Please give your definition of effective collaboration in schools as you understand it today. Use at least one example from your own experience to support your definition.
Collaboration to me is teachers working together for a common goal for students. Collaberation comes in many forms planning together before a class. Consulting with another teacher on the best way to reach a student. Having two teachers in a class at the same time working as a team. Our school has a push in system. The SPED teacher comes into the class and they work together using the one teach on assist model. The general education teacher provides the lesson and the SPED teacher comes in and offers assistance to anyone that needs it. Sometimes she shares an alternative way to complete the work. In math class this takes place often. The teachers discuss the needs of the students after the class during thire planning periods. This seems to work well for these two teachers. There is a "pull out" program for reading the teachers discuss when the best time for the "pull out" is. The students are always afraid that they will miss the "good stuff" that happens at school. The reading specialist tries to incorportate the topic that the other students are working on while she has the students. These are some of the examples of collaboration at my school.
Nancy, Those methods sound like you definitely have to use effective communication strategies to ensure that learning take place when working with other teachers and other educational support staff. It's great that your students get to have two teachers in the classroom so that they can learn from the teachers' different methods of instruction.
Push in and pull out are two philosophies of special education that are currently used in many schools though co-teaching has taken a huge leap forward in the past several years. All have their place and all definitely require collaboration to be effective.
Effective collaboration in schools today means working together to contribute positive growth and development with the students as well as the staff. Everyone wants a common goal for the students to achieve and master the skills that are required for the students. In order for this to happen effective communication between teachers needs to take place. The examples that I have seen in the schools I have taught in are the push in and pull out methods. When substitute teaching in an inclusive classroom rooms all teachers pushed in. This was effective for the students as well as the teacher. Effective communication is essential for cooperative collaboration.
Effective collaboration is communicating daily/weekly with your colleagues. Being a special education teacher, I pull my students from their general education classroom. It is important that I collaborate with my general education teachers so that I know what they are learning in social studies and science and if there is a specific circumstance where I cannot pull my students or need to pull them at a different time. Effective communication would be talking on a daily basis, either via email or in person. Email is convenient, but is not always the most effective way to communicate. Exchanging lesson plans, creating lessons together and discussing what worked and what did not would be effective ways to collaborate. Although I do not push into my general education classes, if I helped develop lessons with the general education teachers, they would have differentiation for all students.
I worked with a general education teacher who was very stand-offish and did not communicate effectively. There were numerous circumstances where my students did not come to class. I had to take all my other students with me, stop instruction and go find out why they are not in class. Had we communicated to each other prior, I would not have had to interrupt instruction in order to figure out where the students were.
Selina-Sounds like you had some bumps in the road last year when it came to communication. Often times we will encounter those stand-offish personality people and although it is difficult, we still need to remember that we all should be working together as a collaborative group for the benefit of helping the student. It's unfortunate that teacher you worked with had a negative approach, but sounds like you learned to iron out the wrinkles this year and hopefully will have a more positive experience.
Effective collaboration starts with teachers, administrators, and support staff sharing a common goal. Once all members of a team agree on the established goal and are invested in it, they must find a method to attain it. Since there are many pathways to achieving a goal, they must find a way that they are all willing to try, even if it is not their preferred method. It is during this stage especially that all members’ voices must be heard. When everyone give their opinions, it is easier to gauge the will of the group as a whole. I find this method to be beneficial in my Professional Learning Communities, or PLC’s, that we meet with on a weekly basis at our schools. The general education and special education teachers that teach the same math courses meet together for about 45 minutes to discuss scope and sequence, assessment results, and best practices. During these meetings, it can be difficult to collaborate if a goal is not set. Therefore, our PLC leader sets up the weekly goals and topics to be discussed. They are meant to keep the communication on topic. One topic that we discussed frequently was the student process of retaking assessments. Many people had diverse opinions on the topic, but as a group, we had to make a final decision. Our group leader tried to make sure that everyone’s voice was heard before we finalized a retake assessment process. At times, it can be difficult to collaborate with the number of group members involved and the diversity of teaching background. However, the majority of the time, the group decisions are successful.
