I hear you when you say you are pessimistic about seeing changes in education. In speeches I give, I sometimes liken education to “Ground Hog Day” – the movie. We just keep living the same day over and over because we just can’t get it right. But if you didn’t believe – didn’t still have hope – you wouldn’t be doing what you are doing now. And you ARE making a difference!

Like Nancy, I’d still recommend the teaching profession because it’s a passion-driven profession that can make a difference for kids, even with a bunch of non-educators (and maybe non-educated) making the policy decisions. If teachers aren’t there to push back, to keep believing and understanding and advocating, then what would happen?

Some day something good is bound to happen. Until then . . ,. I’m with you and Nancy and a lot of other great teachers and friends . . . we just keep plugging.

Anne

I do think the culture is shifting as more faculties develop a partnership outlook, but it’s too slow, too slow.

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You know, John — Most of the teachers that I know are all about collaborating with colleagues no matter where they are working or what positions that they are in.

The hitch is that no matter how useful collaboration is, we still only have a limited amount of planning time during the course of a week AND we still have a heaping boatload of individual planning responsibilities that we have to tackle.

Which means we weigh the perceived benefits of a collaborative partnership against the additional time, energy and effort that it will take to pull that collaborative partnership off. Most of the time, outside of the collaborative partnerships with people on our interdisciplinary teams and/or our content teams, no amount of value can replace the loss of our remaining time for completing those individual responsibilities.

Does this make sense?

What I’m saying, I think, is that collaboration is great but it’s time consuming. That means some collaborative opportunities fall by the wayside no matter what.

Rock on,
Bill

Unfortunately, many teachers don’t think of librarians as teachers and close themselves off to the possibilities of collaboration to protect “their” classroom. I LOVE to collaborate with teachers (and therefore the students) and get great satisfaction when students see the cooperation between us.

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Hey Katherine,

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. Jazzed to hear that you think there’s some logic in my position on the role that classroom teachers play in encouraging reading.

And I’m with you on the need for there to be more collaboration between classroom teachers and librarians. I’ll be the first to admit that I almost never reach out to form those partnerships with my librarians.

But that’s not because I don’t WANT to collaborate — or that I don’t see the librarian as a knowledgeable partner. That’s simply because collaboration takes coordination — we have to find the time to meet and to brainstorm and to plan.

Unfortunately, that’s time that classroom teachers almost never have. We’re already usually committed to two or three planning meetings every week — with core teams, with content teams, with grade level teams — and we have traditional tasks like grading papers and emailing parents to tackle.

Added up, those responsibilities make it difficult for us to find time for more collaboration even if that collaboration has the potential to be productive.

Does that make sense?
Bill

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Hey Pal,

Great to see you here. You know that your support means everything to me.

And I’m with you on the “if not us, then who?” line of thinking — but I’ve become so pessimistic about the actual probability of seeing change that it almost doesn’t seem worth it anymore.

Isn’t that frightening? It’s seems like a Sisyphean effort — and that leaves me exhausted.

While I’d like to believe that change is really possible from the ground up, I just don’t — which is why I think twice about recommending a profession to others that has nothing but a ground floor.

Any of this make sense?
Bill

Only place I disagree with Bill? I still urge people (young and old) to go into teaching. Because if we don’t, who will? You can’t make an admittedly godawful situation better by withdrawing and taking your acolytes with you, and leaving only those who believe education is an entrepreneurial “opportunity culture” behind.

Now if only I could get all of my teachers to realize that I am here to help them and that I have teaching experience, technology skills and research time that they can rely on. That word “teacher” in front of librarian is real. Unfortunately, many teachers don’t think of librarians as teachers and close themselves off to the possibilities of collaboration to protect “their” classroom. I LOVE to collaborate with teachers (and therefore the students) and get great satisfaction when students see the cooperation between us. Then the students see the “teacher” in me!