Stories from the Field
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Teacher-to-Teacher Collaboration
Teachers at Kirkersville Elementary taught me the importance of and the necessity for collaboration between them. Eighteen years ago, in the midst of the Ohio Achievement Test movement, they looked at what they needed to do to improve instruction to meet the standards and decided that they could not do it alone. We set about making the time to focus the learning on being productive and working together both at the grade level and across the grade levels.
Imagine my surprise when I changed positions and school districts and discovered that the teachers in my new school did not see the value in collaborating with one another. Each worked in his/her own room every week. Little did they know that they were mirroring what their colleagues were doing on an almost daily basis with varying degrees of success. My goal became to help them to see the value in sharing their expertise and carrying the load so that all could have equitable success.
There were several key elements and hurdles in encouraging teachers to collaborate. Probably the biggest hurdle was getting them to see the value of collaboration and then giving them the time to talk to one another. The time issue was actually the easier issue to address since I was able to arrange the schedules of the specialists to allow all or most of the teachers at each grade level to have common planning time. Another way of creating time for collaboration was to redesign staff meetings as an opportunity for grade levels to discuss a curricular issue.
Convincing the teachers that collaborating was more powerful and more productive than working alone, at their own convenience, was harder. I began by writing post-it notes attached to their lesson plans as I reviewed them. The post-its suggested to Teacher A that Teacher B had a great plan for presenting some concept and maybe he/she would be willing to share. Asking Teacher B to be willing to share was certainly a validation for Teacher B too. Making sure that each teacher at a grade level was asked to be “the giver” was crucial. Before long, teachers began using common planning time to plan together.
The next step was to make sure that their time together was as productive as it could be. Again using the staff meeting, I modeled how to set an agenda, complete with a suggested time per item, and the designation of a facilitator, recorder, timekeeper, and reporter. We also looked at using the agenda as the note format by leaving large spaces between the items where the recorder could just write the resulting action directly below each related agenda item. When they left the meeting, the work was largely done and there was a record of who would be doing what. We also tried to set a time limit on when things would happen. Actually this technique worked extremely well for my part of the general staff meetings too!
One crucial element in this was to make sure that all the work was related to Standards. Standards-based planning was part of our Continuous Improvement Plan across several years, and it was built into all of our building-wide planning. Thus it was a natural application when it came to grade level work too.
Common planning time then sort of took on a life of its own. Teachers were meeting outside of school hours at their homes and even during summer vacation. They came back to school sometimes having a plan for teaching a whole content area for the year. Teachers new to the building were usually quite excited to realize that the structure for much of the instruction was already in place. Over time, the grade-level team had addressed all of the content areas and then began to see ways to integrate their instruction across curricular areas. Before long, our Ohio Reads grant money was largely spent on content related books to be used in reading instruction.
How did all of this affect student learning? My former school scored extremely well even on the early “proficiency tests” and continues to be a School of Excellence today. Over 6 years, my new school went from meeting no standards to meeting all of them in year 5, missed grade 4 math by a fraction of a percent in year 6, and again met all standards and AYP the year after I retired. Yes, they too are a School of Excellence.
Are teachers working less? Certainly not, but they are working more productively and are very motivated by their own expertise, commitment, and obvious success in improving student learning.
