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The School Librarian & TeachersPayTeachers vs Open Education Resources

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Teachers Pay Teachers vs Open Education Resources for the School Librarian - Teachers Pay Teachers offers a mixed bag of instructional materials at prices ranging from inexpensive to very costly. OER offers completely free and open licensed instructional materials from an array of educational institutions. Here's my reasoning for choosing TPT. #NoSweatLibraryEducators are sharers, and School Librarians are super-sharers as evidenced by the 12,000+ members of LM_NET listserv. Through my 13+ years as a Middle School Librarian I’ve created documents for Library Lessons through online service providers and freely offered these to other School Librarians who asked for ideas.

After retiring I put my Library Lessons and administrative documents into my Google Drive and shared them. Then one day—when I’d exhausted my monthly stipend paying some unexpected bills—I realized I might earn some extra retirement money by selling my library lessons & management materials on Teachers Pay Teachers.

My first hurdle was an emotional one: overcoming a natural reluctance to charge for teaching materials. Then, as I looked through the Properties settings on my computer files, I realized that nearly all of my work had been created here at home, in the evenings and on weekends—because what school librarian has any time to work on such things during the day? These lessons were my intellectual property, and while I’m perfectly willing to share ideas, if someone wants the work done for them, I deserve to get something and they should be willing to pay for it.

TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS

Teachers Pay Teachers logoTeachers Pay Teachers stated goal is “to make the expertise and wisdom of all the teachers in the world available to anyone, anywhere, at any time” and they provide an online “marketplace where teachers share, sell, and buy original educational resources.”

I established a brand—”No Sweat Library“—and since TPT asks sellers to give away their first upload, I offered, for free, my Library Lesson Planner Template which I’d amalgamated from the best of other planners I’d used over the years. I also offer some of the same free materials I share here on my blog. (click on the FREE Librarian Resources link in the menu bar!)

I began to update my Library Lessons to current content standards and National School Library Standards. So began the long (and continuing) process of making my Library Lessons worth a purchase. Considering the countless hours I’ve put into updating and improving my intellectual property, I feel completely comfortable with the reasonable prices I’ve attached to each product. (My hourly rate x time it takes to create=how much time & money I’m saving them & their school district!)Gender Equity & Marketing Our Teaching Materials - Teachers Pay Teachers has become a valuable educational resource for teachers all over the world. Learn why I chose to contribute and why I think it's important. #NoSweatLibrary

Recently I read an explanation about selling from a gender equity standpoint. I’ve never come across this approach before and it’s extraordinarily powerful, especially for teachers and librarians who are predominately women.  I have permission from the author, Monica Froese at Redefining Mom, to quote from her article:

Most women struggle with asking for money. … I don’t struggle with asking for money for my hard work. … I am 100% unapologetic about it and let me tell you why.

  • FAMILY CURRENCY: For every minute I’m sitting at my desk creating amazing content and resources for the world to consume, I’m taking time away from my kids. That is some pretty serious currency. The tradeoff for spending time at work is making money so I can give my kid’s a better life. I can’t do that if I don’t get paid.
  • EXPERT STATUS: It takes a lot of energy and mental capacity to be an expert on a topic. … It’s not only a valuable skill…but it requires a lot from me to live up to my promises of being an expert. If I didn’t charge people…you wouldn’t take it seriously and I’d be wasting my time.
  • VALUE: People don’t value what they don’t pay for. Period.

It is not wrong to be compensated for your hard work. I spent a lot of years being in the room with c-suite male executives. Men have no problem talking about money, asking for money, or stating how much they are worth. The reality is having open conversations about money is important for gender equality. I choose to exist in a world where my daughters see me working hard and being fairly compensated for it.

This wonderful article has made me more determined than ever to provide high-quality resources for teachers and other school librarians…and to appreciate that they are willing to reimburse me for the time I’ve saved them!

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Open Educational Resources LogoLately I’ve also been pondering the growing trend toward Open Educational Resources. What is OER? First proposed at a UNESCO conference in 2000, it became reality a year later when Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) put their 2,000 courses online. Making this university-level content available began what the MIT president called “the global intellectual commons” and since then more than 300 colleges and universities around the world have contributed OER courseware and materials. The purpose is best expressed on the Open Education Consortium-About Us webpage:

…probably the most basic characteristic of education … is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built. Open Education combines the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources.

OER Commons - Open Educational ResourcesPublic K-12 education has stepped into the OER movement through the OER Commons, which offers over 40,000 items for primary and secondary educators. As a partner with FutureReady Schools and FutureReady Librarians, OER Commons promotes research-based and personalized lessons that comply with Common Core ELA and Math Standards, NextGen Science Standards, the C3 Framework for Social Studies, and AASL National School Library Standards.

Most importantly for us, the Open Educational Resources initiative doesn’t just mean access to free—as in no-cost—materials but it also means free as in openly licensed, that is, we can copy, modify, and redistribute OER materials! Here are some examples of the “5Rs of OER”:

  • Retain: House them in a digital cloud space, such as Google Drive.
  • Reuse: Once in a digital cloud space, the teacher has access to frequent use as needed.
  • Revise: Teachers make edits so that the content best fits the readiness needs of their students.
  • Remix: In some cases, content is taken from one source like a lesson or online textbook, and merged into something completely different, such as a video, which is more accessible to the learner.
  • Redistribute: Acquired resources can be shared with as many people as desired, without a cap on numbers.

The beauty of the OER Commons is the huge number of contributors: universities; public institutions, like the Library of Congress, the Getty Museum, TED, and NASA; and several educational providers, like Khan Academy and Read Write Think. In addition, here are more OER online sources from which to find materials:

For the School Librarian, OER sites don’t seem to offer much in the way of middle school library lessons, so I will continue to provide products for sale on TPT to best benefit my colleagues. Eventually I can make some of my products available to the OER Commons to supplement what’s there and give my lessons a wider exposure to public education.

