When Teachers Collaborate Magic Happens!

I am always amazed at the things that come out of teacher collaboration. By now I should be used to magical things happening when groups of teachers share their new ideas or "oldies but goodies". I was asked to share what my third grade team is doing with the Reading and Writing Workshop and Shared Reading at another school in our district. I recieved a very warm welcome and could immediatly tell that this staff, was ready for change! They flipped through examples of my student work that I brought along and asked very thoughtful questions throughout the presentation. Their principal then broke them into different break-out sessions to allow teachers to learn from their own peers about things that were going on in their classrooms to be able to take those back as well. Teachers came over and asked me questions about how I started, how I got grades and a variety of other things having to do with giving up control as the teacher and allowing students to take that on.

After the session as I was packing up to leave, several grade level teams stayed in the school library and immediatly began planning what they wanted to change first! It was awesome to see teachers so commited to their students that they didn't mind changing what was comfortable to them in order for student achievement to be higher. I am so glad that students in our district have teachers who are so commited to their learning!