Coming to group consensus is a difficult process, especially with a large group and a diverse group at that. Good for you for striving to hear everyone's voice.
Collaboration to me is teamwork. When a group of people are on the same page and working together to help a student or a group of students be successful. Communication is the key factor in communication. in order for the team to work together they need to be communicating regularly about what needs to be done to benefit the students needs and how each person is going to approach this goal. When I was working as the vocational instructor at Elim I was constantly meeting with classroom teachers, the BCBA, and therapists when goals were being written or when there were concerns about a student. In these meetings we discussed where we wanted to see the student progress to in the next year and the different steps to take to get the students there.
Collaboration is working cooperatively with one or more individuals on a common goal for any amount of time. Effective collaboration only occurs when mutual respect and understanding has been established. Only then can a group really come together and communicate in order to meet the needs of the students involved. Collaboration can be as simple as popping in someone's classroom to ask a question about a student, or as complicated as meeting daily to compare data/discuss progress. As a special education teacher, collaboration with multiple individuals in key in order to ensure the success of our students. I must collaborate daily with speech pathologists, social workers, occupational therapists, parents, teachers, administrators, and even the students themselves. This may look different amongst groups, but the key is that we all have the students' best interests in mind and we want our students to be successful both inside and outside of the classroom.
I love your definition of collaboration and the many ways you use it in your school. It is so true that the best interest of our students must be uppermost in our minds at all times!
Effective collaboration to me means that there is a clear, well-functioning and organize system in place where all educators and administrators are working as a team. By working together, there should be an established mission in place to promote what is going to most effectively prepare the students to be successful and accomplish goals and dreams. An example of this within my program would be that all of the staff came together and worked to effectively communicate and create a plan that has been providing positive results of having students go to job-fairs within the district's community and neighboring areas. By prepping them through and doing real-life role-plays with each staff member representing a different "company" prior to going to the jobs fairs, they have gone into each one well prepared and confident. Results of this have had students now working for UPS, grocery stores, and local stores within the community.
Collaboration is a team working together to meet the needs of all students. The collaboration team is comprised of administration, teachers, support staff, paraprofessionals, sometimes parents, and any other people that may play a role in the students’ lives. Not only should the team work together, but they should also share the same goals for the students. When professionals collaborate with each other and share their ideas with the team, the students are more successful.
In my previous blog post, I talked about how my classroom team has been having team meeting to discuss each student, his/her individual academic and behavioral needs, and brainstorming ideas to help make the students more successful. We will have the BCBA, SLP, OT, and social worker attend our meetings so that they can share their ideas as well. These collaboration meetings have been very effective, and the students are benefiting from them.
I believe that effective collaboration is essential in a classroom environment. A classroom environment should be supportive, reflective, clear, and informative. One example from my own experience is offering support to your coworkers. As a new teacher, I am so grateful for all of the support I have received from administration, therapists, assistant teachers, and paraprofessionals. For example, I am inexperienced with creating social stories so I emailed my team social worker to collaborate with me to create a social story. She and I discussed what the story should include, the physical appearance of the story, and when the story should be used. This collaboration not only introduced me to the practice of a new teaching skill but also created a communicative bond between the social worker and I.
Collaboration is the act of working together towards a common goal in my opinion. It involves good communication skills and the motivation to be a team player. I participate in IEP meetings where we must collaborate. I am in charge of academic and learning goals for my student, but the school social worker creates social-emotional goals as well. We must collaborate as to what I see in the classroom as being an emotional need, and she shares with me if there is anything significant in therapy that might lead us to a behavior. We work very closely together to ensure that we are meeting the needs of each student on our caseload.
I think it is really important to remember that while people may have differences in opinion, true collaborators still work to achieve a common goal! I think it is awesome that you brought up the importance of social-emotional goals and considerations.
