Don't Just Cooperate ... Collaborate

Good advice from a grant-getting guru

Give Barb Kerns the "go-team" approach any day. Whether helping her students understand Victorian literature or rallying her fellow staff members to apply for grant money, Kerns — a librarian at Greece Arcadia High School in Rochester, N.Y. — believes that collaboration, creativity and focus are the keys to success.

"Librarians have changed over the years," says Kerns. "We're not just the people who stand at a desk and check out the books." So when opportunities arise to close gaps or boost achievement, Kerns is quick to bring teachers and library staff together to identify and solicit grant money.

That strategy has paid big dividends, in the form of numerous grants awarded to Greece Arcadia over the past several years. Kerns is something of a grantwriting guru in her school, responsible for netting more than $90,000 in funding to date. (Of course, she has her eye on the milestone $100,000 mark.)

"When you're writing grant proposals, working with others brings new perspectives," she says. Too often, she says, grant pleas go unheeded because of a lack of focus. "You can't just say, 'give me money for a projector,'" Kerns says. "You have to tell what the projector will be used for, why you need it, and how students will benefit from it." And when it comes to digging out the details, you just can't top a librarian — "the ultimate generalist," as Kerns puts it.

Kerns sees a precedent for grant collaboration in the everyday activities of the school. "All kinds of studies are talking about the effect of library interaction on student learning. Indeed, the library has evolved from a book depository to a school's nerve center. At least that's the case at Greece Arcadia, where 1,300 students and 100 staff members combine to initiate more than 1,500 classes utilizing the library this past year (as opposed to the national average of 500 classes). "The new constructivist theory is that students learn best when working things out with others," she says. "The same goes for grants."

When teachers and librarians brainstorm, the results can be highly creative. Kerns recalls a teacher whose high-schoolers were finding it difficult to grasp their assigned Victorian literature. "We discussed the problem, then wrote a proposal for money to support hands-on learning," says Kerns. The school won enough money for the staff to locate authentic items from the historic age — photos, clothing, amusements and tools. The students got a taste of Victorian morals and lifestyles, and the payoff came when the class showed enhanced understanding of such books as Tess of the D'Urbervilles — an achievement boost that was reflected in test scores.

In an age of standardization, students need to be challenged, says Kerns, and "PowerPoint simply does not fill the bill anymore." Kids from elementary school on "have become accustomed to cut, copy and paste. They have to be exposed to more sophisticated ways to express themselves." The school's staff is writing a grant proposal that incorporates the new Gale Science Resource Center online database as a literacy initiative and a tool to push students to higher-level thinking.

Using collaboration, creativity and focus, Kerns helps her school land two or three grants per year, usually in the $500 to $5,000 range. Most of her requests are for cross-curricular needs; only a few pertain specifically to the library. "The pain is in the writing process," she admits. "Writing is not easy, but it's worth the time."