Collaborate at James Island Charter High with Amy and Melanie

My day at James Island Charter High School, I got to see many collaborations happen throughout the school day.  To start, a teacher called the library and asked if the lab portion was opened 3rd period, it just happen to be so.  Then the teacher asked if one of the librarians, Amy Ball, could teach the website verses databases lesson  from last year to her students, the Amy quickly pulled up her lesson from the previous year, made copies, and was ready to go.  The class came in about 30 minutes later and I got to observe Amy teach the difference between a website and database, and the difference between different databases.  This was not the end of the collaborations, a U.S. history teacher called Melanie Crumpton halfway through the day asking for help on creating a lesson involving primary sources from World War II.  The Melanie and Amy jumped at this opportunity and started finding primary sources for this teacher in databases and print books.  The collaborations did not end here, at the end of the day the librarian that is currently on the leadership team, Amy, collaborated with other members of the staff to update the academic honesty policy for the school.  Each year Amy and Melanie switch who is on the leadership team, they always make sure at least one of them are to keep the library a part of conversations between department heads and administrators.   

There were a lot of interactions going on through the school day between the librarians and the staff, but this is not a normal day I am told.  The Amy and Melanie try to target collaboration with courses that have a little more flexible time to try and collaborate with.  The struggle with high school is so much information needs to be taught in a short amount of time, many teachers do not seek out the library for help or collaborations.  The Amy and Melanie work a lot with a freshmen course in which the students get to explore information literacy in general.  They even do some of the grading for this course to make sure the teachers each year still utilizes the library.  They have their go-to teachers for collaborations, but collaboration is not happening as much as they would like in their library.  

With the challenge of getting teachers to come into the library, Amy and Melanie have a candy jar set up right by the circulation desk in which they keep filled.  This first gets staff members to come into the library, as people drop by to grab candy this allows the librarians to greet the teacher and even have a short conversation about what they are doing in their classes. The Amy and Melanie also send out a "What's New" emails every other month highlighting what is new in the library, they usually get a few responses from teachers asking more about what was highlighted.  Lastly they make sure to host professional developments throughout the school year to get teachers in the library working with some their materials and resources.