OASL 2015 Fall Conference Presentation | Partnering for Student Success: Earning College Credit in the Library

By: Paige Battle, Grant High School teacher librarian, Portland, OR


This year’s OASL (Oregon Association of School Libraries) Fall Conference in Coos Bay, Oregon, focused on the theme of “20/20 Vision” as teacher librarians and library staff members look clearly toward the future of school libraries. Conference keynote speaker Mark Ray told attendees that we need to move beyond the phrase of “preparing students for the 21st century” since we are now 15 years into that century! The phrase we should be focusing on in connection with student learning is “future ready.”

OASL 2015 conference logo

Taking that phrase to heart, Lori Wamsley and I wanted to showcase how we have partnered to offer high school students an opportunity to be ready for the next step in their academic future.

We presented a session entitled “Partnering for Student Success: Earning College Credit in the Library” on behalf of ACRL-OR and their efforts to support professional development opportunities along with their goal of increasing collaboration between school librarians and academic librarians.

The session focused on sharing how Lori and I have worked together to create an opportunity for students to earn up to six college credits in their high school library through PCC’s Dual Credit program. We provided a brief overview of the program and discussed:  

  1. how we collaborated on the development of course syllabi and course activities
  2. how assessment of students and the courses are done.

The main takeaways from the presentation included:

  • detailed explanation of how Dual Credit works
  • student benefits – both financial and academic
  • application process for both the high school elective class and for PCC
  • statistical data
  • course syllabi for two PCC education courses
  • programming ideas that extend learning beyond the walls of the school library

Discussing PCC’s Dual Credit Program with OASL conference attendees and sharing how that program is being offered (currently in Portland Public Schools at Grant, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Wilson and at Sandy High School) was very rewarding for Lori and me. I am always appreciative of opportunities to showcase the learning happening in my school library and the ways that librarians can partner with one another across “borders” on behalf of student learning.

These partnerships are becoming more and more important for librarians. Based on statistics from a 2010 study conducted by OUS, students who participated in accelerated option programs, like PCC’s Dual Credit, were more successful in college.

Feedback we received from OASL attendees included:

  • library staff in attendance who wanted to share materials with their district and work on implementing a similar course in their high school libraries
  • PPS librarians who are new to the program and wanted to learn specifics about required course assignments and outside-of-class library and literary events
  • a middle school librarian who was gathering information for a family about college credit learning opportunities their 8th grade student could potentially take advantage of in the future

Lori and I would be more than happy to provide information for anyone interested in learning more about the PCC Dual Credit program. Links to our OASL presentation can be found at NWCentral.org.


Paige Battle is the teacher librarian for Grant High School where she teaches a dual-credit course to junior and senior student library assistant interns. Paige is currently a member of YALSA’s Michael L. Printz Award committee. Email: pbattle.ghs@gmail.com Twitter: @Grant_Library

Lori Wamsley, Ph.D., is a faculty member at Portland Community College in the Education department. She teaches online courses in the Library Assistant program and Paraeducator program.  Lori has previously worked as reference and instruction librarian. Email: lori.wamsley@pcc.edu

7 comments

  1. Hi Jennifer…this is a neat thing, and I wanted to comment on it, but I am getting some weird message saying I couldn’t comment because I wasn’t logged in to the email account which I am using to read the message. Odd.

    Tony

  2. Here is what I wanted to say when I got the weird message saying I couldn’t post a message:

    What courses were these that were conducted via the school libraries? History? Literature, Research? Inquiring minds want to know!

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