The model is so successful, but not without room for greater growth.
What's working?
- Our lessons have greater depth and focus since our focus is more targeted, and we have more time to focus in on one or a few areas of teaching and learning.
- There is no competition between teachers and classrooms since we are working collaboratively to teach all students.
- Students feel like one big team, and there is less competition amongst them.
- All students have found at least one teacher to relate too deeply. We don't have situations where students feel like they don't get along with the teacher since there are enough teachers for a student to choose at least one that they relate to.
- Our teaching and service to students profits from our collaboration since we troubleshoot and support one another regularly.
- The program overall benefits from our collaboration because we build a strong program together.
- Our schedule, though tight, allows us to teach a lot--students have busy days with lots of variety.
- There's less behavioral issues since students are busy and engaged most of the time.
- We can maximize the use of our shared resources to teach all children well.
- We team with parents and regularly communicate via our team website.
- We use a servant-leadership model when it comes to working with students and families, we serve children and families to the best of our ability and take their ideas, questions, and needs seriously.
- We have strong support from the building principal.
What could be better?
- I think we can use some of our collaborative times better, especially collaborative times led by people outside of the team. There's lots to do and better use of that time with strategic process, effective use of time/place, and meaningful focus will result in even better work for the students. There's a chance that greater systemwide focus on differentiation and distributed leadership would further enrich our model.
- I want to think about my role as a collaborative member of the team, and the ways that I can work well to support and elevate the team members and what we do together.
- The more that other administrators learn about and support the model, the better we'll be able to develop the model.
- We should revisit the schedule in January to think about next year and if we have greater needs in this area.
We're fortunate to have common planning time and PLCs to use to think about the model's growth and development. Overall I am so dedicated to this model and happy to teach with such wonderful colleagues with such a dynamic model--it truly is the best structure I've taught in throughout my tenure.