Enriching collaboration

Collaboration. What does it look like in schools and how can you measure the results of that collaboration? This has been an underlying theme for us during year one of our turnaround plan. I believe that collaboration, much like creativity, needs some structure in order to thrive. All voices must be given the opportunity to contribute, to lead, to question, to push, and even to disagree in order for collaboration to be truly impactful and effective. I said to my colleague this week, "Politeness is poison to collaboration," and suggested that we might have t-shirts made with that phrase. What does that phrase mean to me as a leader and as a developer of teacher leaders? It means that everyone must feel that they are engaged in the direction of the dialogue, the development of ideas, and the evaluation of effective implementation in order for collaboration to work. If teachers feel that they can only share their true thoughts when they leave the room, it is not true collaboration.

Our enrichment partner (part of our extended learning time aspect of our turnaround plan) has been provided STEAM based instruction for our students daily while our classroom teachers leave the classroom for Collaborative Team Planning. In the beginning of the year, we operated without connectivity between enrichment and classroom curricula,even though we saw some beautiful products of the enrichment programming early on, we were missing the collaboration between our two systems. Throughout the year, we have engaged differently and more purposefully around planning collaborative units and projects. Our enrichment staff has willingly worked with teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators to see connections between the curriculum areas and develop lessons and units that build on and expand upon concepts taught in classrooms. As we have gotten better at collaboration, the work has become more meaningful to our students and to our teachers. As teachers have seen the multiple ways that creative thinking can enhance their content and curriculum, they have been encouraged to collaborate more with their enrichment partners and have found even more connections and ways to engage our students. 

We just finished a three day Celebration of the Arts this past week. It was amazing. Over three days, our students worked with a composer on a commissioned piece and presented the world-premiere of a work composed for our students, performed musical selections that aligned to the theme "I am the future," presented dance and instrumental performances, and hosted an Open House Living Museum for parents and families that included students reading stories they had written, dramatizing stories of kings, queens, fairy tales, pirate ships, and lost treasure, and created space ships, solar systems, and geodomes. This was the result of collaboration - between enrichment and classroom teachers, between school and community, and between students and teachers. This collaboration allowed our students to engage with the arts in ways that showed them who they are and who they can be. The arts can bring out the best in us and collaboration in the arts can unite a school community. Enjoy the images of our collaboration and the amazing things that our students created. It was so powerful to be a part of this collaboration (that's me - sitting at the piano). I am in awe of the things that great teachers can do with students when they are given the autonomy, mastery, and purpose to make great things happen.