In Initial Teacher Education programmes, we spend time and
effort clarifying for our student teachers the importance of collaboration and
partnerships. Rightly, much of our emphasis is put on the importance of keeping
the child at the centre of our decisions and working with partner agencies and
colleagues to ensure our young people are Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured,
Active, Respected, Responsible and Included.
Worringly, it can be all too easy for classroom teachers to withdraw
into their own classrooms, developing tunnel-vision in their pursuit of improved
professional practice. For these soloists, the pressure mounts as the year moves
on, they gallantly struggle to deliver the type of learning expected by
management and parents, heroically accommodating the needs of all their learners
whilst simultaneously ensuring their students jump through all the right exam-prep
hoops (at just the “right” time), all whilst spending their evenings marking
and painstakingly pouring over data to identify areas for further development.
Blaming themselves for anything other than progress.
Collaboration and Partnership working can have many benefits
then for Staff Health and Wellbeing too and, ultimately, this means better
staff retention for schools.
Sharing the burden
One of those benefits is the recognition and understanding
that individual teachers do not carry the pressure for the wellbeing and success
of their learners. Rather, that pressure is shared across the whole
community.
Pasi Sahlberg recently told Dr Deborah Netolicky, "If
we run schools within a culture of collaboration and collectively being
responsible for things, it benefits also the adults and teachers when they
realise the work is not only about 'my work', 'my results' and 'my outcomes',
but we are responsible for all these young people in our community. We should
see them as our students, our children, not just looking at our own
classroom"
And it is not only class teachers who benefit from this kind widening of
horizons beyond-the-classroom. School Leaders can benefit from a more collaborative,
cooperative approach to leadership.
Last year, Steve Munby, in conversation with Sarah Philp and Billy Burke, explained we can all change the system for the better, from within our
own sphere of influence, but we must first "believe and behave that
children's learning in other schools is as important as children's learning in
our own school. Once [we] accept that we are here to enable all children to be
powerful learners, not just those in our school, that's a fundamental shift in
approach. It means that when a school down the road is struggling, [we] pick up
the phone and ask 'How can I help?'
I know, first hand, the value of having close working relationships with teachers across Scotland and the support and sharing that I benefited from as an early career teacher from colleagues within the Modern Studies Association - the gratitude I felt then helped shaped my approach to sharing back whenever I was approached thereafter.
With both the Regional Improvement Collaboraitves (RICs) and Education Scotland under increased pressure
recently, perhaps Local Authorities need to look more closely
at how they are facilitating sharing across schools. Where is the time set aside
for collegiate conversations and engagement at all levels? How are we building networks of
support?
And withing our schools, Senior Leaders must avoid constant delivery of information and open up in-service days for increased collaboration and cooperation.
After all, teaching is a not a job for a Superman figure, single-handedly saving
the world. It takes a team, so how are you building yours and supporting your
staff to share their burdens?
