My Portfolio

           I have learned many things during my journey to becoming a certified teacher, but few of them are more important than learning how to fit into collaborative groups. Along this pedagogical journey, I found that it was essential that I become a listening and contributing group member in many group projects. From my encounters of working in small groups at the University of Washington, Cascade View Elementary, and elsewhere I have grown to value and appreciate collaboration. My experience has always been that two minds are more powerful than one, while I also believe that three people working together are better equipped to bring projects to a successful conclusion than two. As such, I have come to rely on collaborative groups to strengthen my ideas, focus my attention, or clarify any given task that I might have. As a result, I see collaboration as being a vital necessity for advancing my teaching practices, methods, and assessments.

Critical Friends Groups

           At the University of Washington, I was introduced to Critical Friends Groups (CFGs). CFGs are comprised of collaborating teaching professionals. In these partnerships, teachers come together to share, critique, and improve or adapt their teaching practices. As I have stated earlier, collaboration works. CFGs, if approached with an open mind, expand a teacher’s ability to engage student learning. In CFG workshops, teachers follow a given protocol to examine student work, assessments, or whatever question, concern, or curiosity the teacher deems pertinent. In these collaborations, teachers are given warm, cool, and hard feedback of their chosen concern. I have grown to value these professional workshops as a means for improving my pedagogy.

           At one CFG, I brought in a writing assignment from my second grade class. This assignment asked the students to write an expository piece about themselves. They had just finished writing a book of poetry, and this was their final assignment. It was titled, “About the Author.”   I thought I had given them a good prompt for writing this assignment, but what I got back from the students was not up my expectations. For the most part, their “About the Author” papers did not provide enough information, or they were full of run-on non-essential information. To view artifact one and two click on these two links (ARTIFACT ONE) (ARTIFACT TWO). As a little bit of background, this class is comprised of 24 students. 11 of them are English Language Learners (ELL), and almost all of the remaining students live in homes where English is not the home language. After seeing the results of this assignment, I immediately started reflecting on what I had missed with my instructions and expectations, and why I had overestimated my students’ abilities. I decided that this assignment was ideal for bringing before my colleagues at a CFG. Perhaps, they would have some suggestions for refining or improving this assignment.

           For this CFG workshop, I had the choice of five protocols focusing on student work or problem solving. I chose to use the “Tuning Protocol” because it is designed to help educators figure out why student work does not reach predetermined goals or standards. To view the Tuning Protocol click on this link (PROTOCOL LINK). During this practicum, I was given warm, cool, and hard feedback, and I was truly impressed with the depth of my colleague’s knowledge. They had many questions and suggestions. To see the Tuning Protocol feedback criteria click on this link (FEEDBACK LINK).

           My colleague’s recommendations were varied. For this group of students, they suggested providing each student with a visual outline detailing a menu of items that the students could follow item-for-item to help them tell their audience about their lives.  They also proposed stressing the use of a word wall of adjectives, having the students organize the paper with a beginning, middle, and end, re-teaching them paragraph structure, and giving the assignment more concrete structure by combining ideas for clarity and fluency. All of these suggestions, except beginning, middle, and end, were ideas that I had not thought of. As this was an expository assignment, there was no need for the assignment to have a beginning, middle, or end. In the end, all of these ideas had a great impact on me.

Reflections

           These suggestions sent me into brainstorming the steps in the writing process. Writing is a process, and I realized that I had overestimated my student’s knowledge and understanding of how to free write. My instruction had been verbal and did not include visual support. Amazingly however, this shortsighted epiphany was secondary to the impact this workshop had on my own reflections and thoughts. I believe that I have a better understanding of preparing my students to write as a result of this consultancy.

           The bottom line is that my students produced exactly what I prepared them to create. While I hoped they would easily write about their lives, I should have realized that ELL students often get lost in translating from their home language to English.  Many of them also get caught up trying to use correct spelling even when given the prompt to just use invented spelling. I have also come to the understanding that most students, and especially ELL students, lose confidence and are often frozen in fear when faced with any writing assignment.  I say this based on my reflection and observation of this class. However if the process is correctly modeled and clearly stated with visual and repeated verbal instructions, I know that these students would have had what they needed to demonstrate their writing skills and to get their thoughts on paper.

           Due to the time constraints of student teaching, I was unable to refine the writing process for this assignment. On the other hand, I spent a great deal of time reflecting and evaluating my instruction, my student’s abilities, the quality of work that I hoped they would produce, and which of the CFG suggestions I would have used for a re-write.  However for the purposes of this paper, I have produced a graphic organizer using my CFG’s suggestions showing the directions I would have given the students for their re-writes (PROCESS REVISION LINK). If I had had the opportunity to use this organizer, I would have put it up on the overhead while I gave the students directions, walked them through how a response to each bullet point could look, and gave repeated verbal instructions as needed. I would have also provided the students with a desk copy of the organizer to look at while they were completing the assignment.

The Reality of Collaboration

           My primary argument here is that in the realm of education collaboration has become nothing less than a necessity in these times of high stakes saccountability.

           However, collaboration is not always easy.  In fact, it can often be a messy struggle. I find that recognizing that opposition or angst exists will go a long way in helping or inviting involvement. Sometimes people do not want to participate; and often they are only fulfilling an obligation. As for me every now and again, I am one of these individuals. Despite the fact that I always try to contribute with a willing mind and body, I sometimes fall into the reluctant participant category. I am only human as we all are. However, if disinterest occurs, I am still responsible to the group for my contributions and actions. Consequently, I take this responsibility seriously because the groups success or failure depends on me doing my fair share. As for my students I now realize that as a result of consultancies like CFGs, they will be better served if I am contrubuting group participant.

Conclusion

           As you can see, my participation in CFGs and other collaborations have greatly impacted my thinking about teaching and learning. The collaborative process improves teaching methods, instruction, assessments, and as a result student learning. Many collaborative workshops have helped me come to terms with my teaching limitations. As a neophyte teacher, I have many. But with help, guidance, and gentle counseling from my colleagues I have been blessed with a greater perspective for meeting my intended teaching objectives.  Often by working with others, my eyes and mind have been opened to ideas that I had missed, misjudged, or not thought of using. Collaborations have also been a cause for much reflection. No one is capable of recovering all of the knowledge they have confronted or learned. With humility, I always strive to be a willing listener, share my knowledge with others, and bring a smile when working on collective projects.