As far as team-based instruction
goes, I have one main recommendation: I think that the team must find a way
to share their curricular plans in as much detail, in as much advance,
and as regularly as possible. Teachers rarely get into the specifics
of their teaching/learning goals and methods when they work individually. If
at all, such sharing would happen at the department level; it likely happens
with new teachers. But I think in most cases it tapers off, particularly as
teachers become busy managing and organizing their workload. I’d be interested
to hear from those who have worked on teams. Does lesson planning go differently
when a team is charged with the task? Does the team plan themes and goals together?
Specific goals and methods?
For example, consider how a team meeting would go if the English teacher led
off by saying something like, "In teaching Othello, I will lead
the children through an exploration of the notion of ‘women as property’…"
What if the teacher then proceeded to quote lines and share specific lesson
plans and activities on how this issue will be investigated by the students
in her English class? Such groundwork might lead to insights and possibilities
not necessarily possible if individuals planned in the traditional, isolated
way. Might not, in such a collaborative environment, the social studies teacher
get an idea for a unit on gender in different cultures or across the ages? Or
for a unit on notions of monogamy? Or any of the themes…. What if the team
decided on having each member take turns to bring to the fore the ways that
an agreed-upon theme plays out in his or her subject matter? The crucial part
is that the group members all share what their angle in is–so
that every teacher might make references day-in day-out to the various "radiations"
or "spokes" all protruding from (or to) the "hub" of the
theme. It’s unlikely, however, that there is shared ownership of the curriculum
and methods across the most teams, as they actually exist in the real, hectic
world of school teaching. It ‘s unlikely in our posited example–the interdisciplinary
team teaching Othello–that everyone on the team has read Othello….
But consider the possibilities if the Othello brainstorming were shared,
and the planning were consensus based. Consider, for instance, if the group
decided the shared focus was to be on the theme of "manipulation."
Possibilities blossom … in the individual minds of the experts, all supported
by the group dialogue, all differentiated by members’ specialized disciplinary
lenses. The math teacher steps up and asserts: So much of math, which involves
simply shifting numbers and variables from one side of the equation to the other,
is simply the legal, premeditated, deliberate practice of manipulation–taking
what Iago does and stripping it of its moral charge (its negative moral
charge, says the mathematician with a devilish grin)–and getting away with
what you can get away with–because the symbol system at hand allows for (some
would say encourages) such processes–all to the end of securing some
advantage. The language of jealousy (or any human emotion or experience) in
this sense is not all that different from the language of algebra. So many wonderful
lesson plans about manipulation could help children exercise symbolic, linguistic
prowess. But first, you, as teacher, would have to strip the term of its pejorative
sense, and come to appreciate it almost as an art form. Iago’s performance looks
quite different in those terms. Have the class cull examples of manipulation.
Have them engage in one-upsmanship. The prize goes to the best tale of manipulation!
Create a portfolio of nominees of "The Iago Achievement Award." OR!
Shifting things around, what if you had the kids in math class take a "Show
Your Work" episode, and retell it in terms of the morality
of human manipulation? Go Shakespearean on that quadratic equation. Talk about
the scheming of subtracting an entity from your side (protagonist), the left
side, so that your "opposite," the right side (antagonist), had to
do exactly the same thing, lest the equality of the equal sign, that which may
not be compromised, the beloved parallel shafts in eternal balance and beloved
by all (even that right side), should lose its balance and collapse into itself
and in that collapse, threaten that greater collapse, for where might balance
ever be found again, if equality itself was to be made unequal…?
Now this all seems heady stuff, but I have to say–from my recent experience
working nightly with my freshman daughter on her algebra that it was a major
stumbling block getting her to understand the notion of manipulation for manipulation’s
sake that is at the root of so much of algebraic prowess (not to mention Iago’s
highly stylized machinations). She would say, whenever I tried to get her to
"play" with an equation, to manipulate it (according to rule) this
way or that way, she would say with a roll of her eyes, "What’s the point?"
Since she couldn’t see the outcome, she couldn’t take the leap simply to engage
in algebraic maneuvers right there at her disposal. Over and over I pleaded:
So many of the good results of the Solved Problem stem from
the sheer willingness–and ability–to manipulate like expressions simply for
the sake of manipulating them. To know that "5-2" and the number "3"
are exactly the same thing, and that the one can be substituted for the other….
Anyway…anyway…
I think the power of a team approach is unleashed when all the teachers involved
are able to make regular references to what is going on in the other
classes. I am convinced that the value of a team approach does not lie in the
"lessons" per se; it lies in having the teachers all on the same page.
But to make this happen, you really need to insist that your team gets to the
specifics of its curriculum. Every teacher must somehow be
willing to take the leap to be conversant in every discipline. To some
extent. That’s where the potential of the "in-class connecting reference"
lies…. If approached in the right way, this "bringing up to speed"
of one another could be highly collaborative–or it could be divisive and threatening.
I don’t think, however, teams should just assume that the issue is solved or
not an issue–simply because you’re all colleagues and professionals. The most
damaging attitude is the one whereby individuals, out of collegial respect or
personal fears about their competence in other disciplines, leave interdiscipliary
planning to each expert. That’s not collaboration! Just as I think kids in the
classroom have to be taught explicitly how to collaborate, I think teachers
need to be taught (or to teach themselves) how to be teammates. What if there
were some formal team-building activity that oriented everyone to the vision
of interconnected planning and instruction?
I anticipate that one rejoinder is going to be, "Who has the time for
this kind of shared planning?" But anything worth doing is worth doing
well. In this sense, the costs of such an approach are analogous to the costs
of integrating technology in your teaching. To do it right involves excessive
costs; it can take over. But after you let it take over, you’re in a different
place, and you begin to glimpse possibilities you haven’t seen before. And with
the other rewards comes a new, heightened efficiency–and the freeing up of
time in unexpected ways. But this whole process would take lots of administrative
support so that such planning meetings might be continued and supported over
extended periods of time. For I would emphasize that in the shared planning
model the advance planning (before the semester) is not nearly as important
as the day-to-day, in-process team interaction as the lessons are being taught.
The day-to-day activity ideas flow from the in-process brainstorming and discussions
of the team.
So in a nutshell, here is my formula:
- Get the team to share specifics of their curricular plans. Be formal about
this. Assign each team member one day to bring the group up to speed on his/her
upcoming lessons, goals, activities. - Come to some agreement as a team on the theme of each chunk of time.
- Find some way to keep the focus on team meetings during the semester,
rather than just before the semester. Find some way to achieve agreement
on the structure of the meetings; so often teachers need to de-pressurize,
so there are powerful lures just to vent and short-circuit real thinking in
team meetings. It can be a lot of work to have the kind of curricular-sharing
meetings I’m talking about, so I think the group needs to be strategic about
protecting the productivity of the day-to-day, in-process meetings.
Finally, I would simply say that the kind of collegial discussion I have sketched
here does happen and has happened since the creation of the
first school at the very dawn of collegiality. I’ve seen it in various schools
where the faculty members do talk to each other. So I’m not proposing
anything new. But I don’t think the "institutions" of school and professional
life support these practices. People engage in them because they are
professional and dedicated and intelligent, and they see what is needed to make
something work. The question I’m getting at is how can we reform professional
structures to be more "friendly" to the kinds of interactions and
collaborations that are needed to make innovations like team approaches work
in the way they need to work to tap into their potential?