Collaboration Makes Everything So Much Easier and Better

              

Collaboration Makes Everything So Much Easier and Better

             When I first started to teach, I remember the feeling of being plunked into a classroom by myself and left to my own devices. I struggled a great deal and so a number of consultants came in to give me advice but then left.  The only way I could get them back was to make an appointment and have them come when I was free from teaching, which really, back then, was of no help to me.  When I had a student who gave me trouble, I went to the principal and he told the student that his recalcitrant behaviour would be punished by Jesus Christ in the next life, which obviously was of no use to anyone.  

 

              When I began to read prodigiously for my doctoral research, I read a book by Roland Bath, an American school principal, originally, who taught at Harvard and wrote several books about school improvement.  In his book, Improving Schools from Within, he likened classroom teachers at that time to kindergarten students who did not play together but rather in parallel to each other.  He suggested that the vast majority of elementary teachers went into their rooms, closed their classroom doors and avoided any professional conversations with anyone else in the school for fear admitting a mistake or a fear or a weakness would damage their professional image.

 

             Little has changed since those days except there have been many steps made to encouraging teachers in schools to collaborate with each other. I subscribe to several group list serves that publish ideas, questions, references and so on for other teachers to derive benefit from.  Technology has only made these attempts at collaboration easier. I remember when I taught a graduate class in research methods trying to use WhatsApp as a way for students in the class to share ideas, suggestions and so forth.  It did not go over very well because there was no culture supporting the use of the technology for communication.

 

                Collaboration both in real time and online synchronously is a very powerful tool that has yet to find its moment in time, I think.  There are so many teachers today struggling to conquer teaching online skills and yet they have been taught to assume it is them against the world, so to speak, when it comes to teaching.  I realize that there is so little time for teachers to spend in collaboration with other professionals when they have to teach their students and most often deal with their families too. But somehow or another, we must find a way to enable collaboration.  

 

             When I was a consultant, I got it into my head to create a situation where I would visit a specific number of schools who were all trying to make webpages with their students and I would be their collaborator available by phone or email or personal visit to help them over the various hurdles and teach them the skills they needed, just in time, so that they could practice and implement new skills as we went along.  It was very successful, and I used it that principle for my doctoral research with, again, much success.  Yet, in the trade list serves I subscribe to, I found a reference to collaborations between pre-service teachers and in-service teachers to help in the acquisition of tech skills.  Our culture makes it a fetish for people to succeed on their own and yet there is so little that we endeavour to do as individuals that is not made easier by asking for help.  To be capable and independent are great virtues but to be sort of incapable in one area and be able to reach out for help is equally important.  So much that ails our world today would be made so much better through collaboration and mutual support.  Let’s encourage everyone to learn once in a while, to ask for help. Try it.  You might actually like the experience and the feeling of support and skill development at the same time.