Post-Reflection

Originally when I chose my teaching partner, I was looking for a few things in particular. First, I wanted an elementary teacher since I currently work in a middle school. Therefore, I have some experience in collaborating with teachers on a smaller scale at this level and wanted to expand my age range. Second, I wanted a teacher who would share past lessons and be willing to make some changes for the good of the students. With this, I was able to pair up Elizabeth with the understanding that she has not incorporated technology into her classroom and feels uncomfortable doing so. I was glad that she was honest about this up front so I was aware of her hesitations. This helped me consider her current position and gave me an idea of how to approach the situation.

After looking over all of her documents in reference to the animal research unit, I made a list of possible enhancements/additions to be made to the unit. These ideas were based off of the GLCEs that she already covered as well as additional GLCEs and some METS. A couple of these included computer work which made Elizabeth nervous. On top of my ideas, she came up with a few as well – some of which branched off of my ideas while others were new ideas altogether. After some discussion, we decided on which changes we would make. I was able to get some of the computer-related ideas included, but not all of them.

As the classroom teacher, she did have the ultimate vote over the LMS in deciding what was included in the unit. Elizabeth has had great success with this unit in the past and she is proud of how she has taught it. So I decided that I would rather add a few small changes to several of the lessons as opposed to reworking all of her ideas. My thought was that if this collaboration experience is successful, I may be able to include more critical thinking and technological ideas in future lessons.

I feel that this process is important when entering into any collaboration relationship so as to not make the teacher feel defensive of their previously used methods and lessons. As collaborative relationships grow, the LMS can begin making even more suggestions and teaching more lessons once that foundation has been established. If the LMS tries to do too much in the beginning it may deter that teacher, and maybe others, from future collaboration.

For us, the virtual planning of using email for a majority of our communication was our only option. We live 2 hours away from each other and have different schedules so meeting in person or even phone conversations would not have been as convenient as email. However, this did prevent us from having “conversations” which would be helpful in future collaborations. Since the LMS would likely be working in the school with the teacher they are collaborating with, hopefully there would be some face-to-face interaction throughout the planning period and thereafter. But due to scheduling issues, this email option may be a common method even within school buildings. Therefore, I am glad that I have experienced it in a long distance situation even though it would mostly be down the hall in a school setting.

The idea of the wiki was valuable; however, using it with my teacher partner was not as easy as I had thought. Since we discussed most of our ideas through email, we would make the necessary changes and have the other person review the final document. From here, I would post the document to the wiki in the agreed upon location. It would have been difficult for us to make suggestions on the wiki to each other without including a note of explanation for the other person. We felt that it would be easier for us to email attachments for review and make comments either within the document or within the body of the email before sending it back to the other partner. Therefore, a majority of the wiki editing/posting was done by me as a way to compile our final documents as opposed to using it as an editing site for our team.

Overall, this project was a great stepping-stone into collaborating with classroom teachers. I understand that I was able to select my own teaching partner with whom I already had a personal relationship with and that this is not always the case in the schools. Also, not all teachers will be interested in working with the LMS on units or lessons. While I did not encounter this particular situation, having some successful collaboration experience will help guide me in how to best approach this teacher(s) in my future career as an LMS.