I came across this article the other day and thought it was very interesting:
I have been teaching for a while now. I have looped twice and for some reason our school has a pretty high turnover rate-so I have worked with a LOT of different kinds of teams. I have worked with people who only cared about themselves. I have worked with people who never contributed at all. And unfortunately, I have worked with people who shut me out-I was on my own island for the year.
The team I work with now is just amazing. We met for lunch yesterday (yes, on summer vacation!) and plan to meet again to iron out some more planning ideas before we go back. Everyone contributes, everyone collaborates. Looking at the list of the characteristics in this article I think we get an A+ (although I do interrupt people to much-I'm getting old now and am afraid I will lose my thought! :). I think it takes just the right balance of personalities and patience to achieve what we have achieved. The hard part is interviewing now for our new member. It has to be someone who will be positive and collaborative to continue our success.
Just as an example-our school is adopting Global Learning this year. Each grade level had to choose a continent to incorporate into our lessons throughout the year. Well, they lumped Pre-K and K together (as they often do) and a Pre-K teacher just chose the continent-there was no discussion. I thought about it all night and came in the next morning. I went to each of my team members and said if our admin lets us do it, why don't we do Antarctica instead? We could do explorers, penguins, glaciers, ice, weather, arctic animals. I mean it's not like we could Skype with anyone there or anything, but I think we could make it work. Every single one of them not only agreed, but was excited about it! So refreshing to work with people who are open-minded and who don't back down from a challenge!
Anyway, how does your team rate? Are you lucky like I am to work with people who inspire you to be better?
Thanks for sharing the article! I have also been on many different teams and the best ones are teams where everyone shares and collaborates!
ReplyDeleteSometimes that is the hard part about being a teacher librarian. You want to be part of the "team" ... but there's just no way to really be a part of every single grade level's planning. Sometimes a bit awkward when they say "Sit with your teams." The music and PE teachers are nice but we really don't have any teaching things in common. Other TL's in the district are in different buildings and we don't get a lot of time to meet together. I had a wonderful assistant and we were a team ... and then she retired and her replacement will only be part part time in the library.
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