Collaborative Team Structures

An informal motto that we use at our school is "be a leader of your own learning." Our goal as a school is to help kids be life-long learners, and we model this practice in our own professional developments. Rarely do we depend on others to tell us what to learn. Rather, we ask our own questions and seek answers through research, designing of PLC's, and working together. As a result, teacher leads naturally emerge as they are needed and dissolve as teachers start to take their learning into their own hands. Since PLC's change yearly, leadership rotates. Typically, former leaders become participants who continue to garner support and excitement for the PLC's work while mentoring new leaders. This helps to encourage equity and access to skills related not only to tech but also to team leadership.

To further increase leadership in our own learning, we implement collaborative team structures to remain in the know about each others' expertise and to receive support in elevating our learning. A collaborative team structure that works in my building is what we call "rounds." Rounds are conducted formally twice a year and informally almost weekly. Rounds are code for "go 'round and see other people teach and steal some good ideas." Since we all have different planning periods, teachers at my school post calendar invites via Microsoft Outlook for different lessons and initiatives going on in their rooms, and other teachers can drop in, observe, and ask questions of the teacher and students during the lesson/initiative. The number one rule to rounds is that there is no direct critiquing to the teacher showcasing their class unless it is requested by the observed teacher afterwards - this greatly helps foster comfortability and trust among fellow teachers. After all, the purpose of rounds is to gain new insights and ideas to build each other up, not knock each other down. Rounds are used for showcasing any type of lesson, but technology has been the big focus for the past two years. As our district adopts more types of tech, some teachers at my school jump on board quickly to try them out. These piloters of the tech then post their round dates so that others can see the tech in action in an actual classroom environment. After observations, teachers are always enthusiastic to jump on board themselves. They bring ideas back to their team, formulate a plan, implement it, and share their round dates with others.

While critiques are important to improving practice - AKA maintaining a healthy educational environment, I believe that it is a human response to not want to be judged by the flaws in our practice/character. Typically instructional choices do not involve the life or death of a student, and as a result I think the problem for educators being critiqued during rounds lies in the fact that teaching can be a very personal experience for a lot of teachers. They feel that who they are as a person is reflected in their teaching. To attack one's teaching practice is to attack oneself. For this reason, it is left as an option for teachers to ask for feedback rather than be given it during informal rounds. During formal rounds, teachers are provided the critiques by our principals who collect the critiques from those who conducted rounds. That way, criticisms are given in a neutral, non evaluative fashion so that teachers can understand the feedback and not feel threatened by it. By not feeling threatened to change, actual reflection and revisions to teaching practices come about.