Yesterday it seemed like the many teachers and assistants in the class were in the way of each other. It was the first day that the collaborative work was fully integrated. I wasn't happy with our collaboration as I didn't feel we had targeted our work enough so that children were profiting from our time, effort.
With that in mind, I went home and restructured the weekly routine, targeting our overall efforts with regard to coaching students well. Now that a draft has been created, I hope that we can sit down and discuss our focus for each lesson and our daily efforts with regard to student learning.
I'm fortunate to have many volunteers, assistants and specialists working with the class this year. Now the key is making sure that our work is responsive to students' most important interests and needs. As schools move from a one teacher-one class model to a model with greater RTI (response to intervention) and small group/individual learning approaches, we need to think carefully about our efforts related to collaboration and prioritization. This focus holds wonderful potential for student learning.
