Collaboration

One of our aims at SPS is that the vision and values are "alive". The staff have already had many conversations about how important it is that these are visible and define our culture of learning. The vision and the values are what we 'are' and what we 'do' at our school.  During the induction, we began to realise that to achieve this the adults must also 'be' and 'do'. For this reason, our appraisal documents (for want of a better term) feature our 5 core learning values and what it might look like as a part of our school's culture for teachers.

The learning environment that we are working in enables us to:

• plan collaboratively (build on ideas, share teacher expertise, empower others)
• share professional learning
• vary the range of pedagogies used to suit the learning
• better meet children’s needs
• build teacher capacity by mentoring and observing each other

It seems appropriate then that one of our learning values that we have identified is "Collaboration." Working in shared spaces requires good collaborative practices to be developed. After a chat with Chris Bradbeer I was reminded of the place of relationships in our teaching teams. I was also reminded that while my team has put my hand up for this innovative learning environment, they are still being forced into working within a collaborative environment. Previously, I have never thought of collaboration as anything other than good, empowering or supportive...  Hansen reminds me that bad collaboration is as effective as no collaboration, if not worse. 

Effective collaboration will grow our culture and our vision along with the other 4 learning values. It is time to walk the talk!