In honor of Georgia O’Keeffe’s birthday, let’s talk about the many ways school librarians and art teachers can collaborate. Librarian and teacher collaboration is a must for school librarians! Collaboration provides teachers, librarians, and students with new opportunities, resources, and ideas. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Start small! Collaborate by helping the art teacher to find resources for classes. Steer teachers to online art collections that can be used for research, examples of specific art types, and more. Explore Google Arts & Culture together and plan a lesson based around the art collections, games, interactives, and other resources located there. Find an art-based lesson that the two of you can do together from the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Plan school-wide celebrations for events like Dot Day or plan to host a student art gallery in the library!
Ready for a bigger challenge? Combine library skills with art by having students do research and then produce an art project. Collaborate with the art teacher to use discarded library books to create amazing works of art. Teach students to analyze art as a primary source using resources from the National Archives or the Library of Congress. Design a Project-Based Learning unit that will assist students in using their art skills for a real-world application. Work with the art teacher to design a maker space and maker projects in the library.
Think outside of the box. Your imagination is the only limit to what you can do when the school librarian collaborates with the art teacher! As always, you can look to TeachersFirst resources and blog for inspiration. What ideas do you have for collaborating with the art teacher in your building? Please share them in the comments below.