Collegiality - collaboration - cooperation

Building positive relationships - Random thoughts!

Unity is strength in the teaching profession and in the workplace. With the NZEI voting through the moving forward of the Joint Initiative and the proposed Communities of Learning I thought it would be a good time to discuss the importance of building relationships with colleagues.  As a person who has recently started at a new school, I am blessed with a set of extremely collegial staff who have been extremely kind and supportive. However, I have also been in schools where staff feel disjointed and disenfranchised, where new staff members are left to get on with their own devices with little support and thought given to how they might be fairing in a new school with new procedures and expectations, because let's face it, every school is different. Without unity in a school, parents and the community can feel that there is no one vision by the staff. Students feel it too.

Even without these Communities of Learning, it as clear that as a profession we have been collectively moving towards forming our own 'communities of learning' without the help of the goverment. Social media has been the profession's friend when it comes to forming relationships with teachers and leaders you would never have known before but now you are able to tap their experienced brains for answers and resources. The VLN and Pond are government run initiatives that have been running for some time but there are also teacher lead sources as well.

The teachers facebook page NZ Teachers Primary (I know there is a Seconday School one as well) is an envaluable resource for asking questions and collecting resources. It allows you to post something and then within sometimes minutes, get what you need and have it working in your classroom the next day. I personally have asked to go and have a look at how thing work in other schools and have always had a raft of opportunities on where I could go. Teacher's are ony to happy to build collegial links with others and of course to show you the fabulous work they are doing in their classes. 

Twitter is also a wonderful way to gain access to other educators all over the world. I often take part in chats with people from Europe and the United States and from these I have gained insights into future focused classrooms and yet again fabulous resources to use in my class. One such resource I hope will help my reluctant writers. The app given to me by a teacher in the US is plotagon and allows your students to animate short plots. I would never have had access to this if it weren't for the collegiality of twitter and of teachers throughout the world. 

Within my school, there are teachers with different skills. My development has been in the area of ITs. We are heading on a digital journey currently with my class having access to 1:1 chromebooks. If it was not for the Educamps, the facebook page, blog posts from educators and twitter I would certainly not be in a position to be working with these devices and having the buy in to learning that I have from my students. I am able to share my skills with other colleagues and will be helping our middle school teacher to advance her skills as she is dipping her toes into the world of chromebooks. Her skills in literacy have been helpful to me and I am using many of her ideas in my class, particularly a focus on sentence building using Alan Peat's work. Our new entrants teacher has helped me with one of my students who has come in with low literacy results giving me resources and giving me ideas on building his confidence. 

Sadly, at the end of this year I will need to find another job because my position is only Fixed Term. I will miss the collegiality, collaboration and the fun I have had at my school. I will miss working with my kids and the relationships I have built with them. I just hope that the unity that I have had in this position will be the same at my next school because it truely is key to having a happy workplace and happy students!