Collaboration.
Collaboration is a tricky thing, especially for a first year teacher (and a second year teacher, for that matter). It was easy for me to “collaborate” (I use that term loosely) with the other English IV teacher, Mrs. M (see right), during my first year because she would share her lesson plans and resources with me, and it gave me one less thing to worry about during my first year. And that’s pretty much all I thought collaboration was in the beginning. I would walk upstairs to her room every morning and get a play-by-play for what “we” would do in our classes that day -- none of which I came up with or designed or even just found on the internet by myself. It felt like I was cheating, somehow, but I also know that first year teachers need all the help they can get to just keep their heads above water. And I would help her out, too -- I would make enough copies of things we were passing out that day for both of our classes (copy paper is expensive, too!), and I would help type tests to put in Google Forms for our classes. But would I call this advancing student learning? Not really -- it was more of assuring that our classes were as similar as possible and therefore as fair as possible (in my mind).
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Mrs. M, Grendel, and me.
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"Sage Wisdom" offered to Mr. T,
cautiously accepted. |
With second year, though, I have found that I do less of this type of collaborating, and more just trying to get through each lesson and each day with the kids under control, and anyone that can help me with that is a collaborator. I have a better idea of how to accomplish this because of my experiences last year, and I still use mostly the same lessons that Mrs. M shared with me last year. My collaboration is different this year because this year I have more to give to other teachers. I share “sage wisdom” (kids are turnt from Thanksgiving to Christmas, January is the longest month and therefore the most miserable, and after Spring Break you need to watch out for meaningless fights between restless kids) with Mr. T when he stops by in the afternoon to say hello (see left). I email out writing rubrics for non-English teachers when they mention writing assignments for their classes. I help the Spanish teacher, Mrs. S, with her Google Classroom assignments when she gets stuck (sadly, image not available). And I realized that even without designing PDs and leading PLCs and all the other XYZs of teaching, I am still collaborating because I am a part of this school, and I am striving every day to build relationships with students and help them to succeed in school.
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Sometimes it’s hard to tell that we are all here to do that -- to advance student learning and to help students succeed. It’s hard to see this when we are having to be petty about dress code and being quiet in the hallways in the morning and hosting “all-male assemblies” about “what it means to be a man these days” (which was also just about dress code) (oh, and how to not go to jail). Sometimes collaboration is just picking up the phone to call a couple of parents on a Tuesday afternoon to tell them their child will not graduate at the rate they are going, or to tell them that their child has exceeded my expectations in every way possible.
Sometimes collaboration is getting one of the football coaches to come stand over a child for an hour during your class to make sure they act right. Sometimes collaboration is helping your low kid with his “Squindy the Squid” cartoon because it makes him happy and smile (see right).
[Your] child has exceeded my expectations in every possible way." |
Squindy prevails in this week's edition of The Wildcat, student newspaper.
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It doesn’t have to be complicated, but without it, your sanity (and rare moment of joy) can not hope to be attained. Collaboration, in my first year, was all about what others could do for me -- I needed help, constantly. Second year, collaboration changed for me: I could finally truly collaborate with others -- parents, staff, administration, other teachers -- so we could do this teaching thang together.