C is for Collaboration (and cookies)
11.07.10 By Neema Avashia
This year, my Sundays are consistently booked for 4-5 hours each afternoon, when the other Civics teacher at my school (shout out to BTR cohort 8) comes over and we spend time planning out the content for the week ahead. This is my 8th year of teaching, and up to this point, I have never had someone to collaborate with consistently about curriculum. Every lesson, every activity, every assessment has been the product of my brain in relation to whatever curriculum and standards exist. And I can tell you with certainty that the quality of lessons that my fellow teacher and I create in collaboration with one another are infinitely better than anything I’ve ever produced alone. We bring different strengths and different lenses to the work, and as a result, our students are being taught in ways that push them deeper into content, and further along the skills continuum, than I’ve ever been able to go alone. I know with certainty now the thing that other teachers, principals, superintendents, and policy wonks have been saying all along—that teachers in collaboration with one another can boost student achievement to much higher levels than they can working in isolation.
But here’s the thing… These 4-5 hours each Sunday? They are ours, and time that we are giving up willingly because we know it makes us better at our work, and is better for kids. This time does not exist within the school day. “Common Planning Time” as defined by schools usually never lasts more than 45 minutes. And many times, those meetings are eaten up by administrative dictates that can vary greatly in relevance and quality based on the strength of your school leadership. Furthermore, any person who works in a school knows that just because teachers aren’t teaching during that 45 minute block does not mean that kids aren’t coming in asking questions, or that parents aren’t stopping by to check in, or that any one of the 40 kinds of immediate needs that can arise during a given school day isn’t going to require attention.
Which begs the question—>if districts are really serious about school improvement, and increased student achievement, when are we going to have a real conversation about the type of time, resources, and scheduling necessary to really facilitate collaboration among teachers?
more from Neema Avashia on the blog
more about Dever-McCormack K-8 School on the blog
Comments
05:39 PM
Well said, Neema. I’m applying to join BTR in the fall and your issue strikes me as one that I am curious and concerned with. In many of the places I have worked over the past few years - residential programs for at risk and underserved teens - I worked as part of a therapeutic or instructional team. Collaboration and communication about our planned lessons and interventions was crucial to creating and sustaining learning and growth. However, the time was not available and so we spent long nights after students went to sleep catching each other up on the happenings of the day, forming plans, lessons and interventions. Had we not done that our clients/students would not have received the thoughtfulness and intention that they needed and deserved. But it came at the expense of sleep, self care, and out of our own much needed personal time.
I was working at Citizen Schools, an extended learning day program, last year and was fortunate enough to be team-teaching a group of 35 8th graders. My co-teacher and I were able to plan lessons during the school hours and deliver them in the afternoons. It was an invaluable experience, not only to have the time to plan thoughtful lessons and cater curriculum to our students’ needs, but to have the experience of teaching and learning from each other as young educators gave me insight and tools that I might never have received had I been teaching alone. Collaboration among teachers seems indispensable if we are working towards creating the best classroom learning possible. While choosing programs to apply to, that theme plays a major role in my decision process.
I wonder though, where that time would exist. While there will hopefully always be a percentage of passionate teachers who are willing to donate large chunks of their weekend hours to improving their lessons, if that time is unpaid I fear that percentage will always remain the minority. The alternatives, it seems to me, are to create that time after normal school hours, and pay teachers accordingly. And/or to create paid time over summers and school breaks. Though I’m sure that these ideas encounter a lot of opposition, I wonder whether there are other options…