Violet H. Harada - Radical Collaborations for Learning

Sharon Coatney, Violet H. Harada, and Bridget Crossman

Rose Brock

Jean Donham

Bridget Crossman

Meera Garud

Anita Cellucci

Gina Seymour

Violet H. Harada

Diane Mokuau

Cassandra Barnett

Sharon Coatney, Violet H. Harada, and Bridget Crossman

There is a growing gap between what schools are asked and expected to do and what they can deliver. The traditional isolated way that many schools have functioned is anachronistic in a time of changing family demographics, an increasingly demanding workplace, and a growing student diversity (Sanders 2006, 2). We believe that educational institutions need to embrace the unlimited potential of innovative community collaborations to successfully lead students into the future.

Genuine change in education requires a learning community that expands beyond the boundaries of the place called school and forges dynamic alliances with diverse groups and sectors. Collaborative relationships are limited only by our resourcefulness and imagination. These alliances may involve universities and educational institutions, corporations and small businesses, government and military agencies, healthcare organizations, faith-based institutions, national service units, senior citizen groups, cultural institutions, media outlets, and community volunteer groups. Collaborative partnerships also vary in complexity. Mavis Sanders (2006) reported that collaborative partnerships range from short term exchanges of goods and services to partnerships that result in a series of events or activities.

We are calling the types of collaboration needed as radical initiatives that transform how we learn and how we teach. The term radical collaboration is based on a key principle from Design Thinking. It speaks to co-creation and is inspired by the desire to learn from, offer, and embrace diverse perspectives within the processes of problem-scoping, idea generation, solutions finding, and innovation (https://www.sensetosolve.com/). Such collaborations demand the blurring of lines among the educator, student, and community partner as everyone in a learning community functions as both a learner and a teacher. These types of collaborations are beneficial to all participants and not based merely on hierarchal needs. Unlike partnerships or cooperative endeavors, each participant teaches, learns, and benefits. Thus, these types of collaborations are unusual, unique, indeed radical. These collaborations may evolve into long-term activities that are bidirectional or multidirectional with high levels of interaction and extensive planning and coordination.

Michele Borba (2018) states that the foundational reason for collaborative alliances is to build an environment where young people understand others and stretch their horizons. Empathy is the core of everything that makes a school caring and makes a society civilized. She says that we are producing a smart and self-assured generation that is also the most self-centered, competitive, individualistic, and stressed on record. We want to grow change makers who make positive changes and inspire others to follow. To do this, we need to move from student-centered to community-centered approaches for lifelong learning and global stewardship. Radical collaborations for learning can model and lead students toward adopting these unique community endeavors as they grow and become tomorrows problem solvers.

This book is written on the premise that school librarians are potential agents of change, who can dissolve the divides and help schools break out of silos. Ryan Dowd (2018) notes that librarians are not merely curators of stuff but that they are curators of people and relationships. We believe librarians can also be consummate problem solvers who can align themselves with others to solve problems. Future Ready Librarians (FRL), a landmark initiative to prepare literate students in a digital age, challenges librarians to be effective catalysts and vital connectors, who can create learning landscapes where issues and problems tackled are real and relevant. Collaborative partnerships with community organizations are one of the seven critical gears of the FRL schema, and school libraries are uniquely able to find and foster these relationships.

Recent learning frameworks, such as the AASL National School Library Standards; ISTE Standards; Next Generation Science Standards; College, Career, and Civic Life Standards; and Common Core State Standards, have similar overarching goals: they promote engagement, critical thinking, and problem solving as students assume more agency and choice in wrestling with ideas and issues and deriving solutions that have purpose and meaning for them.

While leading such collaborative efforts can be intimidating, the benefits far outweigh any twinge of apprehension. The outcomes of these collaborations will be wide and varied, depending on the goals of each school and individual librarian. Importantly, there is no denying the positive impact that these experiences have on students.

The librarians, whose collaborative efforts are featured in this book, passionately speak about their partnerships and identify the following benefits as invaluable to their students learning and their roles as educators:

• Students participate in work that extends beyond them and their school to impact the needs of others. Students are engaged with and within their community.