How have connections with other professionals improved your practice? Today's entry is from Shannon Merideth, ELD Teacher at Carmel Valley Middle School:
As the only person on my school site who teaches ELD (English Language Development), finding colleagues with whom to connect is especially meaningful to me. I can say with confidence that nothing supports my teaching as much as sitting down with other teachers to share strategies, discuss successes and failures, and develop or improve curriculum. Because of what I teach, though, I can’t do that within the walls of my school, so I go off-site to have those discussions.
Several times during the school year I arrange to collaborate with other teachers in my district who also teach ELD. I’ve developed productive professional relationships with same-subject colleagues at other schools to the extent that we’ve designed years of curriculum specific to our unique student populations. And as is the nature of teachers, we are never 100% satisfied with our end products, so we continue to meet and communicate regularly to modify the lessons or create new ones, as needed, after implementing them. We correspond by email almost weekly – sometimes more – with updated activities and ideas based on how our curriculum worked with our students. In this way we save each other time. We learn from what went on in the other’s classroom, and we divide up work that needs to be done to prepare for lessons. We share both positive and negative results, and move forward from there.
I just came from a collaboration day with a colleague from another school who, like me, faces the challenge of teaching students with greatly varied language abilities in the same class. Aside from sharing our first month’s worth of work, we were able to have an in-depth discussion about Common Core Standards and what they mean for English Learners. Together we examined the new Language Arts Standards and envisioned tools that would give English Learners access to those standards while still helping them acquire English.
I feel that I MUST have these conversations with colleagues if I’m to grow as an educator and maximize my effectiveness in the classroom. I need to hear that others are having the same struggles, and how they’re working to overcome them. Just the act of saying questions and worries out loud can lead to a path of clearer thinking and problem solving. As a result of yesterday’s meeting, I now have a solid idea of what my next steps will be, a new tool to use with my students that provides support in analyzing text, a completed model of that tool, and a refreshed memory of SDAIE strategies that support English Learners. Most importantly, I have renewed energy for putting all the pieces together to help my students find the words in English that they need to gain access to curriculum AND do tasks involving higher level thinking and problem solving.
