What we know in real life is that students are much more successful when their teachers work in collaborative teams. So, let's envision the heroic engineers in the movie Apollo 13 as a teacher team, working on a critical issue with finite resources:
That's not really that far-fetched. We do have finite resources, and we are faced with urgent student needs every day. Ironically, the same day the NPR story aired, we had district-wide professional learning. I was lucky enough to be learning with teacher teams at Eastern High School, who were collectively diving into student data and searching for real-time actions to address student learning needs related to their school improvement plan. Thankfully, we were not wearing matching ties, but we did have powerful conversations that resulted in four dynamic strategy options.
There are certainly some challenges to collaborative work. The first is time. With student learning as the non-negotiable, urgent need, what might we dump onto the table to fit the square peg into the round hole vis-a-vis time? In other words, what are some teacher-driven solutions? How might we creatively revamp our daily schedule to create more collaborative time? The second is clarity about the work to be done. Do we all understand the parameters and priorities that each team (and each individual) must honor and observe? (DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker, 2014) The third is focus. When we come together, what do we do? Do we study our content standards and curriculum documents to agree on priorities and pacing? Do we discuss essential knowledge and skills we want our students to learn? Do we craft common formative assessments and then analyze results? Do we commit to one another to teach the agreed-upon curriculum? (DuFour & Marzano, 2011)
Going back to the Apollo 13 scenario, each person at each level had to be committed to the collaborative mission in order to achieve success. In Forest Hills, our mission is to "provide all learners with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to build meaningful and productive lives." Our vision is "all learners achieving individual potential," and the term "learners" is broad enough to include teachers. So, how will each of us commit to our collaborative mission and vision? Administrators? Teachers? Instructional Coaches? Here's an example to get started: As an instructional coach, I commit to support collaborative teacher teams by learning new strategies of your choice alongside you to achieve higher student learning.
Since we started with Hollywood, we'll end there as well, with a much better collaborative success story from Toy Story 2:
"There is nothing more important than each member's commitment to common purpose and a related performance goal to which the group holds itself jointly accountable." Katzenbach & Smith, 1993
-- J. Walton
