Leaders demonstrate courage and collaboration
Explain:
The 8th characteristic of an
effective middle school is that “leaders demonstrate courage and collaboration”
(This We Believe, pg 29). To create a successful school, leaders need to
understand that they are unable to do it all independently and therefore need
to invite feedback, ideas and support and effectively delegate work to teachers
and other staff. Additionally school leaders cannot be in every classroom or
provide feedback to teachers consistently. As a result they need to organize
their staff to work collaboratively and support one another. In order to
develop a school that functions long term, school leaders need to develop ways
for other staff to take on smaller leadership roles and work together to work
out day to day classroom problems and share ideas.
Describe:
Mountain View Middle School organizes
teacher teams effectively to maximize teacher collaboration and ensure the effectiveness
of this collaboration on the classroom learning environment. They meet
frequently to review student work and student scores and to develop plans for
the future. In this collaborative planning process they develop extremely
specific measures they will take so that when they return to their classroom
they are able to implement them, rather than continuing with what they were
previously doing.
The video below shows an example of a
meaningful collaborative discussion and
then shows teachers implementing the new strategies they brainstorm during
their meetings.
Analyze:
Mountain View Middle School was so
effectively able to collaborate and develop plans of action together, because
they were given common planning time. The video shows almost 30 minutes of
discussion time between the teachers. Informal teacher collaboration is
beneficial but this kind of calm, productive collaboration does not happen in
the hallways or the lunch room and therefore requires more systematic planning.
Administration need to assign teachers into teacher teams, if the teams are not
already obvious based on shared students or subjects taught and demand that
teachers are involved in common planning time. On top of this administration mandate,
effective collaboration like this, can only happen if common planning times are
given specific focuses and teachers stay on task. Using an agenda as they do at
Mountain View Middle School, teachers are able to come prepared, stay on task,
address the most pressing issues only, and leave with specific plans of attack.
Apply:
At my current school, I do not have
structured common planning time however this is something I know other teachers
may be interested in. I teach my students all of their basic subjects and so
there are not core teachers who share my students, however there are other
teachers who have students of similar ability and who teach similar content to
me. While it is a big commitment to give up a prep period for common planning
time, and I believe other teachers may be open to this, I will still need to
seek out the help of my administrators to ensure that they have the same prep
periods as I do. During prep periods we often are called to meetings however
when there are 10-12 meetings I tend to find them largely irrelevant and
unproductive. Rather, it would be better for teachers to collaborate in groups
of 2-4 with other teachers with whom they share similar students and teaching
content. When/if I am able to make this happen, it will be important that we
keep record of the meeting to ensure that we stay on task and use our time
productively, and not as common whining time.
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