Staff Development

The first thing that struck me in the "Teachers and Librarians Collaborate in Lesson Study" article by Linda Bilyeu was the mention that this method of Lesson Study is core in Japanese schools.  This made me very curious about school librarians in other countries.  How do school librarians across the world compare?  Are they valued differently by their schools?  Do their teaching methods vary greatly across countries?  Do other countries even have school librarians?

The second interesting thing about this article was that teachers take a whole day for Lesson Study.  I think this is a great way to really delve in and think deeply about one lesson plan.  Teachers have enough varying activities throughout the day - planning, observing, and reflecting - to hold their attention, and yet all these activities funnel into making one lesson plan the best it can be.  And most importantly, such a group effort really creates an opportunity for collaboration, in which all teachers, including the librarian, are placed on the same level to help each other with the lesson plan.

As I began reading the Bishop and Janczak article, "Conducting Effective Staff Development Workshops," it seemed to immediately bring up the question of how to balance staff development with regular teaching.  In the midst of a lot of teaching, can it be difficult to justify staff development at the expense of more teaching? The article does eventually get to that question, but only to point out how to advertise the workshop.  Perhaps the article should also make a point of justifying how teachers can stand to take time out of teaching - for example, because they will gain skills to better equip them for teaching.  Otherwise, the article was really informative, talking about all the prep work for a great staff development workshop.

I thought the most interesting piece from the Gilmore-See essay in Coatney's book about the librarian's role in staff development (probably because we just talked about technology in class) was about the librarian as technology trainer.  Because the librarian is most likely to have and teach technology in her library, she is responsible for keeping up to date with new technologies, and probably also for purchasing most of the software and hardware for the school.  I think this is a great role for the librarian.  She needs to stay on top of technology to provide her students with the best education in information literacy.  But she can also keep her staff up to date.  Perhaps this is a solid reason why librarians are so important - they keep current, and they are adaptable to change, whether in technology or otherwise.