I like your definition of collaboration- short and to the point. Working on IEP goals with another professional is an excellent example of collaboration.
I believe that effective collaboration needs to take place all over the school for the school to be successful. As educators, we should strive to learn new strategies and techniques to increase student performance in our own classroom and school wide. Collaboration to me is working together to strive for student success. I believe that collaboration involves a positive attitude, communication, and a chance to take a risk and move out of your comfort zone.
An example of collaboration would be working with specialists inside their classroom to help students with IEP's access the curriculum to their full advantage.
Effective collaboration is the act of humbling yourself and working together with other experts in the field to better the learning environment for a student. In order for collaboration to be effective, communication skills must be present and practiced. These communication skills include reflecting on what was said, stating the implied so no one is left with questions, clarifying to gain understanding of information being sent, utilizing silence when needed, and summarizing the conversation so each person involved in the collaboration can move forward on the same page.
An example in the classroom would be a lead teacher and a paraprofessional working together to develop a new data tracking sheet which would be practical and easy for the para to use and record the data the lead teacher wants/needs.
I collaborate daily with my peers to work in the best interest of my students. Each of my students receive related services. All of the related service providers and I meet weekly to communicate important information to one another. We also discuss strategies that have been effective with particular students in regards to behavior. I feel that it was collaborative because we all respect one another and we are all experts in our respective fields so we can work as a whole to benefits our students. I feel that my current team is collaborative. The foundation of a collaboration is working together for common goals, partnership, shared leadership, co-evolving and co-learning - rather than competition and power given to only a few. My team strives for this foundation. The information-giving dimension is constantly used during my team's collaboration. We all share specific techniques, strategies, and reinforcers that work effectively with my students. We realize that our expertise is valuable and needs to be shared.
I define effective collaboration in schools as, any and all working together for a common goal/purpose. For me, I include not only my team of my para-professional, my counter part, her para professional, and our social workers, but most importantly our studfents and theri families. We are all working together and to be successful we must all collaborate or no progress will be made. Our students get to meet with us as a team and discuss their goals and asspirations we make a plan as to how we can all work together to make that a reality. We them again meet with theri parents and discuss ways as to how they can incorporate home and social activities to conitue to work towards those goals. the families that willingly "buy in" and join in on the collaboration is where we see most of our success. I sometimes think, we forget to include the students and their families as members to the collaboration.
When I think about effective collaboration in schools, several things come to mind. First, I think it is important to recognize that while it is true that one person may have a lot of wonderful ideas and insight to contribute, those ideas and contributions are only made stronger when shared with others. Where I work, we have several core values. One of these values is that "We are a learning and sharing community." It is really wonderful to know that I work at a place that highlights collaboration within it's mission and core values. I take the time to collaborate with lots of people daily. I insist on calling all of the paraprofessionals that work in my classroom "teachers." While all of them may not have teaching licenses, I recognize how closely they work with my students and how hard they work daily. I also collaborate with parents, administrators, behavior staff, a counselor, a speech therapist, a physical therapist, and two occupational therapists. While we may communicate with one another all of the time, it is crucial to actively listen, take notes, try out others' suggestions, and respect differences in opinion. Effective collaboration in short means a genuine team effort.
Working with so many different types of special education professionals requires excellent communication and collaboration or as you said so well, "a genuine team effort."
Effective collaboration begins when all parties involved can determine the benefits of working with each other. Each member of the team has something unique to offer and once everyone on the team can see how working together can help us to work smarter not harder there will be "buy in". As a special education teacher I have had to collaborate with up to 12 different general teachers, not to mention related service providers (SLP, OT, PT, SW, Vision Itinerant, ESL coach, Audiologist, etc.) all in one school year. I would offer to meet before and after school and during my prep and lunch. It was a crazy year of meetings, but once the other professionals saw how much I invested to meeting with them and how all of our jobs were improving by having consistent practices in our own classrooms as well as when we co-taught, they "bought-in" to what I was suggesting.
