I just had an amazing collaboration session with a colleague. I'm still excited, I just had to reflect on it. Have you ever felt the excitement that comes from bouncing ideas off of each other to come up with something totally amazing? ...where both parties brought great ideas to the table, and where an effortless integration of ideas ensued? This was a true meeting of the minds. I brought my thinking and expertise, she brought hers, and together we conceptualized and developed an instructional sequence for a professional development topic.
Here's how it happened:
Today, she came in and shared a google doc. I took notes on what she was saying, she took notes on what I was saying. Then we added the helpful links and documents that backed up our thinking. It was so great because we didn't even have to establish this as a norm. Once we outlined what we wanted teachers to know and be able to do, we asked ourselves, how do we bring this to them in a constructivist manner? How do we practice what we preach, and facilitate this in a way that's aligned with the school's teaching philosophy? So, I brought out the school's constructivist lesson plan template, which uses the 5 Es of constructivism to outline a process. (See infographic below)
Together, my colleague and I laid out a process of exploration and discovery for teachers to dig deeply into this topic. Teachers will discover their own thinking around an idea and unpack that thinking. They will learn what other's have learned and determined around the topic. Finally, teachers will develop a common practice and common set of commitments around this work. I will follow up on their commitments to each other (and the practice) with support and reflective observations.
Why was the process so important?
Tonya Gilchrist (Twitter: @Mrs_Gilchrist) recently wrote a blog reflecting on how we honor teacher agency. Prompting us to contemplate, "how can teachers empower learners with a spirit of innovation and purposeful risk taking when they themselves are asked to comply?" (For those outside of education/sociology, agency refers to the extent to which individuals are free to act interdependently and to make their own choices. It explores how power structures and distributions might move from a more top down orientation to a more equal distribution of power or a more democratic feel). My answer: we administrators have to practice what we're asking teachers to do by "living the vision" throughout the system. WE need to employ best practices in our staff meetings and professional development. WE have to respect and honor teacher voice, expertise, and experience by providing the space to integrate that experience with something new. WE have to understand that professional development is not something we do TO teachers, it's something we do WITH them.
I may have had an idea of something that's needed based on observations of classrooms, our data, and an analysis of systems/practice. However, if I try to implement that idea in my image, teachers are going to see it as another directive, another thing that will soon pass. Conversely, if I can connect the idea to the needs of the teachers, to their experiences, and facilitate a process where they engage deeply with the topic, they become owners of the idea or vision. This happens as they construct meaning and create something together. The ownership involved in co-creation rests squarely on that of the learners, creating a sense of agency. By exploring a topic together, by building something together, by committing to each other, our sense of collective agency around the topic can change school culture and significantly impact student learning.
But, we shall see how it goes! 😁
Constructivist Process by Genvieve Dorsey
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