Pooling Our Resources
Posted by Sherry McGregor on 09 Jun 2009 | Posted in: Grade 1, Grades 2-3, Inspiration and Motivation, Intermediate, Kindergarten, Meet the Mailbox®, Planning and Curriculum, Preschool, Relationships and Team Building, Teachers and Teaching, The Mailbox
| Yesterday was a great day. Fellow editor Krystle Jones was working on a reproducible partner game for The Mailbox® magazine, Intermediate. We had talked over the idea and were both sure it was going to be great. Then, when Krystle started working on it, several issues popped up. So we sat down to problem-solve. Boy! We hit one wall after another. Several times, we just looked at each other wondering if there was a solution. |  |
But we kept working, talking, drawing, writing, and talking some more. And you know what? We did it. We came up with a fun game that will give students lots of great practice. I’m convinced that the key to our success was collaborating.
Thinking about collaboration took me right back to teaching and the way a simple idea could absolutely blossom when a few of us worked on it together. There was the archaeological dig Patti and I spent an afternoon re-creating in her yard. (Patti lived a block away from our school.) Then there was the time Valerie immersed Sandy, Mark, and me in the culture of Northwest Coast Native Americans, so we could help our students have a potlatch with the fifth graders from another school. I could go on and on. (Maybe in my next blog…) It all comes down to this, though—collaboration! It inspires me and drives me to be my best. So, instead of more stories from me, why don’t you post a story or two about a time when collaborating has inspired you?
Congratulations to Jamie Nolan, Data Administrator; Port Washington, USFD; Port Washington, NY. She is the winner of the Math Skills Workout Book (Grade 4) in our weekly blog drawing.
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I think it is wonderful to be able to work with a team where everyone pulls together. The team I work with this year is great. We take one day a week to plan for the following week. One of us will throw an idea out and the others will imporve on it! It is great to be able to do this! We get so much done in a short amount of time!
No matter how long one has been teaching each team member sees a unit from a different angle. I have a coworker that I am good friends with that teaches a level ahead of me, she helps me with ideas to challenge my GT students while I help her build the skills of her struggling students. Once a month we meet as a team and go over ideas for the future. Three heads are better then one.
I totally agree with collaboration…I do not know everything and I am so glad not to have to reinvent the wheel - when one of the other teachers has been there. It helps so much to bouce ideas off of other people!
My grade level meet once a week for a collaboration meeting. It has helped us become more comfortable with each other. If I am not reaching all of the students in my class, I have 6 other teachers who give me different ideas to try. Collaboration is so effective because it helps to build a strong team.
We collaborate as a grade level. We meet once a week just to brainstorm and bounce ideas off one another. We (my coteacher/friend and I) are getting a new teacher to work with this year, so we are excited to see who we will get to work with. New ideas will be brought to our team and that is always exciting. If an activity worked out really well, we get together to share before our grade level meeting … just to share the good news.
I have set up a time, once a month that teachers in my grade level across the district can meet in each others rooms. Sometime you get the best ideas just looking at other classroom walls. Its fun to see what others are doing and a great way to get new ideas.
Collaboration is an important component in my classroom. My co-teacher and I always work on ways to make our classroom better. We also share some of our ideas with the other Pre-Kindergarten class.
We have an Early Childhood Center at our school which is in a mobile unit, and only Preschool and Kindergarten are in it. The three of us teachers and the Preschool aide are always bouncing off ideas with each other and helping each other out. For most of the day we are the only adults we get to talk to (except at lunch) so it’s really necessary sometimes in order to keep our sanity! Really, though, we all work well together and we don’t know what we’d do without each other!
I always enjoyed working collaboratively with other teachers. In many cases, collaboration brings the best of the problem solving inputs. I love to brainstorm ideas and then we look at them together and decide what is best. As a result the essence of teamwork is very strong.
In the school I work in I am the only first grade teacher, but our primary collaborates together. We work together to pull things off like beach day, fieldtrips, book clubs, etc.. I love being able to pool our resources and ideas to come up with fun things for the students and us too!!
Everything we do we discuss as a team. We are a small preschool and it really makes a difference if we cannot work together. If we want to bring in a special treat or have a cooking project we all join in the planning.
At our school we collaborate in pairs, small grade groups and as a staff on ProD days..it is amazing what can get done in one afternoon of sharing ideas. I think our best collaboration is on the school “Talent Show” where every year the last number is ” the teachers!”….we’ve done everything from ABBA to the Beatles to the Beach Boys and this year we “brought back’ the Spice Girls….the students love it and so do we!!
It is great to be able to collaborate with other teachers. I think it really builds the bond that you have. It can really help reduce stress. It helps your stress level by knowing you are both going through it or one of you has been through the same situation before. It also helps stress by reducing your workload when you can work together. It helps by having someone to share with, talk with and have a great laugh with!
Been there, done that! It’s amazing how when you try to solve problems two heads really think better than one, but it’s great to have input from people that are not in the situation itself and can provide you with ideas and things you couldn’t have thought of because you are too involved in the situation.
At my elementary school we get together with our grade level teams at least once a week to plan. Our principal has also arranged for us to get a planning day with a substitute each 9 weeks where we can really focus with our grade level team members on the upcoming 9 weeks of school. This collaboration was built even stronger when we began incorporating our ESL and specialists teachers on what we did each meeting by emailing them, giving them copies of our meeting notes, or by asking them to stop by our grade level planning time. It also helps that each of us on the team have particular strong suits that make planning much easier. We’ve learned to break up the tasks between ourselves since we all are required to teach the same standards with the same materials. It just makes sense to help each other out because in doing so we make our own jobs easier!
We collaborate on a weekly basis. We meet with our principal once a week to discuss problems or sometimes just to have a gripe session. Then my team meets together without the principal to discuss problems, share projects, ideas, etc. When we meet, we usually find we are within a day or two other in teaching thw objectives. After all, two minds are better than one–imagine seven.
our collaboration works at our weekly meetings when our following week`s theme is discussed.we share poems, songs,science and art activies.we bring our ideas and brainstorm ,coming up with new ones and everyone works it out to their preschool level.
The staff at our center collaborated to put together a terrific end of the year Beach bash! The center was decorated beautifully and a wonderful time was had by children, parents, grandparents, and staff as well.
Collaboration is what makes our school thrive. Not only do our grade level teams work together to meet the needs of all of our students, but after reading a research article on differentiating instruction the whole school is going to collaborate to show how we differentiate at each grade level giving each teacher hundreds of ways to help students no matter the grade level.
I have also been working with my suite mate teacher for 5 years now (since her first year teaching and my first at the school) We work so well together that all one of us has to say is a book title or a topic and the other can immediately think of a great lesson to connect to our basal series. If one of us ever got moved to another grade I don’t know what we would do.
My collaborators are my own children. I am always asking for their input before I take it to school to use.
Collaboration brings together the unique attributes of each person involved. Brainstorming together is better and better with each participant. New ideas and approaches just seem to materialize out of nowhere, but we know it’s all because we’re working together with a common goal!
I agree wholeheartedly with collaboration. I teach in a small parochial school with two of each grade level. My parallel teacher and I have been working together for 10 years now. We can practically finish each others’ thoughts.
What one of us doesn’t think of, the other one does. It makes light of our work when we work together.