarian in all of the plcs. Teacher Librarians are collaborating with classroom teachers all of the time....it should be built in the workday. I liked the example of giving a new teacher time built in to plan with the teacher librarian. This library model is new to my school. Once my principal sees the benefits of a Teacher Librarian collaborating with classroom teachers I am sure she will give us sub time to do it once a year. :o)

When I first started teaching in the district three years ago, I had to learn a whole new language of acronyms. PLC mixed with RTI won the prize for the most powerful little word in my new position. The face of RTI and PLCs has changed and improved over the past three years, and in our school PLC's have become a way to plan and essentially "share a brain" in order to make education in a bilingual setting as fluid as possible from their English instruction to Spanish instruction. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a high level of collaboration through our school library simply because in our district, elementary school librarians are only para-professionals. Our librarian is a wonderful person, with strong cultural links to both our Latino and Native American population. However, her background ( not to mention her salary) did not prepare her for the high level of collaboration that exists in schools with professional teacher-librarians. So, when I think of school librarian collaboration within a school, I have to call upon my memory of my own middle and high school experiences- which seemed to be collaborative and effective. At my school, I feel this question should be posed in reverse- how can our librarian build on the successful collaboration among teachers within our program?

By using collaboration as a basis on which to build professional learning communities (PLCs), staff members will be accustomed to working together, listening to one another, accepting and offering help on projects, and understanding the benefits of collaboration for student achievement. A PLC model can then be used for any number of collaborative groupings.

I have now been in two different school districts that have active PLCs. In one school, the groups were built around subject area and even grade level. This allowed for effective collaboration in the sense that I was working with other teachers to solve problems specific to that subject's curriculum. This was great in creating a tight knit group who shared lessons and activities regularly. However, in my new district, the PLCs are purposefully organized sp that the subject area as well as the grade level is mixed. I find this way of organization to be very helpful in collaborating about the "bigger picture" issues like methodology. We are also able to provide each other with "outside the box" thinking because we all look at a situation through different lenses. However, as the librarian, I am only able to collaborate with about five teachers who are in my PLC. I think it would be beneficial for me to be able to move between PLCs in order to take advantage of the potential collaboration time.

I think that collaboration in the library can be a model for collaboration amongst all educators within a building. This is definitely how it started for me. It was easier for me to collaborate with my teacher librarian because she had the time and the space to work with me. It is a little bit more of a challenge to figure out how to collaborate and team teach with other teachers who are trying to manage their own classes and schedules, etc. As I experienced successful collaboration with my librarian and coaches, I realized that I wanted to spread these experiences to my grade level teammates. I think that the collaboration with the librarian was like a baby step that got me closer to more expansive collaborative experiences. Once I felt more comfortable with collaboration, I was able to approach this topic with one of my teammates.

I think that it is almost like spreading a rumor. Once you collaborate with one person in your school, word gets out about what your strengths are and what different people can do to help you out with different areas of teaching. I collaborated with my librarian on a technology piece. Other teachers saw that I was comfortable with technology, so then they could ask me for help with this. It has also worked the other way for me. I have searched out someone who could help me with writing. Then others saw that this person was a big help to me in writing, so then they felt more comfortable with asking for the same kind of help. This seems to be the most natural way to create PLCs within a school.

I think the basis of collaboration is the idea that one party has certian parts and another party has other parts. The only way to make the whole is for both parties to work together and pool their "parts". The library is the most organic place for collaboration to take place in a school. The classroom teacher has the standards and learning objectives that he/she needs to teach, and the library has the technology and resources to help teach that in a broader spectrum than just using a textbook. As the librarians and teachers collaborate together to make learners successful, the idea of working together to make something better should spill over into departments, cores, grade levels, or whatever model a particular school has.

If one Earth Science teacher collaborates with the librarian to create a project about the elements and that project goes well, he/she will tell the other Earth Science teachers about it (hopefully. If he/she doesn't, maybe the librarian steps up and tells the other teachers). Another Earth Science teacher thinks thats a great idea, but maybe suggests adding part C to the equation. And you have collaboration.

PLCs are dependent upon collaboration. If individuals’ strengths are recognized and used during collaborative experiences in school libraries, I believe school wide PLCs would be easier to create, because staff members would already have had a positive experience with collaboration.

