Course Description from the syllabus

Course Description: This course applies leadership, adult development, action research and collaborative theory to the practice of collaborative consultation in school, home, agency, and other professional settings. Participants will engage in personal reflection, journal techniques, case study and applied approaches to understand and apply research-based skills in collaborative consultation, including interactive communication, group process, conflict resolution, and facilitation and team building. These collaborative skills and attributes will be analyzed at the personal level as well as at the team and organizational levels. Throughout, we will also consider the ways in which language, culture and implicit bias may influence collaborative interactions among school and other professionals and their peers, family and community members with whom they interact. Additionally, we explore the ways in which collaborative process may be optimized to enhance outcomes for children and youth with and without disabilities, their families, and other constituents within schools and other organizational contexts.

(Dr. K. Swindlehurst Spring 2021)

Collaborative Consultation represented a turning point in my career thus far. Through the lens of this course, I began to see my role within the greater organization and how I could influence things even from a non-administrative position. I began to put together both my understanding of teams and the leadership qualities I had learned in my Ed Tech courses thus far to find out how to enrich the teams I am on, and influence the organization as a whole from within. This course brought to light many missteps teams can make, how to avoid them, and ultimately served to be incredibly empowering.

When I reflect on the time I spent during this class I can recognize that indeed, this was the first time I considered the school as a functioning business. Although we consider schools to be particularly altruistic enterprises, they are still operating under budgetary, time, and resource constraints. Before taking this course, I did not consider that a well-functioning team could solve problems that I would typically attribute to lack of resources of some kind. This class forced me to think about the ways I could utilize peoples’ strengths to maximize results. Ultimately, this is the purpose of any organization and the skills learned could be used across a myriad of environments.

One of the best lessons I learned in this course was how to reflect critically and consider how my own perceptions and biases could shape how I see things or make decisions. Additionally, it can color my interactions and communication with others. While a pretty simple concept, learning to be aware of my own biases when in the moment is both challenging and important. For instance, coming from a state with a greater population and ability to raise funds for public services, my own bias was that problems that existed could be solved with simply appealing to the district for more money. When I first came to rural Vermont, I felt frustrated that budget overrides and increases were sometimes voted down. However, through taking this course I realized that my own bias coming from a more privileged area (not that I, as an individual, was more privileged) sometimes limited my creativity to solve a problem such as lack of paraprofessionals to help in my room. Additionally, it helped me see that by solving problems with my teammates, we began to function at a higher level and understand that there were many things we did not need to escalate up to administrations but rather could use one another as resources and experts.

As a team, we went from solely discussing test scores at “data team” meetings to sharing an agenda prior to the weekly meeting so that everyone on our team could see and modify our plan for that meeting. This allowed everyone the space to bring up special topics and discussions for problem-solving. After conducting a team assessment (adapted from Thousand and Villa 1992), I found that many of us believed we were working collaboratively to solve individual problems and discuss data, but few of us were confident we were engaging in collaborative activities. While discussions regarding student data can lead to higher student outcomes, researchers have found that student achievement is also influenced greatly by educators working on meaningful, collaborative activities such as assessment calibration (Honigsfeld and Dove 2012). As a result, my next steps after conducting the assessment were to ask my vertical teammates if they wanted to work on scaling some of our literacy assessment tools.

This class highlighted the fact that as a grades 1 and 2 level team we are working well together. But more than the immediate applications, I learned that teams should evolve and self-assess moving to autonomy and self-reliance. I learned to be aware of my own biases and perspectives, and encourage others to do the same. When we are critical of ourselves and reflective, we can grow and change for the better.

References

Honigsfeld, A., Dove, M. (2012). Collaborative practices to support all students. Principal Leadership.

40-45.

Thousand, J., Villa, R., Stainback, S., Stainback, W. (1992). Restructuring and caring for effective

education: an administrative guide to creating heterogenous schools. Ch. 5. Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.

Applied Project Proposal

Adapted Group Functioning Survey (Thousand and Villa 1992)

Applied Project Results and Reflection

Weekly Journal Entries and Reflections