Collaboration w/ Colleague

Last week, my colleague and I met to discuss the course we're teaching next year. We discussed our unit as well, but we're really trying to nail down the structure of the combined course we're teaching. What's making this process difficult is that my colleague is struggling with the process of trying to convert a more linear approach to into a thematic one. We're trying to find some resources that talk specifically about creating a thematic approach to teaching history.

I've inserted a photo of a sort of brainstorm we had about how to best integrate all of the essential parts of what she needs to do with what I need to do. We're lucky that my curriculum is pretty process-oriented while hers is much more specific about content. We should be able to integrate our absolute must-haves in a pretty cohesive manner.

We're pretty excited about this process, though it's a bit daunting at this moment in time. Hopefully we'll have some time to meet soon and process this information even further. We did not talk about my stage three, but I feel like we made some headway into creating a sort of big picture vision that we have not yet had the chance to create.

Collaboration with Social Studies Department Head

The colleague I chose to work with on my integrated unit has been working closely with the social studies department head for the past couple of years. They work together in their planning so that their curricula are in line and their students have the same basic experience no matter who they have as a teacher.

Because my colleague and I are now working on an integrated approach, we thought that it would be wise to include the social studies department head in on our planning. This teacher turned out to be a gret resource in helping us to think about the span of topics and issues covered over the course of the year. She has also approached me in the last week with a video version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I have not viewed this tape as of yet, but I think that it could definitely be useful.

The important aspect of this connection and collaboration is not so much the sharing of a video, but the sharing of resources and ideas in general. There is a lot that can come from a single hour spent brainstorming with peers. I often connect in this way with content-like colleagues, but this hardly ever happens in such a planned-out manner with teachers of other contents. I don't know that I've ever set aside a prep period to plan with a teacher of another discipline. Hopefully, this will all translate to a more transparent set of goals and objectives for students, a closer connection to more and more colleagues, and the opportunity to integrate with representatives of other disciplines in the future.

Tech Integration

In our school, we are lucky enough to have a tech integrator who will come to our rooms and teach you how to use the applications and programs contained on our laptops. She is extremely knowledgeable and is a great asset to our school.

Once I decided to use GarageBand for my unit, I knew that I needed help to understand the entirety of what this program could do. I did not want to rely on my own understanding of its possibilities and functions, so I scheduled a meeting with our tech integrator. We met this past Thursday.

It turns out that I had figured out much of what this application could do in just playing around with it at my house. This was an advantage for us because we were able to move on to other aspects of the projects that I had not yet thought about. Like, how do I want students to share their recordings with other students? Do I want to show them on an LCD projector, or did I want them to create MP3 files and make some sort of playlist on itunes?

The tech integrator and I discussed all of the possibilities and she had recorded questions that she needed to which she needed to find answers, we were done. We scheduled a follow-up meeting for the 23rd.

Meeting with Colleague

Meeting with my colleague about our interdisciplinary unit was time well spent. It is sometimes hard to carve out time to have these important discussions in our every day teaching schedule. We met for most of a prep period last Friday and I think that it was a productive time for both of us.

We started the meeting by looking over my stage one, which my partner had yet to see. We found some corrections that needed to be made and talked about the progression of her unit in relation to mine. It is really exciting to think about the experience that we're creating for our students for next year. We have extended the collaboration of this one unit to a year-long course that we will teach in a collaborative fashion. Therefore, each of the units we teach in our English and history classes will correspond and correlate. This is super exciting because it will hopefully make for a more rich experience for our students and for us as colleagues.

An interesting layer to this particular collaboration is that my colleague is also taking a curriculum course right now at another college. She is using the same basic text that we're using, but we are getting differing messages about curriculum and how to use the book and workbook from our professors. We've basically decided to meet somewhere in the middle and use the planning guides and materials in a way that will work for us and for our students.

As far as leadership is concerned, the fact tat my colleague is also working from the same text helps tremendously. It is not like I am talking with her about ideas she has not heard. In fact, she is using the same process that we are using to create our unit. I feel like my colleague and I have already worked together for such a long time that leadership is not as much an issue as is being completely cognizant of what I'm envisioning so that I can put my ideas and my vision into words during our planning sessions.

Next week my colleague and I will be meeting with the head of the social studies department. This teacher has been collaborating with my colleague for some time on curriculum and planning for the junior history class that they both teach. Now, we are going to meet together to talk about the conceptual lens we've chosen to use for our classes next year. Also, I'm going to meet with the technology integrator to learn more about the Garage Band program. I've played around with it some, but I want to understand the entirety of what it can do.

It's interesting and cool to me that this one unit as opened up conversation between myself and several of my colleagues. My Alt Ed colleague and I are working more closely together on curriculum than we have in the past and we've reached out to include others in this process. Hopefully, this collective effort will translate to better instruction next year for all of our students!