The definition of effective collaboration in schools as I understand it today is understanding each others’ roles and responsibilities. Understanding the goals of the collaboration and how this will benefit the student (s). Also, how this will benefit the collaborators. Making sure each participant is putting forth their best and using their skills effectively. Respecting one another and each person’s ability. Annette
Collaboration as I know it is when teachers work together to achieve a common goal. It is not necessarily student based but can be associated with professional development as well. Teachers working together, sharing ideas and information that will help one another to achieve a set goal. I had the opportunity to work in a school in Frankfort where collaboration was being pushed (forced onto) for everyone. The school staff was not keen on the idea of sharing their work with one another. I remember attending a small meeting of only the 3rd grade teachers. The first 25 minutes there was silence. It wasn’t until one of the veteran teachers spoke up and stated that she would not share anything that she herself had created. Then everyone agreed to the same thing. Then the younger teachers including myself opened up and told the group that if there was anything that they needed we were will to share any and everything with them. It took almost the entire school year before the veteran teachers started to open up. Once the teachers started doing that the school atmosphere had a drastic change for the better.
Collaboration to me is teachers working together for a common goal for students. Collaberation comes in many forms planning together before a class. Consulting with another teacher on the best way to reach a student. Having two teachers in a class at the same time working as a team. Our school has a push in system. The SPED teacher comes into the class and they work together using the one teach on assist model. The general education teacher provides the lesson and the SPED teacher comes in and offers assistance to anyone that needs it. Sometimes she shares an alternative way to complete the work. In math class this takes place often. The teachers discuss the needs of the students after the class during thire planning periods. This seems to work well for these two teachers. There is a "pull out" program for reading the teachers discuss when the best time for the "pull out" is. The students are always afraid that they will miss the "good stuff" that happens at school. The reading specialist tries to incorportate the topic that the other students are working on while she has the students. These are some of the examples of collaboration at my school.
ReplyDeleteNancy,
DeleteThose methods sound like you definitely have to use effective communication strategies to ensure that learning take place when working with other teachers and other educational support staff. It's great that your students get to have two teachers in the classroom so that they can learn from the teachers' different methods of instruction.
Push in and pull out are two philosophies of special education that are currently used in many schools though co-teaching has taken a huge leap forward in the past several years. All have their place and all definitely require collaboration to be effective.
ReplyDeleteEffective collaboration in schools today means working together to contribute positive growth and development with the students as well as the staff. Everyone wants a common goal for the students to achieve and master the skills that are required for the students. In order for this to happen effective communication between teachers needs to take place. The examples that I have seen in the schools I have taught in are the push in and pull out methods. When substitute teaching in an inclusive classroom rooms all teachers pushed in. This was effective for the students as well as the teacher. Effective communication is essential for cooperative collaboration.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you say and experienced only 'push in' when so many schools still use 'pull out'.
DeleteEffective collaboration is communicating daily/weekly with your colleagues. Being a special education teacher, I pull my students from their general education classroom. It is important that I collaborate with my general education teachers so that I know what they are learning in social studies and science and if there is a specific circumstance where I cannot pull my students or need to pull them at a different time. Effective communication would be talking on a daily basis, either via email or in person. Email is convenient, but is not always the most effective way to communicate. Exchanging lesson plans, creating lessons together and discussing what worked and what did not would be effective ways to collaborate. Although I do not push into my general education classes, if I helped develop lessons with the general education teachers, they would have differentiation for all students.
ReplyDeleteI worked with a general education teacher who was very stand-offish and did not communicate effectively. There were numerous circumstances where my students did not come to class. I had to take all my other students with me, stop instruction and go find out why they are not in class. Had we communicated to each other prior, I would not have had to interrupt instruction in order to figure out where the students were.
Thanks for sharing a great example of ineffective communication that then broke down collaboration- something we do NOT want to do.
