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The precursors of collaboration are cooperation and coordination.

Cooperation = Teacher and Media Specialist working independently.

Coordination = Teacher and Media Specialist working together toward a common goal.  They meet to discuss goals but not to share responsibility.

 Collaboration = Teacher and Media Specialist have an expanded planning connection.  They share goals and have carefully defined roles.

Loertscher’s Taxonomy of School Library Media Programs

1 thru 4 = Cooperation, 5 thru 7 = Coordination, 8 thru 11 = Collaboration

To Collaborate

• attend departmental or grade level meetings
• keep record of units taught in the past
• take advantage of teachable moments
• become involved in developing local standards
• be aware of state standards

To Promote Collaboration

• connect with early adopters
• offer suggestions for upcoming units
• talk up successes through newsletters, bulletin boards, displays, & meetings

Administrators can . . .

• ensure teachers have planning time
• use subs to free up classroom teachers
• adequately staff the media center so that M.S. has time to collaborate with teachers
• encourage training of student interns
• promote a climate of collaboration

Questions for collaboration

• Why are we doing this?
• What are the transferrable concepts we want students to develop?
• How will the students extract and gather information?
• How will the students process and organize the information?
• How will students produce their findings?
• How will students, teacher, and media specialist be evaluated?

Collaborative Unit Templates

http://www.indianalearns.org/downloads/Page33Planning.pdf

http://www.libsci.sc.edu/miller/collaboration_template.pdf

http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/images/media/Collaborative%20Program%20Planning.pdf