TeamWork Q&A

After reading TeamWork, I was excited that the authors agreed to participate in a Q&A in order to gain more of their valuable insights into the process of collaboration.

Q: In the book you discussed how the team discovered that it was more effective to accept late assignments for a lower score, rather than not allowing any late assignments. What other discoveries did the team have over the years in relation to middle school grading policies?

A: One year we noticed that we were recording too many zeros in our grade books. Zeros, of course, were the result of students not submitting their work. We realized that it was usually the students who struggled in our classes who received zeros. When we questioned our students about the apparent apathy toward their work, we most often received responses that indicated the students were overwhelmed by the assignment. Instead of working really hard and ultimately receiving a failing grade, they just didn’t try.

Of course, the problem compounded itself because once a student accumulated one zero, it was nearly impossible to overcome the mathematical deficit to bring the grade up. Once our students realized that they were already doomed for the current grading period, they disengaged from our classes. Clearly, assigning zeros and assuming that students were apathetic was punitive toward our struggling students and was not helping them to develop a true understanding of the content we were studying.

To combat both problems, we adopted the mantra, “Zeros aren’t allowed.” The action plan that accompanied the mantra included two elements. First we offered after school tutoring for our students. Each of us remained after school one day a week to assist students with their coursework. These sessions were free of charge and open to anyone on our team. Students who had a zero in the grade book were strongly encouraged to attend. Secondly, we allowed any student who attended the after school sessions to resubmit assignments for full credit. So, all students had the opportunity to improve their scores and bring up their grades. The most wonderful side effect was that our students walked away with deeper understanding of the concepts we wanted them to learn.

Q: While your team would have always been working to improve, how many years did it take for your team to run smoothly?

A: It is important to realize that “running smoothly” doesn’t mean the same thing as doing everything at once. It is possible for teams to run smoothly from the first day of formation. The key to running smoothly is to set and prioritize goals for the team. Sample goals might include establishing and enforcing common classroom management procedures across the team, using anecdotal notes to track student progress across content disciplines, creating and teaching interdisciplinary units, or establishing frequent parental contacts. Once goals are prioritized, choose one or two to work on until they become normal operating procedure for your team. Then move to the next goal and work toward it. By systematically building each component you desire into your practice and by layering each piece one at a time, your team can operate smoothly and continue to move forward.

Q: I just listened to one of your Stenhouse podcasts and heard the discussion that your team layered in new components each year. Do you have a suggestion for a teaming essential that should be the priority for the first year?

A: The first year is all about building relationships—with colleagues, students, and students’ families! This is not always easy because everyone on your team will have very different backgrounds, personalities, etc. The main goal is to develop an atmosphere in which everyone is aware of the commonalities of the team’s members and in which everyone is working toward the same goals. Here are some ideas for nurturing these essential relationships.

First learn about your colleagues. When teams are just beginning to work together, the focus must be on developing a working relationship with one another. Operating smoothly as a team is dependent upon all members of the team being on the same page. The great thing about a team is you don’t have to do it all by yourself! Have an open discussion about each person’s talents like organization, creativity, or communication skills. Begin to talk about what each person brings to the table. Though it seems tedious, teams should definitely take the time to develop core beliefs as described in chapter 1. These core beliefs will carry the teacher team through decision-making throughout the school year. Though it takes some time up front, the core beliefs will save time and reduce disagreements later in the year. It is important to remember that the core beliefs will need to be revisited often and modified as your team makes new discoveries and comes to deeper understandings about your collective beliefs concerning teaching and learning.

Secondly, develop a team atmosphere with your students. Get to know them academically and personally. Incorporate their interests into class activities. Using surveys (like the one on p.45) to get to know your students is a great way to learn about each of your students quickly. Playing games that require students to rely on one another builds camaraderie, and having students create a team name (p. 39) gives everyone a common identity and helps to deepen the family feeling among all team members.

Finally, reach out to your students’ families. Early in the school year, make an effort to contact each student’s parents with specific, positive information about their child. These contacts may include phone calls, handwritten notes, or invitations to conferences at the school. Be sure to emphasize your desires for their child’s success. These initial positive contacts will create a bond between you and the parents so that later contacts will be more comfortable for all of you even if the conference involves an uncomfortable situation. Continue to keep parents informed by creating a team website, maintaining a team blog, or by sending weekly email updates about team activities. Once your team is comfortable with the way your team functions during a routine school day, consider inviting parents to participate. For instance, invite parents to observe student presentations, tutor students who need extra help, or attend field trips. One of our favorite methods for involving parents is through student-led conferences (p. 48), in which our students and their parents discuss the students’ academic progress and set goals for the future.

Putting the first year’s emphasis on relationships helps a team to focus on the one thing that truly unites us as educators—our students’ success. Building relationships with colleagues, students, and their families provides a network of people who will help to ensure that every child on your team is successful!

Q: I like the idea of student led conferences. We have two school-wide conferences scheduled a year. This year our first conferences will be early in the year, just one month into the school year. I was thinking that might not give us enough time to for the students to get settled and then do all the preparation for an effective student-led conference. What do you think?

A: This would depend upon the purpose of the student-led conference. If the purpose is for students and their parents to review work samples, then there will probably not be enough work for students to share and certainly there would not be enough time for your students to be trained and complete the necessary preparations. However, if the purpose is to involve parents in setting academic goals for each student, then the early date could be beneficial. If establishing goals is the purpose, then we would suggest adding at least one more student-led conference to your school’s schedule so that parents and students could review work samples at least twice during the year and monitor student progress toward their goals. (See goal setting on p. 76.)

Q: I appreciated your tips for staying focused during team meetings to best utilize the time together. My team teacher and I both have less prep time than we were accustomed to. Do you have any suggestions for balancing time preparing for our personal classes as well as meeting as a team?

A: We always found that anything we accomplished as a team benefited our individual classes, so the time we had to plan was not perceived as less, it just occurred in a different setting. Though it is difficult to perceive team time as “part of” your individual planning time at first, the trick is to avoid thinking of team meetings as something separate from your personal planning. Though your meetings may not focus on your specific curriculum, they should result in taking care of other components that would consume at least some your personal planning time. For instance, as a team, you will handle discipline problems, conduct conferences with students’ parents, and plan for integration of units. If meetings are run effectively, your team will be doing the work of the team rather than “talking about” the work that needs to be done. Team meetings should reduce the work you do rather than increase it.

However with that said, there will be tasks that must be completed after the meeting is over. In teaming, trusting that your teammates will follow through on their assignments is critical. For instance, if a team member volunteers to create a schedule for a special event yet doesn’t get it done, time will be wasted and ultimately more work will be added to the plates of the other team members. Holding one another accountable and placing a high priority on the team’s functionality helps. Just as we always respect individual planning time, we carefully guarded the sacred time we set aside for team meetings. We always planned carefully as to what would be discussed during meetings by setting an agenda, made critical individual assignments, and started and ended our meetings on time.

We discovered that the longer we worked together, the more we relied on each other, which really helped all of us have more prep time to handle our individual classes. The overwhelming part of being a teacher, the juggling of a thousand tasks, became less stressful. For instance, during research paper time, when Monique is swamped, Amanda took over the task of making copies required for everyone’s classes, and Kathryn took over completing all parental communication. In this way, our team duties throughout the year ebb and flow so that we can assist each other in becoming more effective in our perspective classrooms.