Source:
McCrea, Bridget. (29 September 2010). Toward A More Collaborative Curriculum. Retrieved from
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/09/29/toward-a-more-collaborative-curriculum.aspx
The Bakersfield City district in the state of California has just completed their first year on a web-based program called Learning Village. Learning Village is a system that currently consists of digitized textbooks and lesson plans for teachers. Much of this system has been praised by the district, due to the fact that this web-based system has helped in several ways. Teachers have been to find and store lesson plans through Learning Village and adapt them to their Smart Boards or Power Point presentations. The district has also been able to get rid of many different textbooks, binders, and other supplies that is no longer desired due to the organization and easy access of this program. Teachers have been able to collaborate with the other teachers through this program, seeing what their colleagues have been doing. Teachers have grown fond of the program because this web-based system has allowed them to store lesson plans easily and can be accessed quickly, becoming instant resources for future classes. Since this program has been such a success as it launches into its second full school year, the district is considering adding in chat and discussion features for the teachers as well.
What caught my eye this week in this particular article was "collaborative." As I have said before in previous blogs, I thoroughly enjoy learning through my peers. I appreciate a district who has had a positive reaction to teachers sharing and discussing lessons that are within their curriculum. This type of collaboration could work in so many different areas of schools. The ECED cohort recently observed an ESOL teacher doing the pull out and plug in methods with several different classes. Her biggest complaint was the fact that teachers were not helping to be on the same page as far as what they were doing in the curriculum. This type of collaborative learning would help the ESOL teachers to use the template as the teacher (if he or she so desired to) and modify that lesson in whatever way they would need to in order to teach a skill to ESOL class. I enjoyed this article and I look forward to looking for articles on follow up with this type of program.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteCollaboration is something that is very important and it improves student achievement. I have worked in schools where there is very little collaboration on the grade level (i.e. 1st grade team) and schools that the grade level teachers meet once a week. The students at the schools that have teams that work together always scored higher on standardized tests than the schools that did not meet together. I do not fault the teachers on this. Historically teaching is a very isolated profession. Collaboration is an administrative issue. The principal at the school where teachers had grade level teams each week, worked with each grade level team to ensure that they had their meetings during the school day and provided a room for the meetings to take place. Scheduling is a huge issue in schools, and if principals and teachers want to collaborate, then it has to be a priority, and teachers have to have support from the administration and each other to make sure that when collaboration happens that everyone has time and space to express their ideas and concerns. It is a win, win, situation when collaboration happens, and it is done properly and professionally.