We meet friends at the coffee shop. We talk on our cell phones while commuting. We visit with our co-workers over a sandwich. We even chat with strangers online. It seems human beings are programmed to communicate with one another, sharing ideas, insights, concerns, and consolation as naturally as we eat and breathe. Doubt that? Go anywhere and see if you can find two or more people together who aren’t finding something to say to one another.
Yet, in education, one of the tendencies is for teachers to become isolated within their classrooms, preoccupied with the demands of serving their students and families, and with few opportunities to engage in real collaboration with their peers. Sometimes a hostile or uncertain environment exacerbates this situation, but often it is simply the consequence of too many things to do and not enough time to do them. The urgency of daily tasks takes precedence over the importance of reaching outside of their routines and soon there is only the head down plowing through the pile of things to do.
Of course, this runs exactly opposite to what we know works: engaging, collaborating, prioritizing, planning, acting, and reflecting are recurring steps in a process of continuous improvement that leads to more effective results. So what is to be done?
Well, some of the changes to the school calendar for I.S.D. 166 and Great Expectations School (GES) were made specifically to address this issue. The creation of several staff development days, enabled by the extension of the individual school day, provides opportunities throughout the year for teachers to collaborate.
Professional learning communities (PLCs) established under the Q-comp plans in place at I.S.D. 166 and Birch Grove Community School are a forum for teachers to share goals, challenges, and plans in conversations geared toward improving student success. As teachers work together, they develop programs that are better than any of the teachers would have created alone. By incorporating the best ideas of their peers, all of the teachers become more effective in their individual classrooms.
There are also efforts under way to extend some of this collaboration beyond the bounds of individual schools to a countywide basis. Early next month, there will be a joint effort of all four elementary schools to bring together their kindergarten through second grade teachers. The idea is simply to broaden teachers’ awareness of what is happening elsewhere and see if there is an opportunity to build a foundation for future collaborations that could raise the performance of educators across the county.
Both Beth Schwarz, superintendent of I.S.D. 166, and I attended a workshop at the Minnesota Department of Education that focused on innovations in public education through the lens of the public education system in Finland, which consistently leads the world in student achievement.
One of the cornerstones of that system is a reliance on teachers to collaboratively, systematically, and continually develop their abilities and then bring those skills to bear in their individual assignments to meet the needs of their students. Given the remoteness of our county and the relative stability of our population, we believe we can implement many of the Finnish practices in our individual schools and create an excellent educational environment for all our families.
Which brings me to the next level of collaboration: those outside the formal education system. Where educational excellence exists, it does not exist in a vacuum. Individuals and organizations throughout the community need to be engaged with the educational leaders to support the many facets of a school’s operation. Volunteers who read, tutor, or otherwise assist in the classroom; business and community leaders who facilitate targeted scholarships, work-study programs, or service projects; nonprofit organizations who view schools as part of their outreach programs; and myriad other ways a community can engage with students and schools all serve to build a richer, more dynamic, and more integrated educational environment.
When everyone sees themselves connected to the education of our children, when the lines between “them” and “us” begin to disappear, when what happens in the schools is seen as directly affecting what happens in the community, when we realize that we truly are all in this together, then it will be important for us to be talking, collaborating, and working hard to make sure our schools reflect the excellence to which we aspire.
Each month a representative of our local schools will offer thoughts in Issues in Education. This month’s contributor is Peter James, director at Great Expectations School.
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