Cultivating a Culture of Teacher Collaboration

“Collaborate –to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor”.[1] For a school focused on transformational education, the endeavor goes beyond the intellectual alone as we look for holistic transformation with spiritual transformation at the core.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the church as a body, the body of Christ, and explains that just as a body has multiple parts working together in specific roles, so we as Christ-followers are called to work together using the gifts God has given us. As teachers, we too are called to use our giftings to the benefit of others. One way of doing so is through collaboration.

Collaboration can encompass a variety of goals. Perhaps your school just needs to encourage a culture of more open communication. Perhaps student behavior issues can be addressed through a cooperative effort. Coming together around shared goals and vision can happen through a growing experience of community found through collaboration. The greatest educational aim would be that of fostering the best outcomes for student learning that can happen as professionals really work together.

Teacher collaboration at first glance sounds great. Very few would consider the idea of teachers working together a negative element of educational culture in a school – in fact, most would readily ascribe to it as a good idea. And yet, there are numerous behavioral and thought patterns that might make a teacher or an entire staff less inclined to embrace collaboration in their everyday practice and pedagogy. Teaching is no easy thing. Time is precious. Pursuing collaboration that threatens to add to one’s workload rather than bring benefit and delight to it is probably a non-starter for most. Siloing is a danger for individual teachers, collegial cliques, departments, grade levels and the like. A teacher can easily fall into the “it’s my” (classroom, course, time, pet project…) mindset, especially if a tangible benefit to collaboration is not apparent. Relational pitfalls abound. Toxic peer relationships, competition for scarce resources, school leadership that seems disconnected from the teacher’s reality, a climate that emphasizes perceived shortcomings more readily than little and large victories – all these can sour one’s attitude and aptitude towards collaboration. On the other hand, collaboration done well can also serve to dampen these resistance factors and invite new levels of cooperation and excellence in a school community.

Let’s look at some things that might help a school culture move towards collaboration.

To truly be effective, collaboration must grow towards becoming a key value in your school. It will probably not happen quickly or by command. It needs to be talked about, defined, and imagined – it needs to become something more “demanded” by rather than of staff members. School leadership can help do this, but the individual teacher can also work to influence their closest colleagues (department members, grade level staff…). This influence must begin in a spirit of humility that saturates both the asking for and offering of collaborative input. A teacher willing to take the lead in building collaboration must imagine it, articulate it, and show enthusiasm for it.

Collaboration, by definition, requires cooperation, a working together founded in benevolence. No one wants to be a party of one on a collaborative mission – that would be too much like being in a student group project where one person does all the work!

It also takes humility and honesty, so that one can say things like:

• “I feel like I’m drowning here. I’d love some input from any of you that have gotten a handle on this stuff.”
• “I see this about your (fill in the blank – classroom or time management, assessment strategies, engaging projects, vision for students…) and I wonder if we could talk of ways I might learn from you.”
• “You know, I’ve been very pleased with this new (fill in the blank – strategy, grading process, planning tool, great book…) and I’d love to share about it with (you, the department/grade level staff, PD day…).”

In the best collaborative cultures, school leadership at all levels (head of school, department chair, grade level leaders…) should have a commitment to setting a vision for and articulation of collaboration. What outcomes are sought as we learn to better collaborate? What does true, quality collaboration look like? What forms of collaboration should we not try to implement because they are not beneficial to our school community (e.g., a school with limited staff may not be able to schedule common planning periods)?

Anything of key value in a school’s culture requires basic frameworks and support. Apart from setting a vision for and articulating the substance of collaboration, key resources need to be allocated. These include (in descending priority) time, space, and funding. Time must be found or more likely structured (and protected from encroachment) to allow the interactions of discussion, sharing successes and failures, planning new strategies, and creativity to happen. This is largely a scheduling issue. Comfortable and pleasant physical space is great, but the other sort of “space” might be an openness to occasional scheduling flexibility to accommodate actual collaborative projects. Examples include:

• One “Collaboration Day” built in per month/quarter/semester
• Two subject areas teachers working together with one class population (e.g., English/History unified)
• Common project initiatives across grade levels and/or disciplines
• School-wide focus on a particular theme or value for the year
• Teams of teachers planning schedule, content, cooperative projects, themes or essential questions, cross-discipline grading, etc.

Speaking of teams, these are powerful conduits for collaboration. The most effective teams share regular common planning times with high expectations for planning outcomes and a shared vision for instructional excellence and strong student outcomes. A shared set of students allows team members to monitor closely everything from academic performance to behavioral issues to interpersonal conflict. Projects can be designed and implemented to teach across disciplines and allow assessments that “count” because they are credited to multiple course/subjects and looked at by multiple teachers doing the assessing. It is easier to achieve in the Elementary and Middle School levels than in a larger comprehensive High School but, even at the higher levels it may be worth considering teaming between, say, two courses sharing the same student roster (i.e. History/Literature or Art/Science).

Much can be found online regarding collaborative programs such as Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) or, strangely titled, Critical Friends,[2] but for many of the smaller schools served by TeachBeyond a more localized, organic, grass-roots effort at collaboration may be the way to go.

Collaboration can be a daunting task, but deep, meaningful collaboration brings much reward. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV). God has designed us so that we depend both on Him and on each other for success. Let’s pursue collaboration that allows us to positively encourage one another and grow ourselves.

Russ Kraines
Russ is a 30+ year veteran of teaching in middle and high schools both in the US (public) and in Germany (private, Black Forest Academy (BFA)). He has most recently taught the senior level class Worldviews course at BFA for 11 years. Russ and his wife Diane have served with TeachBeyond since its inception and currently work from home in the U.S. supporting TeachBeyond’s Informal Education efforts and working with School Services in Europe.