Katrina Handy\’s Master in Teaching Portfolio

Professional Collaboration

Introduction

Since I was a grade-school student, I possessed a very strong aversion to any kind of group work. I held on to this aversion throughout high school and into college. However, upon entering the Teacher Education Program, I discovered that many of our class projects were based on group collaboration. Initially, I thought to myself: why would we collaborate when someday we will have our own classroom and our own way of doing things? It was then that I started to learn about the benefits of collaboration. For so long, my perception of working with others was blurred with thoughts such as “we just work together because the teacher doesn’t want to grade so many projects,” or “I am going to have to do all of the work while my peers sit back and relax.” Once I entered my master’s program, I learned that my goal was the same as my peers: to become the best teacher I could be, and this goal was going to be achieved through collaboration. “Group work,” also known as collaboration became an essential component of the program, and a skill at which I am rapidly improving. Collaborating with peers has become one of my favorite activities, and I look forward to collaborating with my future school staff.

Context

Throughout my student teaching experience, I found that the most difficult part of instruction was accommodating the range of learners in my class. I had some lower performing students who had skills comparable to kindergartners in math and reading, and my higher-performing learners had skills at or above third grade. I found this stratification of learners most difficult to accommodate during large group instruction, and I needed help figuring out how to motivate one specific student to complete her work for any given subject. As Bambino so appropriately states “The Critical Friends Group process acknowledges the complexity of teaching and provides structures for teacher to improve their teaching by giving and receiving feedback” (2002, p. 25).

For my Critical Friends Group, I presented my colleagues with the work of a student named Aurora, and requested their assistance in finding methods for motivating her to complete her school work. Aurora is an eight-year-old girl in the third grade. Based on beginning of the year assessments, she is performing at levels much lower than grade level (kindergarten in math, and first grade in reading). As a result, her investment in any assignment is often lacking, and she needs a lot of one-on-one attention in order to complete any schoolwork. I provided my CFG colleagues with examples of her work, which included a math-map, a story she was working on for a writing project, and a graphing activity. We used the “Consultancy Protocol,” which is a process of receiving feedback from my colleagues on how to best motivate Aurora to start producing work independently and with confidence.

Collaboration

I presented the student work to my colleagues and posed the question: how can I motivate and support this student to complete her work, and to do so independent of any exorbitant one-on-one assistance? Throughout the process of asking clarifying questions, I was already taking note of the actions I needed to take during this portion of the collaboration: “[The collaboration process] is critical because it challenges educators to improve their teaching practice and to bring about the changes that schools need…” (Bambino, p. 27). One such action that my colleagues suggested was to simply sit down and talk with Aurora about her work habits, and find out more about how she feels about different subjects, allowing me to better gauge her self-confidence and attitude toward school.

Once we started the probing questions portion of the protocol, my reflection on the actions taken to accommodate this student were becoming very clear, specifically, the instances in which I allowed the student to control and manipulate my time to help her. For example, my colleagues pointed out that I gave her considerable one-on-one attention, thereby reinforcing her dependency on teacher assistance for work completion.

Following the probing questions, I moved away from the group, and my colleagues openly discussed methods to get Aurora to work independently. Some suggestions were to decrease my one-on-one assistance slowly, and help her to be self-sufficient during large group instruction and work time.

I was hesitant bringing this issue to my colleagues, as I thought that I had exhausted the ways in which I could encourage Aurora to become more invested in her work. However, my thoughts were proven wrong once I began my CFG. Throughout the entire process, I received a lot of excellent ideas to implement with Aurora. My colleagues were forthright with their advice, and very thoughtful about their contributions to the motivational issue being discussed. I found their advice to be above and beyond the scope of my thinking for Aurora. In participating in this collaboration, I realized that I was too focused on the student and what had not been working, instead of attempting to find new ways to help motivate her to complete her work. My colleagues used what they knew about Aurora, and thought of different ways for me to motivate her, while keeping her on track with her peers.

Result

The following is a list of suggestions that my colleagues brainstormed to help me motivate Aurora:

– Use her family as a motivator

– Ask lead questions

– Use the pre-teach, teach, and re-teach method with her

– Conference with Aurora to figure out a plan for her to succeed.

– Use visual checklist on her desk: motivating because she could keep track of her own progress

While my colleagues offered many different methods to assist Aurora in learning how to work independently, I was not able to try out their suggestions, as I only had one day remaining of my student teaching. However, if I had had the opportunity to implement the changes suggested by my colleagues, one suggestion that I would have used would have been to use her relationship with her family as a motivator. I could have used this suggestion during journal writing, as well as story writing. It would have given her a place to start in her writing, instantly making the assignment more relevant to her life, and her confidence by really knowing the subject matter of the assignment would have improved.

Another suggestion was to ask Aurora lead questions. I had done this once; I asked her questions individually, and then asked the class, and she raised her hand and contributed during the large group discussion. Often she failed to participate in large group discussions because she felt that she would be wrong if she spoke. Asking her more lead questions though, could have prompted participation in the large group discussion.

In addition, I would have used methods of pre-teaching, teaching and then re-teaching to give Aurora the continuous support and repetition she needed to comprehend a concept. She worked best when the skill being learned was concrete, not conceptual. Based on this understanding, I could have reinforced her conceptual learning with the pre-teach, teach, re-teach method, and her skills practice with more frequent written/verbal practice.

I would have also sat down with Aurora to figure out what she thought about her classroom learning and what would be helpful to her. It is critical to talk with students, as they often know what is best for them in terms of pace and material being taught and learned.

Conclusion

While my CFG did not take place until the final week of my student teaching, I had many other opportunities to collaborate with the staff at school, discussing student needs and how to accommodate those students in the classroom. I took part in an Interdisciplinary Team Meeting about Aurora, where her mother agreed to get her tested to see if she would qualify for Special Education services. I was able to talk about Aurora’s skills as a student, as well as her qualities as a friend to her peers in the classroom, and most importantly, we discussed what Aurora needed to be successful as a third grader and in her future school years. In addition, my cooperating teacher, the special education teacher, and I had several conversations about Aurora and meeting her needs as a lower-performing learner.

I have always been very hesitant to give my own opinion during large group discussion. Additionally, my perceptions of being a teacher were always that a teacher has a classroom, where he or she implements lessons and management plans, individually, not necessarily needing to seek help or assistance from older, more seasoned professionals. However, in being part of this cohort, this CFG, and also being placed at an open-concept school where collaboration is unavoidable, I understand how essential and frequent collaboration should be. I value collaboration so much, because it is not the practice of “stealing ideas,” but more the practice of excellent teaching where sharing ideas about teaching is helpful and constructive for everyone involved in the collaboration process.

Throughout all of my collaborative interactions, I reinforced my belief that the more minds working on one problem, the better the outcome will be for the student and the teacher. The process of collaboration has become one of the most important parts of my teaching and learning, and I wish that I had learned and understood the benefits of collaboration much earlier in life; my experiences could have been much richer as a result of strong collaboration.

REFERENCES

Bambino, D. (2002). Critical Friends. Educational Leadership. 59(6), pp. 25-27.