I need to listen to the contributions of my colleagues. Right now, I don’t practice this in the thoughtful way I would hope to. The contributions of my colleagues in 407 repeatedly show me how much valuable information other people hold, and Tuesday was no exception.
As we started drafting our chocolate chip cookie rubrics, I recognized it as a low stakes activity and checked out. I tossed out a few ideas but didn’t defend any of them. As we workshopped the rubrics later, I realized how useful a second set of eyes could be. I learned I need to be careful of confusing the quantity of a thing, say chocolate chips or vocabulary words, with their quality. I also need to be clear about criteria. Sometimes only half of the words I need to explain what I want make their way onto the page. As I write this, I wonder why I didn’t see what I could learn from my colleagues during the writing of the rubric.
The answer I think, is that I am struggling to shift from being competitive to being collaborative. In the past, I’ve seen school as something I could win by getting better grades than my classmates. If I’m not getting graded on my cookie rubric, why bother? As I become a teacher, I’m valuing collaboration. I don’t just mean practicing collaborative learning in my classroom, but valuing what my colleagues have to share with me. Lesson planning with Laura made me want to have a co teacher for my whole career! As a teacher, what goes on in my classroom is not about having a better lesson plan than my colleague across the hall. It’s about working together to help support student success.
Colleen, I appreciate your bold honesty. I can relate with the fact that much of our college career seems very competitive but the further we get into our education courses is does become more of a collaboration. Connect that with what several teachers have suggested in the panels: to work together with your colleagues. Ultimately, all educators have, or should have, the common goal to reach students and what better way than to collaborate with our peers.
ReplyDeleteColleen, I feel as though I used to feel the exact same way as you do now. In high school, I was very competitive when it came to my grades. I didn't just do well for me, I did well so that I did better than everyone else, well most people. When I entered college I slowly stopped being as competitive with other people and began to compete with myself, so that I would be the best me. In many of my classes I have labs where I have to work with lab partners and various groups. Do I work best with every partner I've had? Absolutely not, but I have had many partners that I work very well with and that I continue to work with in other classes. When I'm working with a partner that I work well with I find it to be extremely motivating. We bounce ideas off of each other and help each other all the time. I think I collaborate best when I have a hardworking partner. Like you said, lesson planning with Laura made you want a co-teacher. That experience hopefully helped you to figure out what qualities in partners and groups you work with best. With that information you can try to work with people who have those qualities and during that process you can work on becoming collaborative.
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