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 * 8.1 Opener **

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8.2 Teacher Conversations

edutopia article

How does your school/district currently support and or encourage collaboration between teachers?

I think Malden offers a lot of opportunities for collaboration within departments- late entry/early release department meetings, inquiry groups in the English dept, lots of free (even paid!) professional development. At the high school some departments have teacher leaders that have time built into their schedules to collaborate with teachers.

I don't think our school/district supports or encourages collaboration between departments. I think there is some inter-disciplinary collaboration in the 9th-grade academies but in the upper grades I don't think there is much collaboration going on between teachers in different subject areas. In all my years at MHS, I have never collaborated with a teacher outside of my department. Sad, but true.

How much do you seek to collaborate with teachers and how do you accomplish this?

I collaborate with my English department colleagues in meetings when we are working on grade level assessments (mid-terms and finals) and department wide initiatives (Poetry Out Loud). I feel lucky to work in a department with so many amazing teachers. I often talk to other English teachers informally before and after meetings,or if I run into someone in the hall, but I'm not sure I would consider that true collaboration. We share ideas, which is great, but I don't think we collaborate in the intense way that Randy Nelson and his colleagues collaborate at Pixar. I had a friend who taught at the Parker School, which is a Coalition for Essential Schools School, and their faculty truly collaborated. It was a small school with a small faculty and they planned everything together! They spent the entire month of August planning and met every day during the school year to talk about teaching and learning, curriculum and assessment.

I would like to collaborate with teachers outside of my department, especially social studies and science. A lot of the books I teach connect to other subjects - for example, Rumble Fish and Catcher in the Rye (psychology and sociology), Night (history and sociology), Feed (science and technology). I know I could take the initiative (like Lisa Huff, that teacher in Arkansas), but I honestly don't know a lot of people in other departments and unfortunately I don't have the time or energy during the school year to make those connections. I'm sure that sounds awful! I wish that our school would encourage collaboration between departments more. I feel like I have a lot to offer and I am sure I could learn a lot from members of other departments. And of course the students would benefit from an inter-disciplinary approach to learning.

To what extent do you think collaboration is of growing importance for teachers seeking to implement a 21st century classroom?

Collaboration itself is a 21st century skill. If we want students to learn how to collaborate we should be modeling it for them. (As should our leaders in Washington who as I type are bringing the US to the brink of global economic catastrophe with their inability to collaborate!) I do try to talk to students about how teachers in the English dept collaborate. When I participate in an inquiry group, I talk to the students about how they are my "guinea pigs" for our classroom based research. I explain how the English dept works together to develop assessments. And students themselves experience Poetry Out Loud which is the amazing result (every MHS student from ESL1 to AP Lit memorizes and recites a poem!) of collaboration between English teachers.

I totally agree with Lisa Huff that collaboration between teachers, a "peer-coaching model", is the best way to encourage innovation in education. Technology is developing so rapidly, I think teachers can help each other keep up with all the web 2.0 tools that enhance student learning. Last year, during department meetings, Jen Clapp and Ryan Gallagher both shared the different ways they were using technology which encouraged the rest of the department to try to incorporate more technology into their classrooms. I hope that in September I can share some of what I have learned this summer with my colleagues.

In what ways, if any, do you see the thoughts in this article applying to student conversation? Collaboration is the key to progress. In the same way that teachers need to work together, to see each other as valuable resources, students need to realize how much they can learn from their classmates, how much more they can achieve by working together.

**8.3 Innovation in Education**

//"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew//." **Abraham Lincoln** Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk

My reflections on the quote and the talk are in the discussion tab of this page. .