8. Collaborative Relationships 

This is an example of a weekly newsletter template that I fill out and distribute to each student to bring home to their families.  I also keep a copy for us to hang up in our classroom and give one to my assistant principal as well.  This newsletter goes out every Thursday with information for the following school week so that parents are aware of any important dates coming up.  They are also given reminders of early dismissals for students, days off, and things of that nature.  I also include a section that highlights the key learning targets that we are working on for that week within each different content area that we do within our classroom.  There is also always contact information listed at the bottom of each newsletter that lists my cooperating teacher's school email, along with our school's phone number and her individual extension that connects them directly to the classroom phone in our room, so that they are provided with ways in which to reach us to keep the line of communication open and accessible for all of our families. 

This artifact meets performance indicator 8Q which states, "The competent teacher establishes respectful and productive relationships with parents or guardians and seeks to develop partnerships to promote student learning and well-being."  It shows how I am making an active and conscious effort to establish relationships with the families that I work with in order to make myself available to them, just as my cooperating teacher had previously established with them.  This is something that I wanted to continue doing and took over the responsibility of carrying out, so that I could start to build a partnership with them as well and also be able to show them that I want to work towards the common goal of continuing to promote their student's learning and well-being overall.  This simple task of sending home a weekly newsletter and connecting with families in a different way can be a small step in creating a strong bond with the families that you work with and this is something that I want to continue doing in my own classroom as well! 

The main ideal that I took away from the experience that I have had with creating, filling out, and sending home weekly newsletters to the families of my students, is the importance of creating collaborative relationships built on trust, compassion, and genuine authenticity.  This also shows a connection to the overall standard as a whole by showing that there is work being done between the teacher and one of the parties mentioned in the standard above, in this case it being the parents or guardians.  It shows how in this manner, the teacher is coming together with the parents and both parties are collaboratively working together as team members to support the needs of the student.  I also learned the importance of not only building these collaborative relationships with parents or guardians and other parties as mentioned in the standard, but also being mindful of the fact that once these relationships are established, they need to be maintained over time and should not be forgot about or left alone after a single communication correspondance or interaction takes place.  This is something that I want to remind myself of and make as a goal moving forward to remember to always stay in constant communication with all of families early on and often throughout the course of time to show that I care and that we are in this together as a team.

This is a screenshot of a portion of a digital collaboration log form that my school uses and sends out to each teacher every week to be filled out based on what was done during our weekly built-in collaboration time on Tuesdays.  A few years ago, our school implemented early dismissals for students at 1:50 p.m.  This was so that staff could have time to collaborate with one another via scheduled team meetings, behavioral meetings, etc. or to simply have time to work in classrooms prepping materials for students, cleaning desks, organizing student materials, looking at student data binders, or whatever was on the agenda during that collaboration time.  After this new collaboration time was launched and began being implemented, there was soon a requirement attached to it that staff fill out a collaboration log that gave a brief summary of what was discussed or worked on with staff whether it was within the classroom where all staff were present and working together or if it was within participation in a meeting of some kind.  Essentially the collaboration logs serve as an accountability check for staff to justify why they are being provided with built-in collaboration time during the school day in the absence of students being present.  Our school realized the importance of collaboration and wanted to provide us this time to meet with one another and be productive, but also wanted to make sure that the time was being used appropriately and effectively for what its original intention was for.  Within the last school year, as technology has been advancing and becoming utilized on a grander scale in schools, our school adapted this collaboration log and created a digital format for where they can be accessed through a link that is clicked on.  This way, staff can easily navigate through their email or other school online platform to locate the collaboration log and fill it out via a cell-phone, computer, etc. to follow through on this requirement that the school has for us to uphold. 

This artifact meets knowledge indicator 8F which states, "The competent teacher understands the importance of participating on collaborative and problem-solving teams to create effective academic and behavioral interventions for all students."  It directly correlates to the piece of this indicator that talks about the need to collaborate with other people to work through academic and behavioral components of students' overall educational journeys, while also creating interventions for all students that will set them up for the most overall success in their learning environment.  In my opinion however, the main piece to consider with this indicator for this specfic standard is the participation on collaborative teams with other individuals to practice communication skills and other important skills needed to function as an effective team and unit working towards the same overall common goal, which in this case is setting students up for success of course. 

The biggest learning experience that I had through completing these collaboration logs, not only as a team member filling it out with previous teachers that I had worked with in the past, and from the standpoint as the teacher leading the classroom filling this out for myself and the staff I work with, was the importance of delegating responsibilities.  Along with this came first planning and coming up with tasks for staff to do and work on during this collaboration time for weeks when there was no scheduled meetings or trainings that would take place.  That meant that this time could be used within the classroom for staff to prepare other materials for upcoming crafts that we were doing or doing some housekeeping items such as making copies of worksheets or simply helping keep the classroom tidy by wiping down desks or something of that nature.  These were all things that I already knew and had seen done in other classrooms before and I have even participated in working on, but seeing things from the perspective of the teacher was different for me in regard to this collaboration time.  It made me realize that if I wanted to use this time to be productive and effective for myself and my staff members that I had to think ahead a bit and create a list of items that staff could work on and help with creating.  This not only gave them something to do during our collaboration time, but also removed some items from my plate that I would not then have to be responsible for and also allowed for me to practice delegating tasks to staff and working well with those that I am managing and relying on each day.  These small interactions and the way in which the teacher asks staff to complete tasks can either be done well or come across in an unintened way, so it is important to frame requests carefully and show gratitude for the helpo that staff provide to you to promote positive team functioning both while students are present and during times when they are not as well.