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Running head: COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 1

Effective Communication and Collaboration

Anna Switzer

Regent University
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 2

Introduction

Teachers need to effectively communicate and collaborate with parents, students,

teachers, and other professionals to meet the needs of the many different students. When

teachers inform parents well, students benefit because they can be told similar things at home

and at school. Effective communication can give parents a way to stay involved in their child’s

education; this extra support can really help a student succeed. When teachers collaborate well

with each other, they do not have to work as much for the same quality content. Other teachers

can also bring new ideas that a different teacher would not consider.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

My first artifact for this paper includes notes from a meeting with a parent. The meeting

with the parent was a special education committee meeting to evaluate if the eighth grade student

still needed special education accommodations in high school. My notes from the meeting

included what I planned on saying to the parent and the committee about the student and

important parts of and decisions made during the meeting. What I was able to communicate to

the parent and the committee helped them decide that the school should test the student again

because the student has shown signs that some of the results from the previous testing may be

outdated. The notes also show that the next time the committee will meet is in May after the

school has been able to retest the student.

The second artifact is notes from a meeting during a teacher work day that included all

the math teachers. The lead math teacher led the meeting by discussing flexible grouping and

then gave each group of math teachers time to collaborate in their PLC groups. Having a more

experienced teacher lead a meeting helps other teachers because younger teachers such as myself

can have “a role model for teaching” (p. 34). This role model can help introduce new practices
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 3

and provide suggestions during difficult times. My notes from the meeting include important

parts of the presentation that the lead math teacher emphasized. These notes show the plan that

my teacher, my inclusion teacher, and I had for the next few weeks in how we would use flexible

grouping. We planned on reviewing with the class as a whole group with the bell ringer and then

splitting into groups where the inclusion teacher would have a group, I would have a group, and

a third group would do independent work. I also included a Frayer model as part of my notes

from the meeting which showed that a non-example of flexible grouping is splitting up students

into groups to do all the same work in stations. While teachers can use this method, the lead

math teacher was not emphasizing that kind of grouping. Instead, she wanted us to make the

groups more purposeful based on the students’ individual needs or interests.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

During classes at Regent, we discussed the importance of collaboration with other

teachers and specialists to give students the best possible education. Learning from other

experienced teachers is a great way to help students learn because “groups can help complement

the talents of each team member” (Burden & Byrd, 2016, p. 86). With the proper groups,

teachers can figure out better ideas to help large groups of students. Even though we had

previously heard about different kinds of flexible grouping, being reminded during the teacher

work day helps give us time to think about it and plan with the idea fresh in our minds. Without

these kinds of collaboration, teachers will forget to plan with different kinds of methods and will

not be able to teach as effectively. In the past week, my inclusion teachers and I were able to

implement the groups we planned to reteach a couple groups that did not previously understand a

difficult concept. The students who did understand were allowed to work on independent work

instead of relearning a concept they already did.


COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 4

We also learned about effective parent communication. While parent-teacher

conferences are helpful for teachers to communicate with parents, they are also “an opportunity

for teachers to learn more about students from the parents’ perspective” (Hallahan, Kauffman, &

Pullen, 2019, p. 74). During the meeting, I learned that the parent thought the student had a

really difficult time focusing in class, but I was able to contradict that by saying the student is

usually active during class and finishes the work. My main contribution to the meeting was

communicating to the parent and the committee that the student is respectful, asks questions,

stays on-task during class, and seems to do well even though he does has some trouble with word

problems and multistep problems. Since the student had not been tested in quite a few years, the

committee and I, as the student’s math teacher, agreed that the student needed to be tested again

before the committee could make a decision about the student’s accommodations in high school.
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 5

References

Burden, P., & Byrd, D. (2016). Methods for effective teaching: meeting the needs of all students.

Boston, MA: Pearson.

Hallahan, D., Kauffman, J., & Pullen, P. (2019). Exceptional learners: an introduction to special

education. New York, NY: Pearson.

Webb, L, & Metha, A. (2017). Foundations of American Education. Boston, MA: Pearson.

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