Assignment #8 Written Reflection Section 4 and 5

As I was reading chapters 11 and 12 I reflected a lot about the culture at my school.  I think every teacher at my school wants the best for their students.  We are all hard workers.  The problem I see is that we don’t collaborate much.  Once the bell rings and the students leave we do all our own planning.  Part of the problem is we have so many meetings that it is difficult to schedule a time to meet as a staff, but like Routman says, you make time for the things you value, so I believe we can make the time to meet and work together.

Over the weekend I watched “Waiting for Superman.”  When it first came out it was very controversial and many teachers I know felt attacked.  I thought the movie would depress me so I put off seeing it.  Although the movie was depressing in many parts, there were also parts that featured schools where kids were thriving.  In schools where students were doing well, the school culture was different.  Teachers collaborated and continued growing as professionals so they were confident and effective in the classroom.  These schools were inspiring to me and they made me want to bring that culture to my school.

I think the best way for me to begin collaborating with my staff on a weekly basis is to start small.  I work at a k-8 school, so I think if I brought the idea up of meeting weekly at a staff meeting people would feel it was too big a commitment.  However, if I start meeting with a few people from my team and we begin having conversations that directly help our students, other teachers at our school will start wanting to be a part of the dialogue.  I think more and more teachers will be willing to join when they see a small, committed group of teachers meeting to help our students. 

I love how throughout Routman’s book she stresses the importance for teachers to have a life outside of teaching.  The last few years I have devoted a lot of time to writing feedback on my student’s work.  This year I want to continue giving feedback, but do it through writing conferences.  Students will be more invested in their writing when we talk and think about their writing together.  When I wrote lots of feedback to students, I had good intentions, but I wasn’t having students do much talking or thinking about their writing.  This year I hope to spend the time I used to devote to writing feedback to meeting with my colleagues to have important conversations about our students and our teaching.