AASL Experiences #3: Jami

My third conversation about the AASL Shared Foundations was with a middle school librarian named Jami. Jami is the media specialist at the school where I teach, and I chose to talk to her about how she encourages students to Collaborate in her library space. We also talked about her collaboration efforts with classroom teachers during our interview. Jami has a semi-fixed schedule, so she sees each 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Social Studies class every two weeks. For 6th grade classes, Jami spends the majority of the year getting students acclimated to the library: familiarizing them with what’s available, where everything is located, and how they can access online and print resources. For 7th and 8th grade classes, she incorporates research skills into Social Studies lessons to support the topics that teachers are covering in their classrooms.

For all three grade levels, Jami aims to provide as many opportunities as possible for students to collaborate and learn from their peers. For example, during her lesson with a 7th grade class this week, students analyzed a primary source related to the Civil War. She set them up to collaborate and use problem-solving skills in order to determine the topic of a map, and she only gave them a small section of the map to use before she showed them the entire map. Students also worked together recently in all grade levels to construct a local building out of LEGOs. The major challenges that she faces when encouraging collaboration among students are when students don’t want to work together, or when students don’t feel as successful after the project/activity as they would’ve been had they completed it on their own. She said it is also difficult sometimes to meet the varying levels of students within a single class, and that collaboration can either help or hinder that need.

The more conversations that I have regarding the AASL Shared Foundations, the more I notice how connected they are. Jami even pointed out how collaboration increases engagement, which is another Shared Foundation in the AASL standards. The competencies for Collaborate are related to the competencies for Explore in that students can be given opportunities to try new things, ask questions as outlined in the competencies for Inquire, and work together to make meaning and connections. Creating experiences to accomplish the competencies outlined in the AASL standards takes intentionality, and for some media specialists, it also takes creativity to manage time so that these experiences can be planned effectively.