Collaboration and Communication

This is a section from the “synthesis” paper I have been working on. It is a first draft and I would love comments and suggestions.

Collaboration and Communication
When we had our first child my wife was in labor for 12 hours. During the 10 hours of that that we were in the hospital we must have seen 15 or 20 people. There was one wonderful nurse, Heather, who was assigned to work with my wife and I. But there were also other key people involved in the birth. Dr. Heidi, our obstetrician was there, of course and there were many other nurses and specialists.

If we compare the day to education Heather the nurse was like the classroom teacher and Dr. Heidi was the principal. The other nurses were like other teachers in the building. The people who drew blood were the specialists. The main difference in how they worked and how a school works is how they worked together. When Dr. Heidi would come in Heather wasn’t scared—she was excited. She would ask questions and make sure that she was doing all that she could for my wife and I. In turn, Dr. Heidi didn’t shout demands or give orders, she conferred with Heather and made suggestions about what might work in given situations. When my wife requested an epidural Heather, Dr. Heidi my wife and I all talked about the positives and negatives. They even suggested an alternative that we tried first. It wound up not working but we were glad we had tried everything before going to the drugs. (Once we went to the drugs my wife was quite happy.)

When our baby was born Heather stayed with us until the next nurse came on. Before leaving to go home she talked at great length with the new nurse and told her everything about us and our baby. The baby was five weeks early but was otherwise fine, vital signs, etc. Only then did she leave us. Since the baby was five weeks early a special nurse was called in. This nurse took a look at our child and concluded that our baby didn’t need extra help so she didn’t need to stay.

The analogies to education are obvious but the key thing we can learn from the medical profession is how they communicate profusely and how they collaborate with the interest of the patient foremost in their minds. As teachers when we collaborate (if we collaborate) it too often becomes a game of who is the better teacher. This thinking needs to go away. The vast majority of teachers are good, just in different ways. We need to lean on the strengths of other teachers to improve in the areas where they are a little stronger.

A few years ago someone told me how much work they had to do over the summer because they were teaching a new course. I asked them if anyone else in the department had ever taught it. They replied that about 6 other teachers had taught the course. It was clear from the rest of our conversation that the teacher wasn’t going to get much help from the other teachers on planning the course. Why? Imagine two dentists working in adjacent rooms. One knows a new tooth whitening technique, the other does not. Would the first dentist tell the second dentist to read about the technique to figure it out themselves? Of course not. So why do we have to behave this way in education.

Someone once told me that a new teacher was hired who had previously taught in Japan. She was told to come up with a lesson plan for a particular unit and said she couldn’t do it. When asked why she explained that she had never planned a lesson by herself—they just don’t do it that way in Japan. Doctors and nurses have learned that their collective knowledge is much more useful when there is a great deal of sharing and communicating. As teachers we need to work in the same way.

Jargon--why don't we say what we mean?

4 March 2008

I was working today with some science teachers and they were working with some terms that had come from the state of NH. They were talking about GSEs, GLEs, and frameworks. Unless you are a NH educator I will assume that you do not know what these terms/abbreviations are.

Here are the terms decoded:
GSE means: standards for a range of grades (k-2 for example) (It stands for Grade Span Expectations)
GLE means: standards for a grade (It stands for Grade Level Expectations)
Frameworks means: standards.

There were very smart science teachers that did not know the meaning of any of the terms. When the terms were decoded for them they were able to continue the work.

My point is that there is no need to obfuscate what we are doing. We are talking about the big goals and the assessments for those goals. Especially at the early stages we need to keep the process accessible so all involved can participate. When it becomes necessary to introduce specific terms we will have them. But at the beginning we just want to bring everyone into the process so they can begin thinking about goals and assessments.

I do not understand why the trend in education has always been to create new terms new pieces of jargon every few years. I fear that it is all because people are trying to sell new books. The bottom line is that we should focus on plain language that allows everyone to participate in the discussion.

Consider a converation that I had with my friend who goes to Dartmouth Business School. He is a smart man who, before going to business school, taught 6th grade. When I talked with him I had a very good conversation about the goals related to entire schools and to courses. But we never used any of the coded terms that are so often seen in teacher only discussions. We were able to talk about what students need to know and what they should be able to do. We were able to talk about this in a very in depth way. And we never used any jargon in our conversations.

Of course when it actually does get to the level of teachers talking about designing curriculum there will be a need to use some terms and scaffolds. But there is no need to mask what the real conversation is about.