It is the reason I came to Design39Campus. The "sacred hour" of time we commit to being at school and working together for our students is just that.
I wake up every day knowing that when I arrive at school, I'm facing the daily grind with the support of my school family. I am learning alongside amazing professionals who want to grow as a learner just as much as I do. We listen to each other, lean on each other, share with each other every day.
For the first time ever, we decided to come together for our parent conferences. The four of us have met with parents as a team. The unity speaks so true to the message of our school. Even though a student may be from one of our homerooms, that student is a part of everyones learning day. It has been so neat to meet with these parents and have each LED (Learning Experience Designer) share what they see when they work with that child. We see the power behind this and so do our parents. The comments we've heard have been, "It's so nice to see that all of you care about my child".
Another gift of collaboration, uncovering superpowers. We all come to the table in the morning with a thought about a learning experience that we can share with students. The best part is after listening to everyone share, we work together to take a little bit of what we need from every perspective and create amazing. Seeing the different perspectives opens my eyes to all there can be. I might start with a discussion of a nonfiction writing task and it quickly turns into the building of wind cars and researching the effects of wind. One lesson becomes so much more than what I had originally planned and I didn't have to come up with the plan on my own. The learning experiences flourish when there are many minds hard at work. I no longer have to have a plan for every day. I trust the team that I work with and we rely on each other to make student learning authentic, engaging, purposeful.
As crazy as the year has been opening a new school, and making changes in the way we do school, I am grateful for my team and our commitment to collaborating. I can't imagine going at this alone. I believe we are on the path outlined best by Henry Ford, "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."
Thank you for reading.
Smiles,
Your post is so inspirational and truly talks to the power of working closely with others....not simply sharing resources in the room next door. It's when you sit down, actually plan, put yourself out there, superpowers (and shortcomings), that it truly makes a difference. I applaud the fervor of collaboration that Design39 does each and every day to make a difference to all of those students....and all of those teachers. :) Kudos my friend :)
ReplyDeleteI love it! You are delightfully amazing Learning Experience Designers!
ReplyDeleteKriscia, I envy the time you have to collaborate. I wish every school had a "sacred hour" for its teachers to do so. I also love the word collaborate, especially alongside resonance. I wish you, your colleagues, and your students the best in 2015!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of bringing all of the teachers that interact with a student together for a conference. There is power in seeing that there are so many adults rallying behind each student. Teachers collaborate with each other to create great lessons and to find ways to support individual students and parent needs to be a part of that collaboration.
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