Reflection on Professional Practice

       8. The teacher participates collaboratively in the educational community, showing mutual support and cooperation in eliciting feedback from colleagues and supervisors. A teacher shows exemplary professional practice by participating collaboratively in the educational community to improve instruction, advance the knowledge and practice of teaching as a profession, and ultimately impact student learning. Moreover, a teacher exemplifying professional practice elicits feedback from colleagues and supervisors to apply toward improving student learning success. Thus, fostering and maintaining a professional environment of respect and inclusiveness—where teachers acknowledge their differences in their backgrounds and pedagogy but their sameness in the heart they have for affecting positive change in society through effectively educating their students—is crucial to success in professional practice as a teacher [1].

Professional practices, or responsibilities, range from contract obligations such as staying thirty-minutes after school and attending staff and professional learning community (PLC) meetings to building and maintaining healthy, collaborative relationships within the educational community. In my couple of months as a student teacher, I have been attending and participating in every professional meeting as if I was a contracted teacher, and discovered that collaboration among teachers has its difficulties that, if not well-traversed, can hamper an individual or the entire team’s professional growth and development [2]. In “Work Together But Only if You Want To,” Du Four warns that teacher collaboration that focuses on negativity such as punishments for students or delegation of tasks and norms will cause team meetings to “deteriorate into complaint sessions” (2011, p. 60). The first day I joined my assigned PLC group as a student teacher, one member confessed their feelings of being unheard and disrespected in past PLC meetings and apologized to the team for their part in causing those meetings to perpetually end in deadlock, promising that they will be making a conscious effort to participate with a greater sense of collegiality and receptiveness toward items on the PLC agenda regarding norms and rules [3]. I realized at that point the opportunity I had to learn secondhand the importance of mutual support and cooperation in allowing for professional growth and development from collaboration. Despite an especial effort of said member as observed at subsequent meetings and in group emails to turn a new leaf and work harmoniously with other PLC group members, another member continued to discuss with other group members about past enmity for said group member and kept the antipathy alive [4]. Witnessing the collateral damage of ineffective teacher collaboration helped me realize that (1) an individual member’s determination, alone, to be respectful and cooperative to optimize the benefit of collaboration toward advancing pedagogy and ultimately impact student learning does not necessarily mean all other members will reciprocate for the success of said collaboration and (2) failing to navigate team politics well can permanently damage one's relationships within that specific professional community and diminish the potential value of collaboration for personal professional growth and development [5]. To enjoy the benefits of teacher collaboration, I internalized from my observation the fundamental importance of always observing effective interpersonal and conversation skills as well as working with other members "in good faith" to "develop a guaranteed and viable curriculum to ensure that students have access to the same essential knowledge and skills regardless of the teacher to whom they are assigned" (p. 61) in order to sustain access to the opportunity and benefits of teacher collaboration [6].

       Teacher collaboration helps teachers achieve ever increasing number of standards for student performance and success, therefore teachers whom strive to optimize instructional practices to meet the needs of all students and devise assessments most appropriate and engaging for all learners would find that the collaborative culture of teacher collaboration in professional learning communities lead to “higher levels of student achievement” (DuFour, 2011, p. 60) [5].

References

DuFour, R. (2011). Work Together But Only If You Want To. Kappan, 92(5), 57-61.