DeleteSelina-Sounds like you had some bumps in the road last year when it came to communication. Often times we will encounter those stand-offish personality people and although it is difficult, we still need to remember that we all should be working together as a collaborative group for the benefit of helping the student. It's unfortunate that teacher you worked with had a negative approach, but sounds like you learned to iron out the wrinkles this year and hopefully will have a more positive experience.
DeleteEffective collaboration starts with teachers, administrators, and support staff sharing a common goal. Once all members of a team agree on the established goal and are invested in it, they must find a method to attain it. Since there are many pathways to achieving a goal, they must find a way that they are all willing to try, even if it is not their preferred method. It is during this stage especially that all members’ voices must be heard. When everyone give their opinions, it is easier to gauge the will of the group as a whole. I find this method to be beneficial in my Professional Learning Communities, or PLC’s, that we meet with on a weekly basis at our schools. The general education and special education teachers that teach the same math courses meet together for about 45 minutes to discuss scope and sequence, assessment results, and best practices. During these meetings, it can be difficult to collaborate if a goal is not set. Therefore, our PLC leader sets up the weekly goals and topics to be discussed. They are meant to keep the communication on topic. One topic that we discussed frequently was the student process of retaking assessments. Many people had diverse opinions on the topic, but as a group, we had to make a final decision. Our group leader tried to make sure that everyone’s voice was heard before we finalized a retake assessment process. At times, it can be difficult to collaborate with the number of group members involved and the diversity of teaching background. However, the majority of the time, the group decisions are successful.
ReplyDeleteComing to group consensus is a difficult process, especially with a large group and a diverse group at that. Good for you for striving to hear everyone's voice.
ReplyDeleteCollaboration to me is teamwork. When a group of people are on the same page and working together to help a student or a group of students be successful. Communication is the key factor in communication. in order for the team to work together they need to be communicating regularly about what needs to be done to benefit the students needs and how each person is going to approach this goal. When I was working as the vocational instructor at Elim I was constantly meeting with classroom teachers, the BCBA, and therapists when goals were being written or when there were concerns about a student. In these meetings we discussed where we wanted to see the student progress to in the next year and the different steps to take to get the students there.
ReplyDeleteTeamwork is key- getting there can be a challenge!
ReplyDeleteCollaboration is working cooperatively with one or more individuals on a common goal for any amount of time. Effective collaboration only occurs when mutual respect and understanding has been established. Only then can a group really come together and communicate in order to meet the needs of the students involved. Collaboration can be as simple as popping in someone's classroom to ask a question about a student, or as complicated as meeting daily to compare data/discuss progress. As a special education teacher, collaboration with multiple individuals in key in order to ensure the success of our students. I must collaborate daily with speech pathologists, social workers, occupational therapists, parents, teachers, administrators, and even the students themselves. This may look different amongst groups, but the key is that we all have the students' best interests in mind and we want our students to be successful both inside and outside of the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI love your definition of collaboration and the many ways you use it in your school. It is so true that the best interest of our students must be uppermost in our minds at all times!
DeleteEffective collaboration to me means that there is a clear, well-functioning and organize system in place where all educators and administrators are working as a team. By working together, there should be an established mission in place to promote what is going to most effectively prepare the students to be successful and accomplish goals and dreams. An example of this within my program would be that all of the staff came together and worked to effectively communicate and create a plan that has been providing positive results of having students go to job-fairs within the district's community and neighboring areas. By prepping them through and doing real-life role-plays with each staff member representing a different "company" prior to going to the jobs fairs, they have gone into each one well prepared and confident. Results of this have had students now working for UPS, grocery stores, and local stores within the community.
ReplyDeleteWhat an exciting program that would not have been possible without effective collaboration among the team members.
DeleteCollaboration is a team working together to meet the needs of all students. The collaboration team is comprised of administration, teachers, support staff, paraprofessionals, sometimes parents, and any other people that may play a role in the students’ lives. Not only should the team work together, but they should also share the same goals for the students. When professionals collaborate with each other and share their ideas with the team, the students are more successful.
