Nurturing Collaborative Culture

Teach for America has an organizational culture of Teamwork. Kopp (2011) writes about teachers committed to making a difference. She tells stories of teachers becoming involved with families, providing tutoring outside of the school day, and being strong inspiring leaders in the districts they are working in. They encourage families they work with to pursue good educations. (p. 158)

Our goal is to work collectively and cohesively by converging our mindsets and strengths together. We feel that it is essential for us to work well together and create meaningful relationships in order to be successful in both the Business Management and Managing Work and Teams courses. The vision of our team is to establish strong teamwork skills that will supplement our future success throughout our four years at Smith. As a team we envision achieving these goals by creating an open environment where team members feel comfortable to communicate their opinions and ask questions. We will implement this by utilizing a collaborative mindset where we will be able to learn from each other and share our learnings with our future teams. As a team

Problem-solving and collaboration are critical strengths for success in a fluid, diverse environment such as the PRA division. As a student-athlete, I have grown to view time-management, commitment, and cooperation as imperative skills for success. Through Riley Dance Marathon and Special Olympics, as well as a visit to Indiana University’s health care facilities at the epicenter of the HIV epidemic in Kenya, I have discovered my passion and desire to work within the healthcare industry. As a kinesiology major I have a strong background and interest in the medical field that will place me ahead of my peers and push me to excel in your company. Lastly, I firmly believe an experience in the PRA division at Eli Lilly, paired with a liberal arts

My last employment was for a graduate school that had a focus on conflict facilitation and group work which exposed me to methods for working through difficult topics to build better community relationships. With a student and faculty community that spanned worldwide, I was able to experience many cultures and work with a very diverse community of people. My communication and training experience can be used to build collaborative working environment while fostering learning experiences. Being an LGBT POC working in technology, I bring unique experiences and insight into my work environment and can be a valuable voice in collaborative

Teacher Collaboration measures the degree to which teachers engage in constructive dialogue that furthers the educational vision of the school.

I learned quickly that being an effective teacher is an art that takes time and devotion. Many times, teachers are not provided with the necessary materials in order to maintain the various learning styles in a classroom. It is up to the teacher to create an environment where students can succeed. This is a full time job, meaning that a teacher’s work is not done once they leave the school. A teacher must contribute a significant amount of time and effort in order to see positive results in the school and in his or her own classroom. After observing my cooperating teacher’s strategies and learning more about the profession, I knew that I was going in the right direction with my life. I took a significant amount of knowledge away from this experience and have continued to strive to be the type of educator that I was blessed to work with during this experience. .

In terms of becoming a mediator and consensus builder the authors detailed the need for principals to possess relational leadership skills in order to be able to both facilitate groups and coach others on staff in the ability to facilitate their own groups, and stressed that the key to this is the ability to effectively participate in conflict resolution (Donaldson, Marnik, Mackenzie, & Ackerman, 2009). The authors suggested that conflict is part and parcel of school reform and that in addition to being able to deal effectively with conflict the successful principal needs to develop the ability for bringing about consensus within the group, noting that interpersonal and intrapersonal skills were as much or more important than knowledge (Donaldson, Marnik, Mackenzie, & Ackerman, 2009).

My comprehensive collaboration project involved a school community meeting, involving people with various association to education. The meeting originated because of the first workshop poor parental involvement and lack of community communication, concerning date, time, topic, and activities. After this disappointing blow and only two district teachers spearheading the event and activities, a decision evolved, making team membership accessible to all affiliates of education. Meeting members were paraprofessionals, a master teacher, retired teacher who is now a community volunteer and a guardian of a grandchild attending school in the district. Within the room, including myself was a total of ninety-five years of education related experiences. It was important to promote shared decision-making by including people with different views and implementation styles. When planning the organization of group members, I kept in mind the ultimate goal of building trust, through professional participation in community events, thus embracing opportunities of personal interactions outside school community. Members were willing participants, who close ties, through daily interaction in neighboring community after school hours, therefore made their involvement planning parent events crucial for community team success.

Although much of my work is done independently; I do have the pleasure of collaborating with the Office Manager and Physicians on a daily basis. My interacts with them are well welcomed and extremely pleasant. It is my belief that collaborating within a team increases work performance and ensure that information is appropriately distributed; as I am the liaison for the allergy clinic. These collaborations help ensure that goals are completed in a timely and efficient manner.

10) to enable teachers to do new activities gradually without leaving out what is working with existing activities. Some principals may accept an administrative approach to PD in which it is authorized and dictated. It leads to transmission patterns of PD in which teachers act as technicians doing someone else’s plan (Kennedy, 2005). Others, though, may select a more cooperative approach by focusing on gaining teachers’ hearts and minds and a need of improvement for school collaboration. This kind of leadership is often associated with transformative frameworks of PD in which teachers are supported to do work in collaboration constructivistly to change their activities to satisfy students’ needs in their contexts (Kennedy, 2005). Teachers are supported to do work in collaboration to share their skill and to take a risk as a group (Sergiovanni, 2005) which may result in greater abilities to change and school development (Bryk and Schneider, 2002). Conversely, if principals authorize collaborative activities in a manageable approach, ‘contrived collegiality’ (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 247) may result, which leads to a negative influence on maintaining collaborative

The three learner profile attributes that I believe are most important in creating an effective working environment and collaborative team are open-minded, communicator and inquirer.

As a supervisor, with only six years of experience as an educator, I feel I would begin by implementing the collaborative approach. By selecting the collaborative approach this will allow the most flexibility when conferencing with the teacher. I like how I can prepare myself for the conference with possible improvement goals, and action plans that could be considered and potentially integrate into the teacher’s daily routine, but have the ability to let the teacher have a voice in the conference before I completely determine what approach I should implement. By allowing the teacher to have a voice in the conference, I could then determine if the teacher has the knowledge to identify an appropriate goal and action plan on their own before I make my own suggestions. If the teacher is able to demonstrate the knowledge and an appropriate action plan, I will keep my suggestions to myself and begin using the nondirective behaviors approach. If the teacher is not able to identify an obvious problem, any of its underlying causes, or possible solutions, I could change my approach to either directive control or directive informational.

How do these strategies apply to a team that you are or have been a participating member?

Collaboration between teachers is a key component to professional development that will lead to higher student achievement. There is a need for schools to set up time for teachers to be able to collaborate together. This allows for teachers to help each other, matchup content, teach each other new and best practices, troubleshoot student issues just to name a few of the areas that collaboration time can help foster within a school. The key is to build time for teachers to be able to collaborate during the school day or week. This collaboration time needs to be between grade levels, departments, and cross curricular when needed. For many schools this is an afterthought to the school schedule or a fleeting thought after the master schedule is completed. A principal needs to keep an open mind to any strategy that will enable the teachers to be able to collaborate for the good of the students and the school.

Fundamentally the role of the classroom teacher is to implement strategies to support, engage and extend the learning of all individuals. In order for this to occur we need to also consider how we involve, collaborate and communicate with parents, fellow colleagues and specialised teachers. Ashman and Elkins (2008) state that teachers need to make themselves aware of the support systems they can access or create to support the needs of all students. This in turn will ultimately enhance teaching potential allowing teachers to fully maximise learning for all. I personally believe that collaboration is not only essential to the professional growth of teachers (Cramer & Stivers, 2007), but a vital key when acting in the best interest of the students and their families.