Honestly, it has been a stressful couple of weeks. In order to adequately explain the situation, I first need to supply some background information.
The district in which I work has two middle schools. Amy, my collaborative teacher, works at Harbor Lights. She teaches 7th grade Language Arts along with Amy D. The other middle school is known as Mac Bay, and the two 7th grade Language Arts teachers there are Mary and Carrie. Cindy is the middle school librarian and she travels between the two schools. I am currently conducting a practicum with Cindy on Thursdays.
The Language Arts department received new textbooks and supplemental material this year, after working with books over twenty years old. The department decided that they would receive the book The Lightning Thief as their supplemental material, so they could teach the mythology standards set by Michigan's Department of Education. Taking into consideration that they are working with new materials, the department is in the process of sorting through what will be taught and the best method to implement the lesson.
I have found that the collaboration project that began with Amy M. has now grown to include three other teachers at two different middle schools. Cindy and I have had the opportunity to sit down with both sets of teachers, at the two middle schools. Unfortunately, we have not had the opportunity to sit down with all four teachers at once.
During our two meetings, with each set of teachers, we have encountered a lot of confusion and contradictions. For instance, one set of teachers would like us to guide the students only to online sources, the other set would like both. One set would like us to teach proper APA citation the other MLA. One set would like us to guide them to classical Greek and Roman myths and legends, the other would like to include Nordic and Asian.
What has been our greatest concern, as media specialist, is how the teachers are going to address the questionable content. Many parents and administrators are already questioning the teaching of gods and goddesses. Also, as Cindy and I gathered research print and online sources, we addressed the questionable art work that the students may encounter. If you are unfamiliar with Greek and Roman mythology, often the god, goddess and scenes depict a naked figure. Our print collection is very limited because mythology has not been taught, in a number of years. So, as we rush to purchase new materials through Amazon, most of the material is Young Adult or Adult rated. We have found that most of the new material is targeted at these audiences. Also, as we peruse our existing collection many of the images show naked figures. When we addressed this subject with our two sets of Language Arts teachers, each teacher had a different opinion. One was very liberal, one very conservative, and two somewhere in the middle.
Cindy and I have decided that the media specialist role is to guide them to all print materials in our collection. We have created tags, through our Internet portal, to websites that are in-line with the print content. We have asked the teachers to address the questionable content to the students and we will reiterate the point, once the research begins. Let me make it clear that all the sites and books that we have selected are done tastefully, and have a tremendous amount of educational material.
Since the media specialist does not assess the students, no grade on a report card, we are taking the role of research and technology liaison. Since the teachers are still debating between a PowerPoint and Publisher project, Cindy and I have decided to gather the resources that the students will need to successfully fulfill either project. Until the differences are ironed out and an overall objective and rubric for the unit are created, we are focusing on research and technology materials. We have made suggestions and have provided ideas for both projects, but the department is still unsure about their research and project criteria.
Once a decision has been reached, Cindy and I have a couple of ideas on how to share this project with stakeholders. We will announce the project and post a few examples in both the middle school's newsletters. We will make weekly Classline announcements. We will create an announcement on the websites and provide links to the sites the students will be utilizing. We have decided that if Publisher is utilized, we will gather several copies of the student brochures and display them throughout the libraries. If PowerPoint is utilized we will upload several of their slides and use them as screen savers for the two school's computers. Also, since we plan on utilizing Mino cameras for either project, we will submit our video footage to the daily announcements broadcast. We will ask the news room to post footage, once a week as the footage is shot.
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Now that's a real world teaching scenario if I've ever heard one! Your circumstance is wrought with differences in teaching styles, issues of power, and differences ideologies about the curriculum-- to name a few. Nothing out of the ordinary though. That's why teaching is much more complex than some people understand. I'll try to address some of the issues you raise.
ReplyDeleteQuestionable content- If you have not done so already, you should check with your collaborating LMS and see if she has a book rationale letter template or book challenge form that can go out to parents ahead of time. The book rationale is a letter from the educator indicating the merits of the book chosen which outweighs any objectional content within it. See if she also has a readily available censorship policy. Both of those things should take care of any objections parents might have to the content.
Print versus electronic resources- Since there are two of you, you could explain that it is not a problem for one of you to pull the print resources and reserve them on a cart and the other to compile a list of electronic resources. When I was an LMS practitioner, that is how my partner and I would divide our responsibilities.
Outdated materials/cultural emphasis?- One way to get around the dated print materials and to nullify the debate about which culture to focus on is to open up the unit to myths around the world and have students to create a timeline for each continent that highlights popular myths from each cultural group. There are a lot of nice (free) time line creation tools available on the Internet. The rationale for purchasing say one print reference item that includes mythology from different cultures would seem to trump the rationale to buy a lot of print resources on Greek mythology. Just a thought.
MLS/APA debate- There's a online tool that will take students' work and put it into whatever citation style you choose. Again, can't think of it offhand. My thoughts would be that you could use this software to teach students the differences between the two. Have an assignment where they have to detect the differences between the two and have a conversation about what academic fields tend to prefer certain citation styles and why.
At the end of the day, since you are serving in more of an information specialist rather than an instructional consultant role just make sure your team wiki page has a clear description of how the technology objectives will be met and how you will use data from student work to convey that learning to the stakeholders.