Collaboration

     After our half day workshop, it became even more clear to me the power of collaboration. I am so appreciative that two of my teammates are in the cohort with me so that we can have useful, productive conversations. It also allows us to share ideas and benefit from the thinking/work we are doing. I also realized though that outside of my teammates I have so many amazing resources now outside of my own team. Working with other 4th grade teachers on that Saturday really opened my eyes to how much we can help each other moving forward. I shared some of my forms with them and how to use Flubaroo. They were so grateful not to have to reinvent the wheel and I was grateful to realize that we should reach out to each other more often. The blogs are allowing us to be inspired by other amazing educators, but I think it should become more than that. I think if there is a project or topic we are working on we should reach out to some of our other cohort grade level collaborators and ask what they are doing/have done in the past. If they have already created great lessons and tools to use, why not share those successes and save ourselves some work.
     With our time become even more elusive  and our lives becoming even more full with obligation, I feel like we need to start leaning on each other more. We all love to be creative and develop new ideas, but when time is not on our side we should use our resources. If we are expected to teach our children this concept, we should practice what we preach. Now I know personally this is easier said than done, I am horrible at asking for help. This though will become my goal, I want to reach out more to my colleagues outside of my building for ideas/resources that have really worked for them. It seems like something so simple, but I need to nudge myself to do it more often, especially with the use of technology making communication/sharing easier than it ever has been before!