Session+8

__**8.1 Opener- Wallwisher**__

media type="custom" key="10069381"

__**8.2 Teacher Conversations**__ Article by Sara Bernard on Edutopia.org: Collaborative Crusader: Creating a 21st Century Learning Community for Teachers

How does your school/district currently support or encourage collaboration between teachers? This is a tricky question. On one hand, I believe our school //wants// to support collaboration among teachers, but the flip side to that is, unfortunately, the lack of time actually allotted. True, we have had vertical teams in the past and inquiry groups which I found both the be incredibly productive and helpful. Realistically, a lot of our "common meeting time" is devoted to test score analysis and common assessments.

How much do you seek to collaborate with teachers and how do you accomplish this? I have been lucky enough to collaborate with several other teachers throughout my time at Malden. We have built new classes and added units and and revamped outdated ones. As we all know, this takes time and energy and come January with mid-terms and grading and mild exhaustion, not a whole lot of true "collaboration" takes place. If anything, I am more likely to ask a teacher who happens to have the same period off or who teaches the same grade level for help or suggestions. When I do get to collaborate with other teachers, I am in awe of what I learn from my coworkers--poetry is not my strongest teaching point and each year I am so grateful for what they have shared with me. Is that true collaboration? Probably not, but even that makes a difference. Most of this typically happens informally --when we have a common planning period (by chance) or after school.

To what extent do you think collaboration is of growing importance for teacher seeking to implement a 21st century classroom? HUGE!!!! If there is one thing I could add to our department--it would be just that. More time to collaborate. As teachers, we spend so much of our time in our own respective classrooms--often going hours without seeing another adult. Because of the nature of our profession, collaboration adds more than just "working together." It connects our teaching ideas, practices, and objectives.

In what ways, if any, do you see the thoughts in this article applying to //**student**// conversation? ﻿I am not quite sure how to answer this question. Yes, collaboration applies to student conversation. //How// does it apply, though? My thoughts are this--if we want true collaboration to take place, something else needs to go. There is simply not enough time to cover what our curriculum asks and to implement all these great collaborative tools. How we reconcile thoese two, I suppose, is a conversation our department needs to have.

__**8.3 Innovation in Education**__ "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As out case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." --Abraham Lincoln

media type="custom" key="10112381"

//--Response to both the Lincoln quote and Sir Ken Robinson's video can both be found in the Discussion tab.//

__**8.4 Collaboration Activity**__

__**Reflection: **__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This was a rather challenging task for me. My original thought was to create a slide about creating a Google Doc slide--I didn't know how to do this, so I figured it was a great way to learn. Ummm....right. This was MUCH harder than I anticipated. I had to copy the entire original presentation, delete slides, add my own, figure out how to create a slide, paste it back in...it was a total mess at one point. In the end, this is what I came up with and (I hope...I think) I added it correctly. At this point, I am too afraid to edit any other slides in fear I may really mess up the entire presentation!