Building Relationships

I have only been in the classroom as a student teacher and when I original looked at the assignment for this week my concern instantly went to the fact that I was never put in the position to "Compare and contrast strategies that, as a co-creator and collaborator, could be used to build relationships with an individual or group who is already competent but may not be incorporating newer ideas or methodologies. Share at least one strategy that you believed worked and one that did not. Then, compare your experiences with those of your classmates."  (Tufts, 2013)  Then I started thinking about all the things I did as a student teacher.

I was responsible for taking over classes that were originally taught by my cooperating teachers.  The school that I was at had no curriculum mapping so when I asked what topics were covered in each class I was directed to the text books and the teachers' lesson binders.  Other than those sources I had a lot of freedom to create lessons that I felt would benefit my students.  The whole process of student teaching was an exercise in collaboration.  In the beginning I was required to run my lesson plans by my cooperating teachers for approval.  They would make suggestions or comments and I would make any needed changes or notes.  I did notice that I used the laptop station more than one of my cooperating teachers.  He felt that the students fooled around on them to much.  He did like the political cartoon activity that I had the students do for per WWII.  He never did anything like it because he did not want to alienate the students that could not draw.  He never thought to allow clip art, graphic design, and any combination of these to create it.  The other cooperating teacher liked my idea of doing an online scavenger hunt instead of doing it through out the school.  I learned a lot from them and I think they learned a trick or two from me as well.

While at this school I was able to take part in a professional development day.  They had decided to use the time to work in groups to rewrite some of the school wide rubrics for the common assessments.  It was a very interesting process.  They were having an issue with the language the rubrics used.  After reading a couple I understood the problem.  Students and parents were reading them and not understanding what they meant.  The language was very teacher and administration oriented and not very student/parent friendly.  The group I was working with took some of my suggestions, like combining some of the similar categories, but they felt the need to continue to use some language that would be difficult for some of the students to understand.  It was a practice in give and take, they saw the value in some of my opinions and I had to see the value in theirs.  We have to understand that we are all individuals with varying opinions and we need to respect each other.  It was a great experience for me.

Tufts, K. (2013). Discussion 4.1. Blackboard. Retrieved from 
                 https://blackboard.snhu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?      tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_86929_1%26url%3d