Collaboration.
Collaboration.
Proverbs 27:17 states, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” And, I have found this to be true throughout my years in education. In 2008, the school where I worked adopted the Professional Learning Community (PLC) model. In the years that followed, I grew by leaps and bounds in my craft because I was able to listen to how my colleagues approached various lessons and was able to bounce some of my own thoughts and ideas off of them for the ‘approving nod or the kind ehhhh.’ I hope you hear the high pitched maybe not in that last word. Anyway, being able to collaborate with folks who have been there and done that and those who think just a little bit differently than me, challenged me, stretched me, and encouraged me to grow as an educator.
In our setting, we do have to work a little harder to carve out time to collaborate with one another, but it is not impossible. It is amazing how a lunch as a vertical team or a half hour before or after school could help to improve in our craft as educators. Through developing a common vocabulary to sharing tips and best practices, there is so much we can do together to grow and improve in all we do. As the former CEO of Yahoo once said, “When you need to innovate, you need collaboration.”