The Collaborative Teaching and Learning Journey- a Reflection

Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi

With your basket and my basket the people will be well (Māori proverb)

If there was ever a situation that has taken me back to feeling like my first days of teaching, setting up a collaborative teaching learning hub has been it. Sure, my colleague and I have over a decade of teaching under our belts each, but since education is transforming rapidly these days, how would that help? Neither of us had any experience teaching collaboratively. How can we guarantee the unknown?

As it turns out, one word: trust. Trust to learn from failure, and above all, trust each other's skills and ability to make it work. That one word that builds or breaks any relationship: trust. I trust my colleague. She's a kick-butt quality teacher who uses research to inform practice like I do. She holds the learner as the main reason for learning design, and like I do, believes in doing learning 'with children' not doing learning 'to children.' Does she teach like I do? No. Does she see things like I do? Not always. This challenges me to operate outside my echo chamber and learn so this collaboration is helping me become a better teacher so the positive effects of growth flow to our learners.

First and foremost last year we began with The Educational Graveyard: What is not helping our learners develop quality learning and agency?

We made a graveyard of all that we wanted to let go in its current form because it did not serve our vision of learner agency. Then we thought about the Why. Why will we do what we do?

Next came the How. How will we begin to create this vision?:

The What has slowly developed from in Term 1 including incorporating play-based learning, multi-level open maths that uses interleaving and spaced practice, targetted writing workshops, Philosophy for Children and an incorporation of growth mindset based learning process into the reading programme and beyond.

The way we have set up our learning episodes for this term (term 2) is very different than what it was at the beginning of the term for two reasons: we know our learners better and so can target systems and learning design more clearly, and they're more comfortable in the environment. Asking 45 6-year-olds to unlearn some of how learning happened last year and relearn is a big cognitive load for them.

One caution:

Link to the excellent blog post on this here

Collaboration is always more of a challenge that co-operation.  We have done a huge amount of collaboration, the benefit in this being in extending the level of our practice in ways we wouldn't have felt confident to do alone through growing our collective agency. We have created new systems and ways of learning design that have stretched the boundaries of anything I thought possible. She has encouraged me to try new methodology I've come across with a critical eye, preempting the possible difficulties here and there. We spent the best part of a day over the break designing a new Maths delivery system using interleaved and spaced learning. Something I could not have done alone.

The downside to collaboration is that it takes more time. Collaborating to create and adapting new systems takes time and we were ready to challenge the way we have done things in the past so it's something we believe in. We did not want to do single cell teaching time two. The consequence is that we don't often leave school before 6pm but we're mindful that this has to change. There is little time for reflection and I worry we don't always clarify ideas as much as we could if we had more time.

On the positive side, we were amazed at how far we've come after week 1 in term 2. The kids rolled in and we all hit the ground running. There was such an ease of learning flow this past week it was so enjoyable even though we have introduced some new systems. There is that level of collective trust between teacher and learner. The kids feel cared for and this builds a strong foundation of social capital (link to this here). We do feel proud of what we've achieved so far but have worked very hard to get here.

We keep adapting, changing and finding that some of the things we wanted to get rid of (spelling lists) have come back but in a way that we feel is better quality learning (spaced practice to improve long-term memorisation- link here).

At times we have to co-operate because time constraints mean we need to divide and conquer. Time is such a precious resource in teaching.

Where to next?

We were lucky enough to get two hours of professional learning and challenge with Mark Osborne towards the end of the last term.  Some things he said (amongst many others) that have stuck with me:

- Be clear of the Why, How and What. Perhaps this has to be ongoing. Systems change, ideas change and grow so it's always good to reflect, challenge and evolve this. I can see some things I want to add or clarify.

From Simon Sinek link here

- It can never be about what you both want, it has to be about what's best for the kids. This keeps me on my toes in terms of how much cognitive load we are asking our kids to cope with, and how much their voice is included in our decisions.

- There is a difference between compromise and collaboration. Meaning that when one of us compromises with the other then it's not really a collaboration. Whoa! That's a very powerful challenge that has got me thinking that we may need to develop a framework of shared understanding. We are two different individuals after all and it's a give that we won't always agree. So how do we ensure that compromise (win/lose) doesn't overtake collaboration (win/win)?

Would I go back to single cell teaching? It would have to be better than what we've created so far and that would be a VERY big ask. I have a talented teacher alongside me who is an innovator, supports me and challenges me, and shares the highs and lows.

Is it less work than teaching single cell? No. Is it better? With Amy, absolutely yes!