Collaborativeness

Collaboration is a key element to the success of a teacher. Teachers need to talk about what is going on in their classroom with other teachers. This will allow teachers to compare and contrast what is and is not working in regards to teach the students. Teachers are always looking for a way to get more students to understand more material. Collaboration is different than group work in a few ways. Collaboration is more of a joint effort than group work can be. In groups there are commonly people that take over certain parts of the task at hand. Collaboration allows for more of a discussion as well. Group work is usually oriented around a task, while teachers collaborating is a way for them to see what they need to talk about or what they would like to talk about to better their teaching.

An example of collaboration can be observed from my summer work experience. I was part of a field maintenance crew at a baseball complex that was going to host the state tournament for the 14AAA Travel teams. Because there was so much that needed to be done, we all took jobs we knew how to do in order to get the tournament ready. If we saw someone doing a task that we felt could be done in a better way we went and talked about a new way to do that task. We were all working together to get the complex ready for the hundreds of people that would be showing up. I am confident that our discussions on how to improve our work really helped get the job done better than if it had just been a group project and we did individual tasks.