Danielle Krueger is a second grade teacher in Fairfax, Virginia. This is her first year as a classroom teacher. She graduated from Penn State in 2011 where she co-founded an organization (H.E.A.L. – Help Every Angel Live) that raises money for Penn State’s Dance Marathon
I am one of 8 second grade teachers at my school. I am the only first year teacher, but there are three new teachers to the grade level. The year began with packets of endless papers being clipped to my door with post-it notes attached to help me translate. Everybody did their own thing. Everyone was gracious and wanted to help, but with so many different routes headed toward the same destination, it was hard to decide on the BEST avenue.
I was frustrated that everyone did all their own planning. Let’s divide and conquer. With eight team members, we should only have to pull an eighth of the planning load. So we set up sub-committees.
Rather than pulling together resources and throwing together lessons across every content area, we’re all able to put our brain power toward one subject, in which we can immerse ourselves fully. Each committee looks deeply at their standards and puts together meaningful lessons for the whole team. They are also in charge of distributing all related copies, games, tests, etc.
This is just the meat. Each teacher still adds his/her own flavor… The state standards and county pacing guides give us a rough outline of what to teach – the destination. The sub-committees plan out the avenue – one suggested route – the MapQuest directions. However, each teacher’s journey is still unique. We need to travel at the speed limit that our students set.
My advice?
Set up ground rules to avoid bumps in the road:
1. Lay the ground work. There must be an easy means of collaboration- I recommend using OneNote or GoogleDocs.
2. Each sub-committee must stay one week ahead in plans.
3. Have a backup plan.
4. Pull your weight. Be reliable. Hold yourself accountable… Create the same well-thought out plans that you expect in return.
5. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Find someone that already invented it… Then make it run more smoothly. Resources on the Internet are more plentiful than ever before. Take advantage of that.
6. Buy in. Everyone is headed toward the same goal, but this is a lot of work for the veteran teachers that already know exactly what they want to do. This system demands new and engaging lessons. Lessons that are put together with best and next practices in mind. Everyone must buy in and trust the rest of the team.
7. Reflect often. Since the entire grade-level is on the same page, it is important to reflect on what is working, and what isn’t.
The pay out for this team approach is exponentially greater than the buy in. Don’t get me wrong: it is a ton of work to set up an effective system where ideas can be dropped and viewed and tweaked and used. However, when the machine runs smoothly, it only requires light maintenance. This is not pulling one-eighth of the work… This is each of us pulling 100% of the work, but reaping 8 times the benefits. This is spending time to figure out the best way of teaching a unit, and making sure that everyone understands how to do it. This is collaborating and making sure that lessons are planned so thoroughly that we are catching misconceptions before they arise. This is not the easy way out; this is seamless collaboration.
Photo Credit: IvanWalsh.com via Compfight cc