ReplyDeleteIn my previous blog post, I talked about how my classroom team has been having team meeting to discuss each student, his/her individual academic and behavioral needs, and brainstorming ideas to help make the students more successful. We will have the BCBA, SLP, OT, and social worker attend our meetings so that they can share their ideas as well. These collaboration meetings have been very effective, and the students are benefiting from them.
It's great when you can say that the collaboration team is benefiting your students- collaboration works!
DeleteI believe that effective collaboration is essential in a classroom environment. A classroom environment should be supportive, reflective, clear, and informative. One example from my own experience is offering support to your coworkers. As a new teacher, I am so grateful for all of the support I have received from administration, therapists, assistant teachers, and paraprofessionals. For example, I am inexperienced with creating social stories so I emailed my team social worker to collaborate with me to create a social story. She and I discussed what the story should include, the physical appearance of the story, and when the story should be used. This collaboration not only introduced me to the practice of a new teaching skill but also created a communicative bond between the social worker and I.
ReplyDeleteI love how you describe what a classroom should be! Don't you LOVE social stories- I'm so glad to hear you use them.
ReplyDeleteCollaboration is the act of working together towards a common goal in my opinion. It involves good communication skills and the motivation to be a team player. I participate in IEP meetings where we must collaborate. I am in charge of academic and learning goals for my student, but the school social worker creates social-emotional goals as well. We must collaborate as to what I see in the classroom as being an emotional need, and she shares with me if there is anything significant in therapy that might lead us to a behavior. We work very closely together to ensure that we are meeting the needs of each student on our caseload.
ReplyDeleteI think it is really important to remember that while people may have differences in opinion, true collaborators still work to achieve a common goal! I think it is awesome that you brought up the importance of social-emotional goals and considerations.
DeleteI like your definition of collaboration- short and to the point. Working on IEP goals with another professional is an excellent example of collaboration.
ReplyDeleteI believe that effective collaboration needs to take place all over the school for the school to be successful. As educators, we should strive to learn new strategies and techniques to increase student performance in our own classroom and school wide. Collaboration to me is working together to strive for student success. I believe that collaboration involves a positive attitude, communication, and a chance to take a risk and move out of your comfort zone.
ReplyDeleteAn example of collaboration would be working with specialists inside their classroom to help students with IEP's access the curriculum to their full advantage.
DeleteI love your take on collaboration being not only in your classroom but school-wide.
DeleteI especially like your idea of moving outside of your comfort zone!
ReplyDeleteEffective collaboration is the act of humbling yourself and working together with other experts in the field to better the learning environment for a student. In order for collaboration to be effective, communication skills must be present and practiced. These communication skills include reflecting on what was said, stating the implied so no one is left with questions, clarifying to gain understanding of information being sent, utilizing silence when needed, and summarizing the conversation so each person involved in the collaboration can move forward on the same page.
ReplyDeleteAn example in the classroom would be a lead teacher and a paraprofessional working together to develop a new data tracking sheet which would be practical and easy for the para to use and record the data the lead teacher wants/needs.
DeleteI collaborate daily with my peers to work in the best interest of my students. Each of my students receive related services. All of the related service providers and I meet weekly to communicate important information to one another. We also discuss strategies that have been effective with particular students in regards to behavior. I feel that it was collaborative because we all respect one another and we are all experts in our respective fields so we can work as a whole to benefits our students.
ReplyDeleteI feel that my current team is collaborative. The foundation of a collaboration is working together for common goals, partnership, shared leadership, co-evolving and co-learning - rather than competition and power given to only a few. My team strives for this foundation. The information-giving dimension is constantly used during my team's collaboration. We all share specific techniques, strategies, and reinforcers that work effectively with my students. We realize that our expertise is valuable and needs to be shared.
It's great that you are already involved in worthwhile collaboration with your peers!
