Teacher Leadership: Shared Leadership

Teacher Leadership: Shared Leadership: "According to the text, 'Strong relationships are built and sustained when a team of teachers work together to ensure that instruction is tai..."

Currently at our school, the expectations that have been set for professional development are primarily built around departments. The plan generally comes from the top down. During a lot of conference days, we collaborate with department members. Social studies has been working more and more with the English department. Eighth grade has its own team and now the 9th grade academy has been put in place. Periodically there have been some conference days that allowed interdisciplinary conversations, but that seems few and far between. Increasing interdisciplinary collaboration would most certainly benefit our learning environment. In the past, professional collaboration was haphazard. Sometimes the district would push a particular program for a few years and then it would be abandoned for the next buzz program. In the last few years I have been pleased to see more consistency and follow through in addressing collaboration. Two instances I would cite: department roll thrus and Focus on Learning. The Focus on Learning has allowed some interdisciplinary collaboration. Kudos to those faculty members who work outside of the district's time constraints and create their own interdisciplinary projects!