SLIS 794 Librarian Interview 1 Jennifer Thrift COLLABORATION

 I had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Thrift.  Mrs. Thrift is an elementary school librarian who works at a large intermediate elementary school in Charleston County School District.  Mrs. Thrift operate the school library on a flexible schedule and she has been the librarian for 20 years.  I was most impressed that Mrs. Thrift has been able to run a flexible schedule without challenge for 20 years.  Mrs. Thrift said that the administration has been adamant about keeping the library on a flexible schedule and has made adjustments to the master schedule to accommodate the library flexible schedule.  For example, the school runs their special area schedule on a color schedule rather than a Monday through Friday schedule so they can have four special areas (PE, Art, Music, and Computer) without compromising the flexible library schedule. Mrs. Thrift collaborates with classroom teachers with a focus on grade level curriculum.

Collaborations begin with either Mrs. Thrift approaching the teachers or teachers hearing about successful collaborations from other teachers.  Collaborations are typically focused on ELA, Social Studies, or Science, however, Mrs. Thrift has recently expanded into a math collaboration with a Starbucks-themed library transformation.

Mrs. Thrift states that relationships with teachers and students how one successfully engages collaborations.  Teachers have to trust you to collaborate with you. She states that "good work spreads like wildfire" and flexible scheduling is very hard- much harder than classroom teachers think.  To engage successfully, you have to be able to talk to teachers, meet after school, etc...  Another element of engagement is finding out what students are excited about and capitalizing on that.  Mrs. Thrift recently attended a Get Your Teach On conference that helped her boos engagement.  Her library is all about transformations that give students a decorated, themed space for rigorous academic learning.  This year, the school-wide GYTO theme is Magic.

Mrs. Thrift states that her job is to support what is going on in the classroom.  This is the way she gets buy-in from the teachers.  Teachers care about their standards being met over anything else. Teacher-backing drives administrative support.