STANDARD 8: COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIPS

This is a parent letter that I would send to my students at the beginning of the year to create a collaborative relationship between teacher students and parents so that all expectations were written out and understood by parents. I would hope that sending this home would help expectations to be carried through to both home and school and that parents can reflect with students in both good and bad times.

Creating this made me feel like I really had to think about it and once I sent it home, I had to make sure I was following through because you had someone else who knew about rules. I think it also allowed for parents not to get upset when their child had consequences at school. This avoids some confrontations with parents. Like Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 9K suggests collaborating with parents helps improve students performance because they are having better behavior and there is accountability for this both at home and at school creating collaboration between school and home. (Ilinois State Board of Education, 2013)

Doing this I learned that it can be helpful to not only let kids, but also parents know about expectations. I think I learned it can cause less problems as parents know and have signed off on polices and they feel like they are part of the process. It is a simple thing to just send things home to parents that can create relationships with home.

This activity talked about people who were co-teaching and had differences in opinions and styles. There was tension over the way things were going and I had to come up with solutions for them.

I think this is a good example of me being able to work well with other professionals and create relationships even when there are issues. My responses of helping define their roles, reflecting on what's happening or asking another colleague for help all support the Illinois Professional Learning Standard 9F that states understands the roles of an advocate, the process of advocacy, and its place in combating or promoting certain school district practices affecting students. (Illinois State Board of Education, 2013) Making sure you are advocating for good processes and working with others to do that is important for collaboration. My suggestions in this case study support those ideals.

In doing this I learned that communication is really important with the people you are working with. Your attitude can drastically effect the classroom as well, so even when you are frustrated, you have to learn to focus and work on working collaboratively with the teachers/professionals in your class so that they can have the best education possible. I also learned that you should always lean on strengths to find solutions when working with other professionals.