Media specialists have always struggled to find a balance between being “just” a resource and being a true instructional partner.  How the faculty views your position has a lot to do with how your skills are utilized.  In my applied project, I focused on how media specialists can have an impact on student information literacy skills.  Specifically I worked with a self-contained special education class, a classroom teacher, and a parapro.  The results of my project were mixed.  I do feel that I had a positive impact on the students, but not necessarily an impact on their information literacy skills.  We worked on a job skills unit that utilized websites designed to help students focus on job skills and goals and websites that provided job opportunities.  Students used word processing skills to create resumes, they participated in practice interviews, and wrote thank you notes.  All of the information they created was put into a resource notebook for them to use in the future.  These students will be entering the workforce immediately after graduation and my goal was to take them through the process they may follow when searching for a job. 

 

  • Conclusions

    Research Question:  How does collaboration between teachers and media specialists affect student information literacy skills in a special education class?

    Answer

    Connection

    Collaboration does have a positive effect on student information literacy skills.
    • Observation and Student Feedback
    • After instruction, students were able to locate information independently.  For example, several days were spent looking at the GCIS website.  On the first day, it took approximately 45 minutes to get all of the students logged on to the lap top, locate the website, and log on to the website.  On the following days, students were able to operate the lap top independently, log in and locate the previously used website.

     

    “Collaboration” does not have a definitive meaning within the education community.

    Collaborative relationships are challenging to develop and maintain.
    • As media specialists, one of the biggest hurdles we face is helping teachers understand out roles.  It is a daunting task.  Teachers see us as a repository of information rather than a true instructional partner.  My experience with the special education classroom teacher shows that this mind set is prevalent in education.  As a recent classroom teacher, I didn’t utilize my media specialist in that capacity either.  Creating a collaborative relationship takes time—something that teachers don’t have a lot of.  Why would someone give up hours of time to work with someone they aren’t sure is capable or knowledgeable?

    Conclusions

    • Collaboration does have an impact on student information literacy skills.
    • Collaboration is a challenging relationship to create between a media specialist and a classroom teacher.
    • Students benefit from working with instructors other than their classroom teacher.

    Recommendations

    ·         Media specialists should work on creating collegial relationships with teachers prior to attempting collaboration.  This can be achieved through attending department meetings, providing resources when asked, anticipating and suggesting resources without necessarily being directly asked, and showing the faculty that you are dedicated to student achievement through media center programming and services offered.

    ·         Teachers are not always aware what role the media specialist plays in instruction.  We must be our own advocates and show them that what we do does have an impact on student success. 

    ·         Special education students have a particularly important need to improve information literacy skills. The students I worked with will enter the work force after graduation and must be able to locate the information they need without the guidance of their classroom teacher. 

    ·         Special education job programs need to make the connection between community skills and future employment clearer to those students so that they understand that community skills are not just something they have to do, but training for a future job.

    Educational Significance

    What difference will my findings make?  Unfortunately, I didn’t discover the secret key to making collaborative relationships click.  I didn’t figure out how to measure information literacy skill growth with my special education population.  So, why are my findings important?  I did discover through this project that even if your results aren’t quantifiable, intangible results are important too.  Just today one of those special education students came into the media center to locate an audio book.  She was with a friend from another special ed class and I overheard her saying to the friend, “We’ll wait for Mrs. Hoppenrath because I know she will be able to help us.”  My biggest result is not one that I am able to connect back to my research.  The biggest result is that I had an impact on those students and that they now know they can come into the media center with any question and I will be there to help them.  Another student volunteered to come down to get a replacement overhead bulb because he knew that I would be there to assist him.  His teacher (not the one I worked with) shared with me that any time she has a media center errand that needs to be done, he is the first volunteer.  And he is the student who felt like the job skills unit wasn’t very beneficial. 

    Information literacy skills are what is needed to locate, find, and use information effectively and efficiently.  All students benefit from honing these skills, but special education students benefit even more because they are the ones who will need practical information immediately upon graduation and won’t necessarily have educational support to help them do so.  Skills that we take for granted—finding the phone number for utilities, finding the help wanted section of a newspaper website, finding resources available to disabled people—are difficult for intellectually challenged people. 

    Focusing on the media specialist’s impact on student information literacy skills is important because helping to equip these students with critical skills will help to contribute to making them independent. Research has shown that effective collaboration does have an impact on student achievement. 

    Reflection and Conclusion

    In the beginning (how’s that for an auspicious start…), I wanted to work with a science teacher because science teachers have a history of underutilizing my particular media center.  No one wanted to work with me.  Research shows that until a teacher believes you are intelligent and capable, he/she would rather not collaborate with a media specialist than risk wasting time.  The only person who was willing to work with me was a special education teacher.  The only reason she was willing to do so is because of how I interacted with her students during their media center orientation.  What took all of the other classes one period to complete, took her kids three days.  She saw that I was patient and that I modified the material to suit their needs so when I approached her with my applied project, she was open to working together.  She picked the focus of the unit, job skills, and then proceeded to give me everything she had ever done with job skills in the past.  It was kind of like, well, here is what I have done, see what you can do with it.  Our working relationship was never collaborative in the sense that we were working together to design instruction.  I was more like a substitute teacher than an instructional partner.  That was a big wake up call.  If someone who valued what I had done with her students viewed collaboration in this light, what must all of the people who didn’t want to work with me think?  Am I just an overpaid clerk in their eyes?  I made the connection to all of the research I had read—just like students don’t care what you know until they know you care, teachers don’t care what you know until you prove your competence.  The next applied project question may be, “How do media specialists make classroom teachers realize that they are instructional partners and not just hired help?”

    As much as I planned out each day’s instruction, there were many issues that I did not anticipate.  One was having to be tech support to not only the students (which I did expect) but also to the teachers (did not expect).  After the introductory activity, students used laptops to access a job skills website/database.  It didn’t occur to me that some of them wouldn’t know how to even open the laptop much less log on using their student ID number.  Fortunately, I am an experienced teacher and unexpected events such as these don’t rattle me too much.  Helping the parapro open her laptop was interesting…  While I was in their classroom, I also fixed another computer problem and hooked up the television to the computer—not really a part of my instructional plan.  I built extra time into the lesson plan because I knew that these students would take longer—it turned out to be much, much longer.  Originally instruction was planned for a little over a week.  This project took more than two weeks to complete.  Every step took three times as long as I thought it would.  Even writing thank you notes took three times as long and all they had to do was copy what I had written onto a card (I am glad I bought the economy sized box of thank you notes!). 

    Completing my applied project will affect my practice in the future.  I will be an even more visible presence in department meetings and continue to be proactive in sending out information and resources to teachers as I find them.  Students’ lack of information literacy skills is made evident every day in the media center from simple things like looking up a book on the OPAC to locating supporting critical information for a analysis essay.  By being visible and contributing in small ways, such as suggesting book titles for summer reading or sharing articles as I come across them, I am building collaborative relationships.  Although this building process can be frustrating at times, in the end it is the school community that benefits--students, teachers, media specialist, administrators, and parents.