Not to totally quote High School Musical, but it’s true. As teachers, we work alone, but together–with each other, with students, with parents, with admin, etc. Over the last 14 years, I’ve worked with 11 different teachers on my grade-level team and have been blessed to learn a lot from my colleagues about what it means to be there for each other and work together to create a great learning environment for students. Today I thought I’d share some of my teaching experiences with you and how they’ve impacted me, and my hope for what this blog could be going forward.

My first year teaching I had an amazing teammate–we collaborated on everything! Which was good, because my curriculum was lacking. I had a social studies textbook but no teacher’s guide, which was okay since it didn’t address my state standards anyway. I also had a math book, with a teacher’s guide, which was nice since it did a better job of addressing standards, and the math was very different from what I had learned growing up. I also had a general list of skills that I was supposed to teach, in addition to the standards. And that was it. As a first year teacher, I was completely overwhelmed. My teammate had changed careers to become a teacher, and had taught middle school a few years, but never elementary, so it was her first year in a sense as well. Because of this, and the fact that leveled classes and trading for Social Studies and Science had us swapping kids constantly throughout the day, we planned together regularly, built our assessments together, did conferences together, you get the picture. As a new teacher it was nice to rely on her experience, even though it was with a different grade. Unfortunately for me, she was not thrilled with the start-up charter school we were at, and left that summer.

My next six years teaching I also worked with a series of veteran teachers, but did not have the same level of collaboration with them that I did that first year. A couple of my teammates even made my job harder, as they were not really present or spent all of our team-planning time stressing and complaining about their students. I felt like I was on my own. In the midst of that we added a very comprehensive and overwhelming ELA curriculum into the mix, with mixed reviews and results, depending on the grade. I won’t go into all that right now, but suffice it to say, it didn’t help things. I had felt like I had worked out a good system which I could no longer use, and my teammate at the time spent more time stressing about how to make the curriculum work rather than trying to problem solve it. Over that stretch of time, I learned independence, but also maybe what NOT to do.

Year 7 we changed buildings and expanded the team to include three teachers instead of two, and year 8 we became a team of four. I went from being the youngest on my former two-person teams, to being the veteran of the four-person team. Most of the new hires were fresh out of college, and we added a new one every year or so as someone moved or decided teaching wasn’t actually the job for them. I did have two teammates for the bulk of those years though, and having teammates who worked well together and collaborated on planning, material creation, and parent communication was a game-changer. By my last year at the school, we had a whole system of shared files which included lesson slides, lesson plans, field trip and event info, and parent newsletters. We divided planning and lesson creation evenly between the four of us, and it made it so much easier to feel prepared for the week and to feel like we had achieved some work-life balance. We also got along really well, which was a huge bonus! 

I’ve always valued other’s opinions and ideas, and to be perfectly honest, I struggle with feeling confident in my own skills. It’s not that I think I’m bad at my job, I just think there’s always more to learn, and so other people are the experts, not me. I also know that the field of education is constantly changing, and so what may have been considered best practice when I started teaching could now be outdated. While it was sometimes challenging having new teachers joining the team, their energy and enthusiasm, and knowledge of what was currently being taught as best practices was great! 

As I’m moving to a new school this year (still same grade and number of teammates though) I’m hoping that they also value collaboration and that we become a cohesive, supportive team. I’m also hoping that this blog becomes something like that–a place where we as teachers can share ideas and support each other, especially for those teachers who are the only teacher for their grade or whose teammates are not as interested in collaborating. I’m hoping that we can learn together, in this ever-changing field of education. 

Feel free to share your experiences in the comments–what have you and your teammates achieved? What are things you look for/appreciate in a teammate?

We’re all in this together 🙂