Tag Archives: Collaboration

Growth & Collaboration: Walking the Talk

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Pictures say a thousand words so I won’t say (as) much in this post, but I’ll explain these pictures and what they mean to me.  On Wednesday night, my preservice candidates in my secondary literacy course got to present Project Based Learning assessments aligned with Career & Technical Education pathways and state content standards, disciplinary lesson plans that would lead to these assessments and reflections on their take-aways from my course. Usually, this presentation is done to their other colleagues in the course. On Wednesday, my current Masters candidates (who are practicing teachers in a curriculum and instruction cohort focused on Linked Learning principles) and my former credential students (now in the classroom) came to be the audience, give feedback and tell about their experiences in the classroom. Here they are presenting (each to groups at individual tables thanks to our awesome Active Learning classrooms):

It was an amazing night and a super meaningful way for me to end the semester with my preservice students.  It was a night based on reflection, growth, professional collaboration and learning.  I could not have been prouder.

And, following our good-byes, my Masters candidates “kidnapped” me to go to our final program celebration of the semester, where we got to acknowledge one another and celebrate their accomplishments:

CSULB Curriculum & Instruction: Focus on Linked Learning MA Candidates — Fall 2017

I came home that night, and the next morning opened a small gift that was presented to me the day before.  

This teaching bracelet and this night reminded me why persistence is important and why I champion professional learning and growth, professional and personal identities in the classroom, and relevant curriculum that draws students in and helps them to reach their goals.  We can do amazing things as educators when we walk together and push one another. I am humbled by my students and the opportunities to engage in this work, and I am so very grateful for growth & collaboration with them on the journey.

A Parent’s Perspective

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When I first became a teacher, I was very young and several years removed from having my own children.  As a student, I had never received a call home from a teacher and, as a novice teacher, I was intimidated to reach out to parents, worried that I would either “get a kid in trouble” or get yelled at for “picking on” a student.

I learned, eventually, to take a deep breath, and work with families in the best interest of their students.  Parents became partners with me in helping to support and understand their children and I developed strong relationships with some parents that last to this day.

It helped a lot when I became a parent myself.

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My parenting journey is unusual.  My twin daughters were students at my middle school who approached me to see if they could come live with my husband and me. The very condensed version of our story is that we agreed, they came, and we eventually adopted them.  With them came a complicated history and a new role of advocacy as a first time mother.  I had teachers in my own district who were both wonderfully supportive and harshly critical.  I made plenty of mistakes, as did my girls.

But, I was genuinely trying my hardest to do the best I knew how for their development as people, and to support them to be successful in school.

I also believe that my girls’ biological parents tried their best, and gave them everything they could to help them be successful in the best way they knew how.

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Fast forward several years to my biological son (child 3 of 4) and his entry into school.  Because my son was born to me, and had, what I thought to be, a much less complicated history, I figured the transition into school would be simple.  Not so much.  For a variety of reasons, my kid, who initially struggled with change, has been in 4 different elementary schools in 6 years. In each, I’ve sought to develop relationships with his teachers and been an advocate for him to get an education that would support and challenge him.

This year, he’s been in a Mandarin Chinese weekend heritage school.  I don’t speak Mandarin well and couldn’t understand most of his teacher’s orientation.  It left me in tears.  Luckily, upon approaching the teacher, she was able to give me the most important information in English, and was kind and welcoming.  I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing there most of the time. It’s incredibly hard, makes me not want to be at school, and has me struggling with shame on a weekly basis.

My experiences have left me convinced of the important of home-school communication.  As a parent, more than anything else, I want to be heard and acknowledged. I want educators to know that I’m doing the best I can, and I actually have an important and unique perspective about my children.  As an educator, I want families to understand how much I care about their students and that I’m also doing the best I can.  I want us to work as a team to support their child’s development.  As a parent and an educator, I do not expect the other side to “give in to my demands” or “make my life easier.” I understand the constraints that educators face each day and the demands that parents feel in many aspects of their lives.  I have incredible empathy for both sides.

I share all of this because I have seen and experienced the pain of being misunderstood on both sides.  I’ve also seen the possibilities of powerful teamwork in support of students.  I hope we’ll choose the latter for our students, but also, in the spirit of our shared humanity.

Making It Work

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I am fortunate to be on a campus that has an incredible faculty technology support team and that is forward thinking in terms of active learning and technology integration.  As an early adopter and tenure-line faculty, I have also been lucky to be assigned to these active learning classrooms more often than not.  Sure, some semesters, I have chosen to teach off-campus, at local high school sites, where I face firewalls that block active social media engagement, but that’s a fine trade-off given that we’re actually engaged in a secondary classroom and actively a part of that campus.

This semester, however, I’m back on my university campus for all my courses.  And, because of a late schedule shift and a particularly popular course offering time, there were slim pickings in terms of rooms.  So, this is what I walked into yesterday:

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Yes, that’s right. Immovable rows in a lecture hall.  And, there was a VGA cable, but no smart panel input for the VGA cable (at least not one that could be figured out after a few minutes of screen pressing diligently).  While my students may have been ready for active learning, my seating was not.  It was pretty much my “anti-pedagogy” nightmare.

What’s a girl to do in the moment? (Besides silently cry via emoji and let my sorrows be known to the twitterverse?)

Well, if there’s anything years of middle school teaching have taught me, it’s that you’ve got to make it work.  Teaching is not about one’s circumstances.  It’s about how we can adapt to make the best of less than ideal situations.

So, we used the walls and the halls (or the aisles, in this case):

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When you’re committed to collaboration, if the chairs don’t move, you do. We held class, did people bingo, shared with and about one another, developed community, and climbed over some furniture. Your commitment has to be stronger than the bolts that tie the furniture to the ground if you want to make it work because there will always be obstacles. That’s our professional reality.

PS. I put in for a room change this morning.  Please keep your fingers crossed.  The extra distance to the room is worth the possibility of…wait for it…tables and chairs! (I’m easily satisfied) Stay tuned for updates.