If you ever sit in my classroom, you will find that I have a song to go with just about everything. When I talk about collaboration, I always sing the first part of Vanilla Ice's song, "Alright stop! Collaborate and listen." Silly? Yes. Truthful? You bet. To collaborate, you have to be willing to also listen. I collaborate most often with teachers of the same subject. For example, all three of the Algebra 1 teachers develop unit organizers, unit time lines and tests that are the same. We vary our instructional approach but teach at the same pace. When a lesson does not go well, we discuss ways of doing things differently. Teachers from other subjects, especially in courses with an end of course test, collaborate on ideas for like students or even bell ringer activities.
Life happens, and collaboration among teachers may not occur until a staff development day. Sometimes quick emails serve as an effort to collaborate. With this quick fix of collaborating, I am not doing as well as I could be in engaging with other teachers. And since our time together is short and few and far between, I do not always brainstorm enough ideas before helping in the development of a plan.
Time needs to be set aside for me and other teachers to meet together and brainstorm. Also, more collaboration among different subjects could benefit me as well as others. Luckily, I am in a district that not only cares about scores, but also about meeting the needs of students. We break down test scores and look at the individual child and also the demographic group. Even though our test scores were above the state average, they are allowing us to visit other schools and collaborate with them to find new ideas and ways of reaching students. In addition, we hope (but have not put into practice) to meet with the middle school teachers. They can help me know my students' strengths and weaknesses and could help develop a plan before the school year even begins.
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