The library is a hub of information, collaboration, assessment, analysis, and synthesis. This is why it would be such a natural beginning for collaboration. Schools needs to take what occurs in the walls of the library and expand it to the classrooms. It is important that the teacher-librarian prepares the students and staff. Some teachers get so anxious when something new is presented, so I believe it needs to be a gradual process for it to be successful in a whole school setting of collaboration.

Our local high school has PLC, but it is only collaboration amongst teachers. I would be curious to know how it works and if teachers see benefits in this approach.

Schools can use the library's successful collaboration as a starting point for the rest of the school. Teachers can view how the librarian works with them to help the students to learn and then work with others to achieve similar goals. An art teacher can collaborate with another teacher to work on an art project like hot air balloons that furthers what has been taught in science class when the class goes outside to fly their balloons. Math teachers can work with PE teachers to come up with ideas on how to show students where math is used in sports. The school that my daughter attends and I volunteer at had two teachers working together on book reports. One class was 2nd grade and needed help reading the books and writing the reports. The other class was 5th grade and those students benefited from teaching the younger kids. Once collaboration is viewed as a way to benefit everyone, it will be contagious.

The school library/learning commons is the logical place for collaboration to originate since one of the main objectives for the library/media specialist is to promote school-wide collaboration. Instigating and setting the example of positive and productive collaborative efforts benefits the students and faculty and takes the first step toward the resutling profits of collaboration and PLC's. The process has to start someplace and the inter-departmental efforts will follow close behind. The individual departments often feel daunted by the challenge of incorporating the available technology into their familiar unit plans. With the urgings of the librarian and the tech team, the teachers and students become more and more familiar with the tech tools at their disposal.

I think most people are reluctant to change the way they do anything, until it is proven that another way is better. Especially time-crunched and pressured to perform people. Accomplishing a familiar task in an unfamiliar way may end up just being a waste of precious time. As a leader, the TL has an opportunity to alleviate many of these fears. By creatively documenting the success of collaborative school library experiences, the door will open for professional learning communities to develop. With leadership, and with the benefits being fairly obvious, I think the teachers, and other building professionals will open up to participation in more and more collaborative projects.

I believe that most teachers now-a-days realize the importance of collaborating with teacher librarians to ensure that their students earn a well-rounded education that will support them post school. My school is working on creating an environment that allows teachers and teacher librarians time to collaborate, which I believe is one of the most important aspects necessary to ensuring collaborative experiences. If teachers are feeling stressed about not having time to do what they need to do in their classrooms, how can we expect them to drop what they're doing to work collaboratively with librarians? Time and a progressive attitude towards education will lead to successful collaborative experiences in schools.

The school district I work for has implemented the PLC environment very nicely. This type of collaborative environment has taken several years to perfect and will continue to become a district-wide goal. Our school has implemented the PLC environment and every year that I have been with the school the PLC grows. I do have to say that if a teacher is not comfortable with technology the PLC environment can be very daunting and scary. I do believe that collaboration and planning will begin to take on a whole new dimension in our school once the teachers realize that the teacher-libriarian is just another resource that will make thier teaching much more successful and enjoyable.

It seems like many school initiatives are moving towards collaboration amongst students, teachers, staff, administration, and parents which may make collaborative experiences in classes more prominent and effective. For instance, the Response to Intervention initiative mandated to schools to identify struggling students is an effort to be undertaken by teachers, assistants, counselors, administrators, psychologists, parents and students. Schools not collaborating in this effort are, by definition, not in compliance with the collaborative RTI process. Another example is in my current field, Special Education, where student Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) have to be collaboratively constructed by a host of educators, and the meetings have to be attended by numerous individuals involved in the student's education. These are just two examples of many others that could be given, and just may encourage more collaborative efforts in classrooms and media centers.

The school I work in has built a very dynamic PLC, consisting of both horizontal and vertical articulation but it took several years to reach the level of collaboration and planning that we currently enjoy. While the teacher librarian at the time we began this process was an essential part of the process, she was one of many. Our principal, now retired, empowered the entire staff to take ownership of the experience and while there were differing rates in the amount of 'buy in' and comfort initially, with each passing year the PLCs and the school have become a stronger and more vibrant community for
students and staff alike. This year we have had a change in administration, but hopefully we will be able to continue on the path we have been on.

With most school reform leaders are needed. If the librarian is successful in her collaboration with other staff members then they must document their successes. These collaborators now become building leaders sharing their experiences and achievements. In order to have a school wide change, we need to be willing to use modeling, coaching and the gradual release model with our teachers. Once teachers start to see the benefits within their classrooms they will open up to additional arenas for collaboration.