English Leadership Quarterly - Volume 40, Issue 1, 2017

This article details an innovative collaboration between community librarians and literacy educators from a local university and the many benefits that arise from collaborations that draw upon the strengths of each group to advance community literacy. The highlighted collaborations include two projects: Battle of the Books and Harry Potter Battle of the Books. Each collaborative event offered numerous benefits to the library, university and the communities that they serve, including 1) creating a culture of readers, 2) supporting a sense of community, 3) promoting life skills, and 4) introducing diverse literature.

This article shares the results of action research conducted by a teacher-librarian in British Columbia. The findings highlight the value of intentional instruction in online search skills, especially in a collaborative model between the classroom teacher and the librarian. Among these findings: Students lack the skills they need to successfully navigate through online sources/ In an action research project to respond to this need in a middle school, mini-lessons were integrated into classroom research assignments. These were designed to engage students in authentic tasks, allow them to work collaboratively with their peers, and utilize their existing technological skills. The mini-lessons increased students’ skill level in a way that was meaningful and transferable. The impact of collaboration between the classroom teacher and the teacher-librarian were also examined. Collaboration led to a statistically significant higher level of student skill development in this area. Educational leaders at the school can promote this kind of collaboration by advocating for ample teacher-librarian FTE and time-table scheduling that provides flexibility to allow for effective collaboration.

This manuscript focuses on the collaboration among state level librarian, English language arts, and literacy leaders surrounding text selection, evaluation, and diverse voices in curriculum, including the continued need for a focus on diverse children’s and young adult literature, teachers and librarians working together for text selection purposes, including representation and diversity and critical literacy considerations in the evaluation of text complexity, the examination of young adult literature and creator/s of these texts, and cultivating spaces for students to see themselves and others in what they read, with permission to ask critical questions.