I am not the first educator to grapple with the unnamed elephants in the room that can hinder collaboration. But, let me start by admitting that when it comes to "playing with others," I bring all kinds of my own resistance to the table. I always have, even as a child, and this isn't something that is dissipating with age. Quite the contrary, actually. I like going in my room and being in charge of what happens in there. Mostly, because--and I suspect that I am not unique among teachers in this regard--I am a control freak. And I, probably like many others, honestly believe that my way is the right way. Well, at least most of the time. And so, okay, I'm all about picking up some ideas at conferences and searching Pinterest for cool classroom tips, but ultimately, I just want to be left alone to do what I believe to be the best for my students. It's pretty presumptuous, truth be told. Arrogant, even. Okay. Guilty.
But I'm not as oblivious to my faults as I am making myself sound. I know that there are many places in my teaching where I fall short. I can name and discuss them at length. The most glaringly obvious is my inability to think in a linear way. And yet, to follow a lock-step style of teaching, binder-based and handed down from on high has almost led me to contemplate career alternatives. It leaves no room for individuality and for the passion that must fuel each lesson and unit. Still.
I have big thoughts. Big ideas. I can write essential questions all day long with ease. I can map out curriculum on a giant piece of paper with arrows and thought bubbles that connects it all into a coherent year long thematic paradise. A colleague once took a look at one of my maps and made a reference to Russell Crowe in the film, A Beautiful Mind. Remember, he was the schizophrenic math genius. I, of course, was flattered and insulted all at the same time, because whether he knew it or not that colleague was speaking a truth that I was all too well aware of. Like the guy in the movie, I have a heck of a time pinning all that thinking down into a day by day orderly progression that does all that thinking justice. I fail miserably every time. I never get to realize the entire vision because I can't line up all the steps it takes to arrive at the grand destination.
Let's jump to the beginning of this school year when I learned that there were enough sections of creative writing to assign one to a colleague, Rhonda Leese. She wanted to meet and talk about what I had done in the past. You can imagine my panic at having to lay out step by step how I've taught this course over the past several years. The jig was up. I was going to be found out.
I responded with the only course of action possible. Create a binder. Dazzle her with resources and surely she'll think that I know what the heck I have been doing for the last four years. I mean, I know what I've been doing, it's just that it comes out differently every time. And that is difficult, then, to articulate to someone who wants to follow your lead. Or just find a starting point.
To make a long story short: we met. She looked at the binder. The first semester went by. We talked some. And then, we were forced to meet again during a professional development day devoted to collaboration. Luckily, I really like Rhonda as a person, so my anxiety over the meeting was minimal. And it all began easily enough...I opened a Google Doc and titled it, "Taking Creative Writing VERY Seriously" and we started planning out the semester. As we worked, I fired off a bunch of essential questions that we and our students should work toward answering at the end of the semester. I thought it went pretty smoothly. We didn't get very far, but we had something; more structure than I've had in the past. Ever. I chalked up the success of the collaboration to the compatibility of the people who were collaborating.
For some time after that first meeting, both Rhonda and I pretty much forgot about the folder and then, one day at the end of the semester, I got an email that informed me that she had edited the document. Little by little, it was becoming more fleshed out and so we decided to meet again. We worked together to get the questions into some kind of logical linear progression (imagine my struggle). The content was looking great. Finally, Rhonda volunteered for something that I would NEVER--well, maybe I would if someone was holding one of my loved ones hostage, but not under any circumstances of lesser desperation--sign up for. She wanted to type up the syllabus.
Big red signs started flashing in my head that said something to me like: "You are not doing enough of the work! You are a slacker! You are the weak link in the group! You are not doing your share!"
And so I just came clean.
"You really want to do that?" I asked her. "That's a lot of work." Kind of like trying to get hamsters to walk in single file, I thought. Or like getting the leaves to fall from the trees according to shape, and then size, and then color. An impossible task.
She insisted. And then she did this thing that I think made all the difference. She, too, came clean about some of her own insecurities during our work. And her honesty must have been enough to put me in some kind of place, comfortable enough with Rhonda, to drop my ego and let her.
She sent the completed syllabus to me today. It's beautiful. Far better than anything I could have put together. The red signs are no longer flashing in my head, for I see both of us in it. It's clear. It's logical. It contains all of the elements that I see as vitally important to, as Calkins says "helping kids weave reading and writing into the fabric of their lives." The elements are organized in a linear progression that will be our road map as we work to provide our students with experiences of all of those elements. It is a piece of collaboration that integrates our strengths, and capitalizes upon our differences in the way that we think about and process the sometimes very messy task of teaching creative writing. Most valuable, it is a future model for me as I strive to replicate it in the other classes that I teach without Rhonda.
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