DeleteI define effective collaboration in schools as, any and all working together for a common goal/purpose. For me, I include not only my team of my para-professional, my counter part, her para professional, and our social workers, but most importantly our studfents and theri families. We are all working together and to be successful we must all collaborate or no progress will be made. Our students get to meet with us as a team and discuss their goals and asspirations we make a plan as to how we can all work together to make that a reality. We them again meet with theri parents and discuss ways as to how they can incorporate home and social activities to conitue to work towards those goals. the families that willingly "buy in" and join in on the collaboration is where we see most of our success. I sometimes think, we forget to include the students and their families as members to the collaboration.
ReplyDeleteI love that you meet with your students as a team and that you also involve your families!
DeleteTeresa I love that you include your students!
DeleteWhen I think about effective collaboration in schools, several things come to mind. First, I think it is important to recognize that while it is true that one person may have a lot of wonderful ideas and insight to contribute, those ideas and contributions are only made stronger when shared with others. Where I work, we have several core values. One of these values is that "We are a learning and sharing community." It is really wonderful to know that I work at a place that highlights collaboration within it's mission and core values. I take the time to collaborate with lots of people daily. I insist on calling all of the paraprofessionals that work in my classroom "teachers." While all of them may not have teaching licenses, I recognize how closely they work with my students and how hard they work daily. I also collaborate with parents, administrators, behavior staff, a counselor, a speech therapist, a physical therapist, and two occupational therapists. While we may communicate with one another all of the time, it is crucial to actively listen, take notes, try out others' suggestions, and respect differences in opinion. Effective collaboration in short means a genuine team effort.
ReplyDeleteWorking with so many different types of special education professionals requires excellent communication and collaboration or as you said so well, "a genuine team effort."
ReplyDeleteEffective collaboration begins when all parties involved can determine the benefits of working with each other. Each member of the team has something unique to offer and once everyone on the team can see how working together can help us to work smarter not harder there will be "buy in". As a special education teacher I have had to collaborate with up to 12 different general teachers, not to mention related service providers (SLP, OT, PT, SW, Vision Itinerant, ESL coach, Audiologist, etc.) all in one school year. I would offer to meet before and after school and during my prep and lunch. It was a crazy year of meetings, but once the other professionals saw how much I invested to meeting with them and how all of our jobs were improving by having consistent practices in our own classrooms as well as when we co-taught, they "bought-in" to what I was suggesting.
ReplyDeleteYour idea of "buy in" is critical for effective collaboration to occur. It sounds like you're becoming a pro at this.
ReplyDeleteYour idea of "buy in" is critical for effective collaboration to occur. It sounds like you're becoming a pro at this.
ReplyDeleteThe definition of effective collaboration in schools as I understand it today is understanding each others’ roles and responsibilities. Understanding the goals of the collaboration and how this will benefit the student (s). Also, how this will benefit the collaborators. Making sure each participant is putting forth their best and using their skills effectively. Respecting one another and each person’s ability.
ReplyDeleteAnnette
Excellent definition of collaboration- especially understanding how it will benefit students.
DeleteCollaboration as I know it is when teachers work together to achieve a common goal. It is not necessarily student based but can be associated with professional development as well. Teachers working together, sharing ideas and information that will help one another to achieve a set goal. I had the opportunity to work in a school in Frankfort where collaboration was being pushed (forced onto) for everyone. The school staff was not keen on the idea of sharing their work with one another. I remember attending a small meeting of only the 3rd grade teachers. The first 25 minutes there was silence. It wasn’t until one of the veteran teachers spoke up and stated that she would not share anything that she herself had created. Then everyone agreed to the same thing. Then the younger teachers including myself opened up and told the group that if there was anything that they needed we were will to share any and everything with them. It took almost the entire school year before the veteran teachers started to open up. Once the teachers started doing that the school atmosphere had a drastic change for the better.
ReplyDeleteWow, it took a whole year? It's too bad that the veteran teachers didn't so the advantages to collaborating with the new teachers.
Delete