TIP NO. 1

Become familiar with team development. There a five stages of team development and if you know where your team falls in their development you can set goals to move from one level to the next and find ways to work through difficulties in each stage.

• Forming: In this stage, team members are getting to know each other, discussing group roles and team goals. Everyone tries puts their best foot forward.
• Storming: Team members begin to have conflict and have a difficult time working towards the team’s goals. Members will have doubts on whether the team is going to succeed or not. Team members also clash over how to work within the team and the direction of the team
• Norming: The team begins to follow through on the norms that was created by the group. Members see the benefit of being apart of a team and work towards upholding the norms and begin to respect each other. In this phase, it is easy to regress to the storming phase but if team members are mindful of this then regression will be less likely.
• Performing: Team members begin to work together and produce results. The goals developed earlier are being achieved. Team members feel a sense of a accomplishment and want to solve bigger problems.
• Adjourning: the end of the process, team members begin to feel emotions regarding the team coming to an end.

TIP NO. 2

Teacher facilitators need to be trained but also be given room to learn and grow as facilitators or teacher leaders.

There can be a notion that teacher leaders know everything and do not need support.

This can’t be further from the truth.  Teacher leaders have to transition from being the instructional leaders in their classroom to leading their colleagues.

Yes, there are some similarities but having knowledge about adult learners and the emotional intelligence are critical pieces of teacher leaders who lead teams of teachers that are collaborating.

TIP NO. 3

Administrative tasks such as creating agendas, meeting minutes, data collection and follow up are important for successful teacher collaboration.

How many times have you gone to a meeting and thought to yourself what is the point of this meeting and everyone leaves the meeting feeling like their time was wasted.

Teacher Collaboration means that teacher teams document their progress through minutes, agendas and data collection. It helps teacher teams to visualize their progress and motivates the team to keep going forward.

TIP NO. 4

Teacher collaboration requires direct support from school administration. Sometimes, school leaders may have a  hands off approach when it comes to teacher collaboration.

However, without the decision making capabilities of the school administration a lot of teacher initiatives get left to the wayside because of this hands off approach.

Based on my experience, when administrators are involved in the process, teachers feel more comfortable making decisions that they know will benefit the school and their classrooms.

Teacher collaboration, if done correctly, empowers teachers to drive positive change within their school.  When done effectively teacher collaboration can lead to effective teacher teams that can be an example for other teacher teams within your school.

It also sets the stage for a culture of learning, when teachers are learning, then students will benefit from this. In other words, a ripple effect is created.

These tips will help you get more value out of your teacher team meetings. Think about what tips you’re not currently implementing in your teacher teams and how you might add them so you can go to your next teacher team feeling like, yes!, Let’s do this!

What tips do you have for teacher collaboration?