Introduction
I get out of my car and look at the tall grey building in front of me, check the address and walk through the double glass doors. Once inside, I’m warmly greeted by a woman at the front desk who directs me to the dean’s office just around the corner. As I look around at the large open common space, I see beautiful, colorful student art everywhere – on the walls, hanging from the ceiling, down the hall. I see students of various ethnicities walk past, talking and laughing (wait, is that a teacher they’re walking with?) The dean comes over to shake my hand and we sit down for a chat, but before we can even get going, a student knocks on his door. The dean looks over and jumps up, apologizing to me. “I’m sorry, this is a graduate from last year – I just have to say hi!” and he runs over to hug the student walking through the door. After they catch up for a few minutes, he’s back, sitting with me, and we begin what will end up being a five-year conversation, one that continues even today. These were my first few minutes at High Tech High International, my dream school.
My list of dream school qualities looks something like this: challenging, engaging, involving, diverse, a place that holds students and teachers accountable, but also supports them, a place that teaches critical thinking, multiple perspectives, problem solving, and encourages creativity and innovation, a place that is collegial, where ideas are exchanged and implemented, and people are respected and valued. This describes HTHI. Amidst all of this wonderfulness, however, there is one thing I’ve struggled with through the years: collaboration, both my own and in what I see around me. For although there’s a great exchange of ideas here, lately it is more often between teacher and student than between teacher and teacher.
There are definitely wonderful, creative projects going on at my school, but there aren’t as many integrated projects as there could be. Why is that? And why am I still sometimes resistant to interdisciplinary collaborations myself, even when I see the benefits? My initial sense (based off of my own experience) is that many teachers here may have done integrated (maybe forced) projects that didn’t seem authentic, lacked quality, or that took too much of their class time for the benefits derived. At the same time, I’ve also seen incredible, inspiring, limit-pushing, envy-inducing integrated projects around campus. So how does that happen? And what’s being done at other schools and among other teams to create these amazing integrated projects? How could I replicate that success with my teaching partners, and maybe even inspire others at my school?
Because of these wonderings, I’ve been thinking lately about the meaning of collaboration. “Co” means equal, so that means encouraging and supporting a culture where teaching partners are equal contributors, and feel that they have an equal say in the project. This makes me reflect on how I can be a better partner to my own colleagues – to be better at communicating, spending more time brainstorming ideas, making sure everyone I work with feels like they are an equal contributor to the projects we work on, and finding resources that we can all benefit from or that add to our projects.
I feel fortunate that this is what I want to improve at my school,that my focus is on how to make something wonderful, even more wonderful and to push myself in the process. So here’s what I want to find out:
My list of dream school qualities looks something like this: challenging, engaging, involving, diverse, a place that holds students and teachers accountable, but also supports them, a place that teaches critical thinking, multiple perspectives, problem solving, and encourages creativity and innovation, a place that is collegial, where ideas are exchanged and implemented, and people are respected and valued. This describes HTHI. Amidst all of this wonderfulness, however, there is one thing I’ve struggled with through the years: collaboration, both my own and in what I see around me. For although there’s a great exchange of ideas here, lately it is more often between teacher and student than between teacher and teacher.
There are definitely wonderful, creative projects going on at my school, but there aren’t as many integrated projects as there could be. Why is that? And why am I still sometimes resistant to interdisciplinary collaborations myself, even when I see the benefits? My initial sense (based off of my own experience) is that many teachers here may have done integrated (maybe forced) projects that didn’t seem authentic, lacked quality, or that took too much of their class time for the benefits derived. At the same time, I’ve also seen incredible, inspiring, limit-pushing, envy-inducing integrated projects around campus. So how does that happen? And what’s being done at other schools and among other teams to create these amazing integrated projects? How could I replicate that success with my teaching partners, and maybe even inspire others at my school?
Because of these wonderings, I’ve been thinking lately about the meaning of collaboration. “Co” means equal, so that means encouraging and supporting a culture where teaching partners are equal contributors, and feel that they have an equal say in the project. This makes me reflect on how I can be a better partner to my own colleagues – to be better at communicating, spending more time brainstorming ideas, making sure everyone I work with feels like they are an equal contributor to the projects we work on, and finding resources that we can all benefit from or that add to our projects.
I feel fortunate that this is what I want to improve at my school,that my focus is on how to make something wonderful, even more wonderful and to push myself in the process. So here’s what I want to find out: