Excerpts:
Making Collaboration Work
I'd love to see the kind of collaboration Ms. B and I experienced among many more school and afterschool teachers. A schoolwide effort with the support of the principal would likely provide the most benefit for students. Here are my ideas about how collaboration between school and afterschool teacher pairs could be fostered.
A schoolwide collaboration might begin with a short information session to educate the in-school teachers about what goes on after school and the afterschool practitioners about what happens in the classroom. Such a meeting might be lead by one in-school teacher and one afterschool practitioner. These educators and others might share ideas on how to collaborate without creating more work or taking more time.
I can't recommend highly enough the quick conversations, both in each other's classrooms and by phone, that fueled the collaboration between Ms. B and me. In addition, in-school teachers and afterschool practitioners could create a journal that they could pass back and forth to discuss their struggles and achievements with their students. They could use the journal to monitor student performance and behavior, share lesson plans and objectives, and set down student achievements and struggles by sharing test results and other data. This journal need not take much time or create work. Similarly, the two professionals could communicate via an assignment pad passed back and forth by a student. The teacher could note the students' homework, and either professional could write comments on students' behavior or need for help. These forms of communication would be very simple for both professionals.
Collaboration can work; we just need to be creative. We can work together to learn what works and what doesn't. Collaboration between in-school teachers and afterschool practitioners helps both sets of professionals, but the ultimate beneficiaries are the students.