A guiding coalition is formed, teachers are placed in collaborative teams, and the work begins. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, what often plays out is that the renewed enthusiasm is quickly eroded because educators charged with implementing the PLC process succumb to the misconceptions of collaboration.
1. Misconception: All Teachers Want To Collaborate
2. Misconception: Teachers Know What To Collaborate About
3. Misconception: Teams Are Committed To The Work of Improvement
Collaboration vs. Co-Blabbering
Collaboration is about co-laboring – creating, thinking, and doing with your team. Collaboration is not:
- meeting to talk
- talking about ideas without acting
- meeting, then going to do the work
Teams Have Goals
Teams have goals. Purposes and objectives for their existence. These goals define the direction of their work. They give reasons to co-labor.
Here’s a quick definition from the dictionary:
The action of working with someone to produce or create something.
Something produced or created by collaboration.
Help your teams out by guiding them through goal-setting, preparing agendas, and assigning tasks at each meeting. Help them take the lead and determine how they will work and what they will work on!