Librarian Interview: Ashley Ridge High School

 I was able to spend a day with the librarians at Ashley Ridge High School at the beginning of November. The librarians, Jen Traeger and Lauren Spivey, work together to create a high school library program     which supports all of their students and teachers. I interviewed them about the Collaboration competency because I felt they were the perfect team to speak to this competency.

The level of collaboration visible in their library made the interview exciting and interesting. Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey have been working together for several years, and one of the ways they have collaborated with each other and their teachers that they are most proud of is their breakouts built for different content areas. They gained ideas about breakout boxes from attending a session at a SCASL conference one year and have not looked back. Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey have worked with history teachers, English teachers, and a culinary arts teacher to create breakout boxes on a variety of topics.

Ms. Traeger has also collaborated with one of the special education teachers at ARHS to do story time every few weeks for her students. Ms. Traeger works with the teacher to select picture books which connect to the content the special education teacher has been covering in class. I was able to visit on a day when story time was taking place, and it was a positive and successful experience!

Both Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey have also worked with the teacher cadet program at ARHS to provide materials and books, and Ms. Spivey helps collaborate with students to run a student-led book club during their lunch break. They have also begun collaborating with students and teachers to create student written book reviews to share with the school community.

While they work well together, Ms. Traeger and Ms. Spivey feel it can be challenging getting teachers to embrace using the library as another space to challenge students. Teachers often feel overwhelmed and like they lack the time to deviate from their long range plans. They are continually trying to get more teachers to collaborate with them other than the ones who already do.

They both feel collaboration is fun and worth the effort it takes to make it successful. They are glad they've been able to build positive relationships with some of their teachers in order to make these collaborations possible.