In Service

Yesterday, I led a Cooperative Learning workshop with a group of second year teachers. I’ve presented on this topic, in this district, several times before–and it was one of my favorite kind of days.

The group was small–there were seven teachers, total. And they were a diverse group: music teachers, speech pathologists, special education teachers, and high school teachers from a couple of different content areas. The discussion was interesting, and I learned a lot.

Something that I noticed, though: they latched on to the activities and strategies that I shared with them right away: games, ice breakers, reciprocal teaching structures, active participation strategies…all of the fun stuff that helps to build community within a classroom or within teams. But, they weren’t so crazy about the emphasis I was placing on planning for a successful year, truly engaging with their kids, and using a lot of specific praise.

Some of them explained that despite their great efforts during their first year on the job, implementing CL resulted in chaos. Inequity. Frustration all around. And I remember feeling this way as well.

We spent the afternoon trying to go at the planning proactively. I shared the situation that I found myself in as a teacher with mammoth class sizes, inclusion students, and very short class periods. And I gave them some tips that worked for me when I was struggling with the same issues. Tips “beyond the binder”…nothing really fancy…just simple things that I did to rectify my own issues implementing CL over the course of the very quick decade I spent in the classroom. I didn’t think it very binder-worthy, truth be told.

They loved it. They ate it up, made it their own….left with a plan. It honestly left me with a bunch of mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy that they were happy–and planning to take some serious steps toward implementing Cooperative Learning. But it was quite perplexing to realize that despite the fancy binder and the awesome resources and the wasted anxiety about the agenda, what mattered most to these teachers was my willingness to admit that it wasn’t all sunshine and flowers, that I too couldn’t bear giving group grades, that I needed to do a lot of modeling before my kids truly understood what a “six inch voice” was, what a “valid contribution” looked like, and what “smooth group transitions” really required. And that there were good, solid ways to measure–to assess–CL skills and hold kids accountable for improving their performance.

That conversation made up the better part of yesterday’s “staff development”…for all of us. It was really just a conversation….and I wasn’t leading it….I was just contributing. I wish every day could be like that.