And just when I thought I had peaked as a master teacher in my career......it happened. It wasn't new to me; I had done it as early as in my first year of teaching in 1994-95. It wasn't scary; I had sought it out and invited it into my professional life. It wasn't a new concept; businesses had been doing it for decades. It was just a title-less, name-less thing I had been doing for years.
But now it had a name. And it was so new that even my auto-correct spelling kept showing the word as "unlisted" or spelled incorrectly for several years.
Collaboration.
Collaboration. The word seems to roll off my tongue and off the tip of my typing fingers now so effortlessly. Ironically, however, the journey of collaboration hasn't always been effortless. "Collaboration" is the word that has perhaps changed more of what I do now in the classroom than any other significant title behind my name or training I have sought. "Collaboration" has given me more direction and stretched me further than I thought possible.
During the past decade, I have worked hard to create a personal professional teaching/learning network. I love to share ideas with teachers within and out of my area of focus (German). As I have created lesson plans, activities, formative & summative assessments, etc, I have carefully uploaded these to my google drive which I freely share with countless teachers in my district, state, and even nationwide at this point. When I share with people outside of ASD, I ask them for feedback and to share with me the things they alter or add so I can consider these as I constantly try to reinvent myself as a teacher.
While the collaboration process has been powerful at a school level, for singleton teachers (like myself), it has been empowering to collaborate weekly with German teachers within Alpine School District. We work hard together to refine what we want our students to know (proficiency standards), how we know if they are learning (creating both formative and summative assessments and then using the data to determine who is meeting standards) and then creating ways to remediate those who aren't meeting the standards while creating resources for those who are more gifted learners. It is a beautiful process that takes work, patience, vision, and direction.
But now it had a name. And it was so new that even my auto-correct spelling kept showing the word as "unlisted" or spelled incorrectly for several years.
Collaboration.
Collaboration. The word seems to roll off my tongue and off the tip of my typing fingers now so effortlessly. Ironically, however, the journey of collaboration hasn't always been effortless. "Collaboration" is the word that has perhaps changed more of what I do now in the classroom than any other significant title behind my name or training I have sought. "Collaboration" has given me more direction and stretched me further than I thought possible.
During the past decade, I have worked hard to create a personal professional teaching/learning network. I love to share ideas with teachers within and out of my area of focus (German). As I have created lesson plans, activities, formative & summative assessments, etc, I have carefully uploaded these to my google drive which I freely share with countless teachers in my district, state, and even nationwide at this point. When I share with people outside of ASD, I ask them for feedback and to share with me the things they alter or add so I can consider these as I constantly try to reinvent myself as a teacher.
While the collaboration process has been powerful at a school level, for singleton teachers (like myself), it has been empowering to collaborate weekly with German teachers within Alpine School District. We work hard together to refine what we want our students to know (proficiency standards), how we know if they are learning (creating both formative and summative assessments and then using the data to determine who is meeting standards) and then creating ways to remediate those who aren't meeting the standards while creating resources for those who are more gifted learners. It is a beautiful process that takes work, patience, vision, and direction.