AASL Standards in Practice: Collaboration

Even though they were adopted in 2018, the AASL National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries still feel new.  I wanted to hear from librarians in the field about how they are putting the standards into practice every day.

I recently had the opportunity to chat about the school librarian domains and competencies of AASL Shared Foundation III: Collaboration with Dr. Zenobia Johnson, school librarian at Mary Lin Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia.  We discussed how school librarians can help students and fellow teachers and staff with maintaining a culture of communication and cooperation.

Of course our conversation was tinged by the topic of the moment: COVID.  How do we encourage collaboration when our focus is on keeping safe by keeping socially distanced and wearing masks?  Thankfully, while collaboration may look different in these COVID times, the need to foster collaboration remains one of the shared foundations of school librarianship. 

One of the key concepts that came out of our conversation?  Collaborating outside the library space!

When our schools here in Atlanta went online for instruction in March 2020 and stayed online for most of the 2020-21 school year, students lost access to a key collaborative space: the library.  Even now, with limits on social contact, collaborating in the library space can be challenging.

During online learning, Dr. Johnson continued to facilitate collaboration as outlined in Domain A: Think using online tools.  Thanks to school resources available through Google, her students could actively work together using Google Meet for virtual face-to-face communications.  In addition, the district provided access to Zoom, which allowed students to continue to meet and interact collaboratively and engage in important digital citizenship lessons with Dr. Johnson. 

Dr. Johnson notes that her students are now “ecstatic that the library is open again!”  But even though students are engaged in the library in person, COVID guidelines still limit their ability to work closely.  Thankfully, the ability of students to exercise their creative muscles continues to extend beyond the library space.  Domain B: Create calls for librarians to help learners “build on their own prior knowledge and create new knowledge.”  During online learning, Dr. Johnson introduced students to tools like Google Slides to collaboratively create projects and share their learning.  Students continue to use these online tools even now that they are back at school in-person.  This year, for example, students will create slide decks for the annual school-level science fair, rather than the traditional tri-fold boards, to share their presentations.

Collaborations with community partners like the local bookstore Brave & Kind bring authors in to chat with students through virtual visits while in-person visits are not an option due to continued restrictions on visitors to the school building.  Through these virtual visits, Dr. Johnson continues to promote students’ access to diverse perspectives (Domain C: Share) and to stimulate group discussions (Domain D: Grow).  

Stay tuned as I share more discussions with school librarians about how they are putting the AASL standards into practice every day!