Collaborative time must make way for collaborative space.
Let me explain myself. At a recent target group discussion with our visiting NCA QAR team at the high school, our teachers, myself included, lamented the lack of time for collegiality, for building a community of professionals who learn from each other, who assemble the best practices amongst the 330 odd ROEA members with about 4000 collective years of teaching experience in Royal Oak.
In brief, we have expertise. We need to work together. And every study of effective business practice demands it. And, where necessary, we usually know where to go to receive the new training we need.
Amongst our teachers we have technology experts, reading experts, behavior management experts, teachers skilled in the newest mathematics strategies, teachers devoted to partnering with the broader community, and those who recognize the best strategies for diverse students with diverse needs. Let us learn from each other, we say, and the entire educational community will be stronger. Help us build a true "educational community" designed not just for test scores, but for every person, teacher included, to learn.
Objections to our proposals in the past years have been numerous: it costs too much, some districts who collaborate aren't effective at it, it is inconvenient for families if we change our school day structure—and, of course, the dreaded "We don't trust teachers to use the time." Sure, accountability is an issue as are costs. Rather than review those arguments here, let me just suggest that these are surmountable obstacles for what could be a tremendous boost for our students. If all history teachers are teaching in the most innovative and effective ways, social studies scores go up. And kids love history. In other words, whoever doesn't want the best teachers in front of their kids all day, please stand up and be noted.
So what has happened, in this time of fiscal uncertainty, to our discussion on professional development? As we wrestle with closing programs, classrooms, and bus stops (issues which require their own discussion), surely we can agree that our teachers must be offered enough opportunity to teach at the top of their collective game.
But here is the trouble. In the current district atmosphere, true educator empowerment in the guidance of professional development and time will continue to be limited. As I write this, the district will be proposing the elimination even of our middle school planning, the last daily and structured commitment to common collaboration we have. We cannot, I believe, expect more. And I pause here long enough to invite any reading administrator to substantively demonstrate otherwise.
We are teachers. We love working with young people. We love our careers. We want to be better at them.
And so that brings us to my opening statement: we must as professionals re-imagine our own development. Rather than hold ourselves victims to state and district boundaries, let us consider how we might help each other. Let us think in terms of collaborative spaces rather than collaborative times.
Building such spaces is what I have done much thinking about in my past year as Program VP of the ROEA. This website is only the smallest of these changes, but a significant one if we use it for our own sharing. Our next steps must be to build technological spaces for our collaboration. We need to build public spaces for our work with community. And we need to share curricular spaces with expertise we can solicit in the private sector.
What's at stake is simple: 1) Increasing our professional confidence in our areas; 2) Meeting the changing dynamics of a post-cinderblock classroom; 3) Releasing ourselves from the barriers which work to disempower us; and 4) Bringing the best education to our students that we can.
I welcome your ideas and feedback, your expertise, your dissent. Solutions are found through healthy dialogue.
--Steve Chisnell, Program VP, ROEA