1.+Proposal




 * Submitted By: Martha McClintock, Liv Perry, Jennifer Faith **
 * Date: October 29, 2010 **

What can we do to increase the amount of collaboration between teachers and the school librarian in our schools? It is our hypothesis that: a. teachers are not aware of the many different ways collaboration between teachers and librarians can look. b. teachers would collaborate more if we were more "deliberate" about approaching them with requests and collaboration suggestions. c. teachers are very busy, but would collaborate more if they were aware of the benefits of collaboration, both to themselves and to their students.
 * Research Question: **

a. Do teachers know about ways they can collaborate with school librarians? b. What are some effective means we can use to invite teachers to collaborate with us? c. What can we do to show teachers that collaboration will reap benefits without adding unduly to their job?
 * Sub-questions: **

Our Action Research will revolve around two key needs; educating our teachers and administrators on what collaboration is and finding out how to approach teachers in ways that encourage collaboration. We will prepare several ways to do each of these and try them out on different groups of staff members. We will then collect data on the types of collaborative interactions that we have with the different groups of teachers to determine the methods that achieve the best results.
 * Description of Project: **

It is important to recognize that the group consists of three school librarians at different schools consisting of different grade levels. We will not all be using exactly the same methods and we will adjust the tools to best fit our individual levels and staff.

**1.** We will start the Action Research by asking teachers and administrators, in an email, to fill out a Pre-Research Survey. This will give us some background information on past history and present attitudes towards collaboration.

**2.** We will explore some different ways to educate the faculty and administration about collaboration. **a**. We will give a presentation on collaboration at faculty meetings at two of the schools. The other two schools will not get the presentation. At the end of the presentation, there will be an opportunity for teachers to give us suggestions about collaboration needs and methods. **b.** We will send the faculty regular emails on specific topics, resources, tools or events that we would like to collaborate on. In these emails, we will also include quotes about collaboration and about the benefits our students will see as a result of the collaboration. Some possible email topics are: **c**. We will create a catchy flyer ﻿ to grab the attention of the teachers and provide some ideas about ways to collaborate.
 * 21st Century Learning
 * Web 2.0 Tools
 * Literary and Informational Genres
 * Reference Tools
 * Online Databases
 * Evaluating Information Sources
 * Copyright
 * Plagiarism
 * Banned Book Week
 * Writing and/or Illustration Award Programs
 * Reading Celebrations

**3**. We will explore different ways to initiate conversations with teachers about collaboration. **a**. We will send one group of teachers an email requesting a meeting with them to get a copy of their curriculum for the year, to discuss units or assignments that will require support from the library, and to discuss ways that we could collaborate this year. **b**. We will put a colorful invitation in another group of teacher’s mailboxes. The invitation will ask for a meeting on the same topics but offer enticements such as refreshments. **c**. We will meet with another group of teachers face-to-face to set up meetings. We will have a handout about the meeting and offer incentives but we will set up a time for the meeting right then.

**a**. We will record on a calendar when the initial collaboration meeting for each of the groups took place and our general sense of how successful the meeting was. **b**. We will record responses to the emails on collaboration suggestions that we send throughout the year and keep track of the group that the responders were in. **c**. We will keep a monthly chart logging the numbers and levels of collaboration and will note which group the collaborating teacher was in.
 * Data Collection: **

At the end of the year, we will graph the results and determine if the presentation or the method of initiating collaboration had an effect on the numbers and kinds of collaboration. We will also conduct a follow up survey to gauge teachers feelings about the collaboration that we had for the year.

__Week One:__ Send out email for Pre-Research Survey. Send a reminder during the second week. Close the survey at the end of the second week. __Week Three:__ Give Presentation of Levels of Collaboration at Faculty Meeting. __Week Four:__ Start delivering invitations to meeting to set up collaboration. Send repeat invitations each week and attempt to have meetings completed by the end of Week Ten. __Throughout the school year:__ Keep a collaboration journal and a monthly chart describing the collaborations. On the chart, keep track of the groups the collaborating teacher was in.
 * Timeline: **