Show and Share

We are holding our second 'Show and Share' week in school at the moment. And no, before you ask, this does not involve any risque activities! The idea of the week is to give staff (both teaching and support) the opportunity to experience aspects of good practice around the school or find out more about areas of practice in school that they may not necessarily be overly familiar with. A number of staff have been put forward by their heads of department to be observed. Sessions are varied and include: demonstrations of laser (and other) technology used in DT, HLTA's leading a session on their role in the classroom, how to create a positive learning environment (English lesson) and pupil engagement in music (music lesson).

All staff members receive a prospectus which includes a timetable of the sessions which are up for observation and observers must complete a proforma detailing: what they will take away from their observation; any questions they'd like to ask the member of staff they observed and, a response from the staff member who was observed. Staff also use the proforma to explain what they will do next (or, how they will use the information/practice they have observed). I have the task of putting together said prospectus (from the head's text), timetable and proforma and then disseminating it to all staff (which means uploading it to our VLE as well as providing printed copies).  I also look after the booking system - which is great because it means that I get to chat to staff about their plans for their sessions and also to 'sell' the sessions to their colleagues.


It's a great idea which received some great feedback in a 'debriefing' session following our first Show and Share week back in January. Staff responded extremely positively and enjoyed the opportunity to show what  they could do and share their ideas with their colleagues. Everyone agreed that the school was positively buzzing with great ideas and good feeling (even more than usual). (In fact here's a link to one of the Show and Share sessions from January and also our head's blog about the week)

It got me thinking about a few things.

• How lucky I am to work in a school which values the contribution of all of its staff and encourages all of them to share good practice, regardless of whether they QTS or not.
• How schools work so much better when staff feel comfortable and confident enough to share their classrooms, ideas, feedback and criticisms freely with each other.
• While I know my colleagues pretty well there's still lots I don't know about what they do and I could do my job even more effectively if I did!
• Librarians are already quite good at doing this kind of thing!

Yes, indeedy.

Since I joined the school nearly 5 years ago, with no library or information background, I have had brilliant support from my fellow librarians, in particular Gill (recently retired from Durham Learning Resources), my fellow LIDS (Librarians in Durham Schools) and, more recently, my colleagues in the Youth Libraries Group. Without their openness, their willingness to show me what I needed to know and their willingness to share their knowledge I would have been lost.

For anyone out their in the library-verse, particularly the school library-verse where I know a great deal of people are lone information professionals,  I can heartily recommend getting involved with your local network of librarians. If you are new to the profession, perhaps from a different background (as I was), don't be scared.

We're a very giving bunch!