the team approach

bernadette winter
with the elementary library team
rockford school district 205
rockford, illinois

Rockford is an urban community consisting of industrial areas, an older city center, and new residential subdivisions. Rockford School District #205 is a charter district encompassing the city and a large suburban area. Attendance centers vary by the age and size of buildings along with the economic area that each serves. All schools have library/media centers which vary greatly in size, organization, and the number and quality of materials in their collections.

Consultant Role

Several years ago a decision was made to ask the professional elementary library/media staff to serve as a team of consultants in an effort to equalize the professional services offered to individual buildings. Prior to this, most of the library/media centers were operated by library aides, under the direction of building principals and the district coordinator of library services. Presently, consultants evaluate an individual school's needs in order to develop meaningful programs for that building as well as to strengthen its library collection by providing direction concerning acquisitions.

As team members, consultants provide special services for the district in addition to their building level responsibilities. They write a newsletter for the benefit of staff throughout the district alerting them to new ideas, resources, and services. Consultants sponsor workshops for resource aides dealing with reference materials, audiovisual equipment, and book mending. Consultants developed a handbook to assist resource aides in library routines and procedures. In-service sessions conducted for professional staff members include storytelling, computers, and literature.

Consultants regularly assess an individual building's library collection and operation. Procedural and operational changes are recommended as needed to facilitate access and use. In additional consultants evaluate resource aides in conjunction with building principals.

The consultant team has developed and maintains a districtwide, computerized book list to assist each building with their library book orders. While ordering is not limited to the list, this has helped to simplify and improve the ordering process.

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All district library material orders are centrally processed. This includes ordering, cataloging, shelf and catalog card production, labeling, and other clerical duties necessary to make the material "shelf ready" before it is sent to a receiving school. Consultants check catalog card filing as these materials are incorporated into school collections.

Curriculum Involvement

Serving on curriculum committees has become a vital part of the team member's job. The Rockford district has curriculum committees on the district level where policy is set. There are also curriculum committees in each building where these policies are modified to meet the specific needs of that school.

Elementary librarians serve districtwide on the curriculum committees for language arts, computers and mathematics. These staff members become the "experts" in a subject area and help keep the rest of the team current. Team members serve on building level committees working with the teaching staffs to effectively implement new curriculum requirements.

With the current pressures on education to introduce high technology at the early elementary grade levels, to implement more math and science requirements and to emphasize a better understanding of literature, the team member's time is well spent serving on the curriculum committees.

Special Projects

Team members have worked together on various special projects over the years. Working with the director of instructional resources and his staff, team members have provided on-camera and off-camera assistance for a community supported program on youth alcohol abuse and crime. They have acted as editors and technical writers for Illinois History, a video tape series compiled by the Rockford Instructional Resources Department.

During the Bicentennial year, team members devised, built, and circulated three Bicentennial Traveling Trunks which contained information on colonial history. The trunks included early toys, spices, handmade scap, replicas of coins, and early American documents as well as recordings and filmstrips on the era. During this time, several team members wrote and produced a sound filmstrip for elementary students on early Rockford history. The Instructional Resources Department then converted the program to video tape and the program is now a part of the Illinois history series.

The recent revival of storytelling as an effective and pleasurable way to encourage reading led the team to produce a series of Storytelling Boxes, each on a different subject: i.e., cats, dragons, monkeys, mice, and bears. The boxes contain books, stuffed animals, puppets, and ideas for storytelling programs. The boxes circulate through the district library department to all school libraries.

Team members have worked together to write grants and share the benefits when they were approved. Of particular interest have been the Illinois Arts Council grants for Writers-in-Residence. Poets, fiction writers, and storytellers have presented programs at several schools under these grants.

School Closings

Because of declining enrollment, Rockford has closed 23 attendance centers during the past 15 years. In some cases, the age and condition of the building was a determining factor in the decision. Another factor in the closing was the annexation of Protectorate District #211 in 1968. Some of the annexed schools had small, inefficient buildings and these were also closed.

The elementary library staff has developed a method of dismantling and redistributing library materials from a closing school. This process involves several steps which the team handles as a group in a relatively short period of time. First, all material is recalled from circulation and thoroughly weeded by members of the team. Next, catalog cards and shelflist cards are pulled for each item saved during the weeding process. Having evaluated the needs of other schools in the district, most materials are sent to the schools where the closed building's students are being transferred and incorporated into that school library collection. Any remaining material from the closed school is donated to other district or community programs. This process has helped to equalize individual collections among the various elementary schools.

Team members play a crucial role in the selection and dissemination of those materials saved from a closing school. With firsthand knowledge of other school library collections, members can quickly identify needs and assign materials to appropriate collections.

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Community Activities

The team members work with a number of community organizations. The school librarians and the Junior League have developed a creative writing program in the schools. Teachers submitted individual children's stories to a committee composed of parents, teachers, students, and the librarian. The books selected were then sent to the league which assumed the financial responsibility of publishing. "Project Author" has become a district project and is now sponsored solely by the Rockford School District. Many of the schools have volunteer typists and book binders who "publish" the children's books. Selected books from each building are entered in citywide and statewide competitions.

The elementary library team cooperated with the Rockford Public Library staff to develop a series of video tape programs of children reviewing their favorite books. This series was called "Pot of Gold" and supplemented the public library 1983 summer reading program, "Reading Rainbows," a commercially produced video tape series of book reviews. Both series were broadcast on the local instructional television channel.

Team members serve on the committee which plans the Northern Illinois University Conference on Children's Literature. The conference brings together authors, storytellers, poets, and illustrators for a two-day seminar. This annual spring event is open to teachers, parents, students, administrators, and librarians.

The school librarians, the Rockford Public Library, and Northern Illinois Library System share resources and materials in a cooperative network, bringing workshops and book exhibits into the area The Rockford Public School Materials Review Center is open to all area librarians. This type of coopation and interaction make each collection available to more patrons, and involves all of the participating members in new ideas and approaches to better serve the community.

The consultant program in the Rockford School District has been in effect for the last eight years. It is a means to provide superior professional library/media services within the limited financial resources available. With the improvements created by the cooperative interaction of team members, the library department looks forward to the challenge of managing future problems with efficient solutions and developing innovative programs to meet district needs.

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