Collaboration

Collaboration is teachers working together to create lessons and instruction that is better and that meets student needs more effectively than if it we planned alone. When teachers collaborate with other teachers, specialists, and administration it keeps everybody on the same page and moving in the same direction for student success. While there is usually only one teacher in the classroom during the actual instruction, I think that collaboration and the idea that two heads are better than one is necessary in effective instruction. The special education teacher needs to know what’s going on in the classroom. The classroom teacher needs to know what the English Language Acquisition teacher is doing during pull out. We can’t all be doing our own thing or we would be doing a disservice to our students. Teachers need to be collaborating. Many schools I have seen allow for grade level common planning time at least once a week. I have a formal grade level plan time on Fridays, and I talk to my team about what we are teaching many times a day. Collaboration is crucial to a fluid and cohesive learning environment.

Collaboration is multiple teachers purposefully meeting regularly to align their curricula in order to bridge the gap between different content areas and allow students to more easily make deep and authentic connections. Collaboration occurs any time when two people are putting their heads together on one topic. This might be between teachers of the same grade level and subject meeting weekly and discussing how to best teach a specific shared unit. This might also be teachers of different grade levels and subjects aligning their curricula so that they are teaching similar units at the same time. Teachers can collaborate with administration or master teachers to improve their teaching practices and get expert advice. Or teachers can collaborate with specialists to discuss the students they both work with in order to best meet those students’ needs. Two heads are always better than one and collaboration proves that.