Teaching is not accomplished alone and it is the responsibility of the teacher to work with students and their families, as well as the community, to set the goals for learning and improvement, not only for students but for the teacher and teaching profession.
It is critical for teachers to understand the importance of teaching as a collective effort. Working with colleagues, school staff, families, and a student’s community to help set goals can make learning more relevant for the student and contribute to increased success. Meaningful collaboration allows the exchange of ideas that will lead to more learning opportunities for students as well as provide motivation and support for classroom teachers. Also, by constantly seeking to become a more effective teacher and taking a leadership role in the school or community, other teachers are encouraged to improve and are more likely to identify and find support for areas of needed change. My efforts each day in the classroom are part of a larger collaborative framework in place to educate students. To uphold my responsibilities as part of that team, I solicit feedback on my work, from students as well as colleagues, and I continuously search for applicable research that I can use to improve my teaching skills.
School-wide Collaboration
During one of our daily conferences, my supervising teacher declared: Everything we do is a collaboration. That pronouncement led to a deeper understanding of the shadowing and conferencing requirements for my student teaching placement. Over the course of my student teaching, I witnessed the collaborative efforts that went into a school day between:
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- the bus drivers who transport students to and from school and events;
- the cafeteria staff who prepare and distribute breakfast and lunch;
- the office staff who handle everything from answering the multitude of parent calls and emails to tracking attendance to scheduling substitutes to managing every penny for every team and extracurricular activity;
- the operations staff who keep the school clean, stocked, and in perfect working order;
- the guidance department who help students with both immediate life concerns and planning for their futures;
- the nurse who may dispense Ibuprofen one minute and be called for a student having a seizure the next;
- the specialty teachers, such as the ELL and SPED teachers, who make sure that the learning in the school is accessible to everyone;
- the library media staff who assist teachers and students with locating resources and provide space and tutoring for students needing additional help;
- the classroom teachers, who not only plan lessons to reach the unique students in each of their classes, but also communicate with colleagues in other disciplines to see where they can help struggling students or understand changes in a student’s behavior or attendance;
- the adults at home who support them;
- and the students themselves who show up for class and put the effort into their learning.
Each of those individuals is an essential part of a student’s day, working together to promote the culture of the school. Even if a student doesn’t ride the bus or eat in the cafeteria, for example, other students in the school do, and it is those services and employees that bring those other students with their perspectives, experiences, and knowledge into the classroom to interact with the larger group.
Importance of Feedback
To be the best teacher that I can be and constantly strengthen my skills, I need to continuously evaluate my experience based on my own observations and those of my colleagues. Over the six weeks of my full-time teaching, I reflected daily on my efforts in the classroom. I considered, for example, the effectiveness of the lessons, the engagement of students, what lessons needed more teaching upfront, which ones would have benefitted from student group work, and how I could have incorporated more writing. I conferenced with my supervising teacher and co-teacher, asking how I could have done something differently, what would they have done, what did they see that I didn’t in content, delivery, and student reactions. What was missing from those reflections, though, was the student perspective. After students completed the MAUS graphic novel study, I asked them to evaluate the unit. The students filled out an online form that asked them to describe their likes and dislikes in the unit, their choices of projects and any difficulties they had, and what types of projects they preferred.
Integrating Research Findings into the Classroom
Teachers can apply research findings to their work and use their classrooms to generate additional data to improve their skills and build on their knowledge of learners and content. Through my student teaching and tutoring of writing, I observed and talked with students about research projects and their approaches to them, and I learned that many students dread the research paper assignment. It is boring, most said, and the topics are rarely of any interest to them. In addition, I would describe their approaches as fact-finding missions, aided by unfocused questions on general search engines. Thinking back to young children’s natural tendencies to ask questions, I wondered how to reignite that sense of curiosity in secondary students and make research exciting for them. I then researched how I could develop a culture of inquiry in my classroom.
The literature I reviewed suggested that students lack the skills they need to complete the research paper or project. Before they even attempt to locate sources and determine their appropriateness, they must know how to develop questions that lead to deep discoveries; how to make connections between abstract ideas; and how to synthesize information with their own thoughts. In addition, many have not had enough practice with writing to be successful with a research paper. The literature also highlighted connections between writing and developing the thinking skills needed for researching. I developed a unit to teach students the skills they need to begin researching while helping them build their confidence in a supportive classroom environment. As I implement the unit in my future classrooms, I intend to add to the research with my personal findings of my students’ experiences and successes and refine my unit based on my reflectionns and the data I collect.