Refections (Post)

I ended up with mixed feelings about our collaborative unit. Jeff was the first teacher that I had talked to about working with me on this assignment. When I tentatively asked him about creating a collaborative unit with me for my grad class and before I had even explained much of anything to him, he was all excited about working with me on this. He even had a unit that he wanted to “tweak” a bit where he felt the SLMS would be of great help to him. Since it was the last couple weeks of our regular school year, we concentrated on getting through that first. I think that was my first mistake.

I should have sat down with Jeff right away and gone over the details that I had about this assignment so he could have seen what all was involved. By the end of our first meeting (which was two hours long), I discovered that he was pretty happy with the Romeo and Juliet unit he was teaching (which he has perfected over the last 8-10 years). What he was not happy with was past students’ performance in the quality of expository writing based on their research. What he specifically wanted of me was to teach about plagiarism, correct citations, and bibliography preparation because he was not too sure of himself in those areas. He was not interested in “collaboration” in the true sense of the word, and frankly told me that since it was summer vacation, he was not willing to spend a whole lot more time on it nor to spend his hours typing and preparing. He felt that since this unit was for my class and my grade that those should be my responsibilities. He provided me with all of the materials for the unit such as curriculum, student expectations, a sample activity, etc. He was willing to meet occasionally (which we did) and even consult over the telephone (which we did). Needless to say, I was disappointed. I had been thinking more along the lines of “co-planning” and “co-teaching.” I was also disappointed in him because he never seemed to get his username and password to work for the wiki itself. We ended up going over it together when I had everything in there, and he helped me correct a few things. Normally, he is a whiz at computers, so I really don’t understand what happened there.

I must admit that I did consider seeing if another teacher might want to collaborate in a more in-depth manner, but I changed my mind for three reasons. One, I felt like I had already made a commitment to Jeff and since this is a unit that we truly would teach this next school year, I did not feel right about dropping him and switching to somebody else. That just is not professional in my opinion. Yes, we could have picked it back up and done more planning for it in the fall when school was back in session, but it just did not sit right with me. The second reason was one he had already stated…it was summer vacation and most of the teachers already had plans (summer classes, camping, vacations, etc.). And three, did I really want to start all over again? No.

This type of collaboration, though not what I had dreamed of for this particular unit, is still collaboration but on the lowest level. (As Dr. Kumasi pointed out to me, “Welcome to the real world.”) It was what the teacher wanted, though, and I must say that he is very pleased with it. He confessed to me that he wished that he had been taught specific lessons about plagiarism and creating correct citations and bibliographies before he had gone to college.

On a positive note, though, it was very exciting for me to get to see in more detail what a high school language arts class experiences in a typical four-week period in our school. It made me wish that I could be in the class! Jeff’s ideas are fantastic and make learning more fun and exciting for the students. I have been able to see him at work in the classroom with his students, and they are always engaged and seem to be enjoying whatever they are doing at the time. There is mutual respect, as well, and it shows. He has a heart for his students and tries his best to meet the needs of every student in his class. He has approached me before on ways to help reach his lower readers. All of these were reasons that I was very pleased to be able to work with him.

I also enjoyed putting together the lessons that I will specifically be teaching for his students. I designed them in such a way, though, that they should be easily adapted depending on the grade level and experiences of the students. I am very excited to put my lessons to the test this fall. I plan on expanding from Jeff’s class to many more, for most of our students (and teachers) need this information. I believe that there are other teachers in the school who would be willing to collaborate. I think that if I approach it as a way to help improve expository writing and decrease plagiarism, they too will be excited about it.