The Power of Collaboration

As educators it's easy to close our doors and just do our thing. It's tempting to just fly under the radar and keep to ourselves. I think we miss out on ideas when we avoid collaborating with our colleagues. I find that it's easy to talk about what's going on with students, complain about things, or make small talk about what's going on outside of school. It's difficult to be vulnerable and share what's going on in your classroom. We potentially face being judged when we share what's really going on in our classrooms. I know that I often think about that, when asked what are my students working on.

I'm an overachiever by nature. I want to be the best that I can be. I want to be willing to try to grow myself as an educator. I'm internally motivated like that. I will say that I've been like that ever since I can remember. I have found that one of the best ways that I can grow is by collaborating with my colleagues. It's in having those vulnerable conversations that I can come up with some of my best ideas for my classroom. It is vital to have those conversations with each other. To share our failures and our successes. Those encouraging moments help us to continue to do what we do.

Each week, I look forward to our "Thursday Talk". Our humanities coach meets with us each Thursday and we collaborate and share what's going on in our classes. We share where we are in our transition into the workshop model of teaching. We share projects, books, activities, success, and failures. We lay it all out on the table and help each other pick the pieces back up.

At first it's tough to be vulnerable. To expose your "failures" to each other. It's raw. It's real. It's pertinent. It helps us grow. We are able to gain the encouragement we need to keep going. We get a fresh perspective detached from the "problems". This, my fellow educators, is such a significant part of our jobs. We need to sharpen each other as educators.

This past week I had the opportunity to facilitate our "Thursday Talk." I was so excited to see that we had a full house that day. There wasn't an empty seat at the table. Teachers were all chattering about what they were working on in their classrooms. I was able to share the one pager projects my students completed. We had some great discussion about them. I was so proud to showcase what my students had done. They exceeded my expectations, and I was proud to show them off to my colleagues. The other teachers were excited about this project. They couldn't wait to modify it for their own classrooms. That's a collaboration win!

When we take those moments to be raw and vulnerable, we have the chance to inspire each other with something new and different. Sometimes we share a new spin on a task we've always done. We can put our brains together and tweak a project until we can make it better than before. We can troubleshoot problems and come up with solutions for it. That's the power of collaboration. We can exponentially multiply our skills and knowledge.

It's important that everyone have the chance to share in the collaboration meetings. All voices need the opportunity to be able to share what's going on in their classrooms. It helps the collaboration to be stronger when more than one voice is heard. That's part of developing the strength of the team during collaboration meetings.