2.4 Teacher Collaboration

Self-Assessment: Prepared

Wellcome Middle School maintains a strong culture of collaboration that ensures teachers have frequent and purposeful opportunities to design learning experiences that integrate multiple STEM-related and non-STEM-related subject areas. More than 75 percent of teachers collaborate at least every two weeks, and in most cases, collaboration occurs weekly.

The foundation of this collaborative structure is our weekly Professional Learning Communities. Every Tuesday, grade-level teams from math, ELA, science, and social studies meet to co-plan instruction, review assessment data, design pre and post assessments, and identify supports that will help students reach their learning goals. The STEM Coordinator attends these meetings to guide conversations toward meaningful cross-curricular integration and to help teachers develop interdisciplinary learning outcomes. Several teachers also collaborate with colleagues across schools, such as our eighth-grade social studies teacher who regularly participates in a cross-school PLC.

Beyond weekly PLCs, teachers engage in additional structured collaboration throughout the year. Monthly STEM and AVID meetings provide time for teachers to reflect on mini-challenges, share instructional successes and challenges, and participate in themed professional development that strengthens interdisciplinary STEM instruction. Monthly School Improvement Team meetings, led by the STEM Coordinator, further reinforce this focus by monitoring progress toward schoolwide STEM goals and identifying ways to strengthen integration across classrooms. Staff meetings and committee meetings also support alignment and shared planning across departments.

To deepen this work, Wellcome Middle provides dedicated STEM and AVID team planning days where teachers collaborate to design cross-curricular activities and interdisciplinary projects connected to schoolwide applied learning experiences. These planning sessions ensure that teachers have the time and support needed to create meaningful, integrated learning opportunities for students. Through this layered system of weekly, biweekly, and monthly collaboration, Wellcome Middle ensures that teachers regularly design instruction that weaves together STEM and non-STEM content, strengthening student engagement and supporting authentic, interdisciplinary learning.

Weekly, our teachers participate in Professional Learning Teams (PLTs). During this time, teachers at Wellcome Middle School meet on their designated days to discuss pacing and to dissect assessment data. While examining the data, there is a flow chart of questions that we ask to help improve student learning. The chart is below. Also, science and social studies have the opportunity to discuss what standards they are currently teaching so that they can strategically plan cross-curricular activities. The STEM Coordinator attends PLCs to drive the conversation toward integrating different content areas.    

The STEM/AVID committee meets monthly on the last Wednesday of every month. During these meetings, teachers collaborate to discuss mini-challenges and school-wide STEM challenges, AVID updates, and initiatives. Sample agendas are below.

Our School Improvement team meets once a month; on the second Wednesday. During this time, we discuss ways to reach our school goals and to collect evidence to show our progress. One of our school goals involves our STEM program and what we can do, as a school, to improve STEM in the classrooms.