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How To Propose School Library Lessons to Teachers

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How To Propose School Library Lessons to Teachers - School Librarians can create great Library Lessons, but unless teachers bring students to the library, those lessons just stagnate in our file drawers. Here's how to convince a teacher that a meaningful library visit will enhance classroom instruction. #NoSweatLibrarySchool Librarians come up with lots of new ideas for school library activities—or we get them from other librarians—and many seem fun and educational for students. If the library is part of student scheduling, we can present a variety of these lessons at regular intervals, but for most of us, the biggest obstacle to implementing our ideas is how to get teachers to accept a lesson and bring classes to the library.

We can’t expect teachers to waste their constrained class time on something that is “just fun.” We must convince them a library lesson visit is relevant to what students are studying in the classroom. So, whenever I find or imagine a great lesson idea, I ask myself 3 questions:

  1. What subject curriculum standard does this best support?
  2. How do I make the lesson irresistible to teachers and students?
  3. Who are my most accommodating teachers in this subject?

SUPPORT SUBJECT OR CURRICULUM STANDARDS

If we expect teachers to bring students to the library, we must offer something that will enhance classroom activity, not take time away from it. Even if a lesson serves a good library purpose, it’s only useful if we can tie it to a subject standard. This is where knowledge of subject curriculum is essential, and to help me choose the best subject to support, I use my Library Lesson Curriculum Matrix which documents topics being studied in subject-area classrooms during the school year.

Once I decide which subject is best suited for the lesson idea, I then fill in my Library Lesson Planner with the subject’s Standards. If you’ve not already downloaded PDFs of national standards for various curricula, here are links to some of them:

Show Teachers Quality Library Lessons: Use My Backward Design Planner - School Librarians will get positive responses from teachers when proposing Library Lessons using this Library Lesson Planner. The backward design model starts with Subject Standards & National School Library Standards to create a high-quality and meaningful lesson for students that enhances classroom learning. #NoSweatLibraryThe next step is to fill in the Library Lesson Planner with subject-area Understandings, Key Questions, and Objectives so the teacher sees at a glance how the lesson aligns to their curriculum. We can usually find those from scope & sequence documents or teacher lesson plans. These additional entries go a long way toward convincing a teacher that we’ve planned a lesson to enhance their classroom activities and engage students in worthwhile learning.

Next, add the National School Library Standards, Understandings, Key Questions, Objectives, and so on. I use the same guidelines to create every Library Lesson:

  1. Focus on a single objective.
  2. Teach only what students need for the time they are in front of me.
  3. Give students an activity that allows them to practice what they’ve learned.
  4. Avoid anything that does not achieve the purpose of the visit.

My teachers appreciate having a role in the lesson presentation, so I try to incorporate that into my Instruction Plan. When students see us teaching together, they learn that the school librarian is respected by their teacher as a partner.

MAKE THE LESSON IRRESISTIBLE TO TEACHERS & STUDENTS

I read a lot of activity ideas on listservs and blogs, I hear about them at meetings, trainings, and conferences; what grabs my attention are hands-on sorting or game-type activities, unique handicraft products, or lessons that have students using technology. These activities also appeal to teachers and they’ll get students excited and engaged.

Make Your School Library Lesson Irresistible to Teachers with an Activity Sample! - Inspire a teacher to accept a School Library Lesson by creating a sample of your hands-on activity. When they see that students will do something to enhance their classroom learning, they're more likely to want a library visit. #NoSweatLibraryTo inspire the teacher, I create a sample of the game or handicraft, or print screen-shots of the technology so they can see what students will be doing. This extra step is the clincher for the teacher accepting the lesson…and often the stimulus for others to want a library lesson when the teacher shows the sample around! (I can use the sample during the lesson to model with students…that is, if I can get it back!)

Hands-on activities are a necessary alternative to technology in schools with a large digital divide. I’ve written about my favorite foldables—the biocube, the basketweave for summarizing, and the versatile accordion book. I use a concept attainment sorting activity for my 6g Library Orientation and I also use a sorting activity for a 6g lesson on organization tools.

APPROACH THE MOST ACCOMMODATING SUBJECT TEACHERS

Once we create our Library Lesson Plan, we can seek out a “friendly” teacher in that subject and give them a printout of our Plan along with the sample activity. Even as a new librarian to our school, we already have teachers who are strong library supporters. If we’re really fortunate, we’ll have a few subject “buddies” who are always willing to try any idea for a library visit.

Just as we need time to ponder a teachers’ ideas for us, the teacher needs time to consider ours, and giving them the Lesson Plan lets them do that. Supportive teachers will give an honest response on the efficacy of our idea and, if yes, convince their teaching partners to try it. They can also help us refine our lesson presentation to be even better and more relevant.

HOW TO MAKE IT WORK

Once we convince a teacher to let us do our lesson, we want to implement the best delivery. If we give a slide presentation, make it illustrative and minimize text. Use the Notes feature to create the dialogue/script and print that out as a prompt during the presentation.  And keep it short–fewer than a dozen slides–so students have plenty of time for the activity. (See Modeling Digital Literacy for a full explanation and a handout.)

We want to minimize downtime, so have activity items or craft supplies already on tables and have computers ready for login. Borrow extra wastebaskets and put next to tables to minimize student “travels”. (My custodian always has a half dozen or so extra wastebaskets for teachers to borrow.)

Finally, after the lesson, ask the teacher for input on ways to improve. When we do that, teachers will want to bring students year after year for our lessons, and will come to us to ask when they can schedule library visits into their lesson plans!

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