Running head: Shared Collaboration 1

Shared Collaboration

Gino Fragoso

Azusa Pacific University

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Shared Collaboration

A school, like any business, needs can only succeed if the staff feels supported by the

higher ups or administrators. This requires an environment of shared collaboration. As a future

educator I plan to work in schools with low socioeconomic status (SES) populations. For the

purpose of this paper I will be discussing the process of collaboratively employing four separate

components to improve student learning in the context of an inner-city public school. The four

components that will drive school success are focusing direction, cultivating collaborative

cultures, deepening student learning, and securing accountability (Fullan & Quinn, 2016). As a

title one school, a third-grade class at Magnolia Avenue Elementary will be used as my preferred

future teaching site. Serving 999 students, the student population is comprised of 97.6% Hispanic

or Latino students. 97% of those students are considered to be socioeconomically disadvantaged,

11.3% are students with disabilities, 50.9% are English Language Learners (ELL), and the

average third grade class size is 21 students (California Department of Education, 2017). Using

data gathered by the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP)

report, 20% of students “showed understanding of core concepts in mathematics,” and 25% of

students “showed understanding of core concepts in English language arts/literacy” (California

Department of Education). Using this data, I can assume that in my future third grade classroom

roughly 80% of students will not be meeting the academic standards. As part of the Los Angeles

Unified School District (LAUSD), Magnolia Avenue Elementary is one of 449 elementary

schools located within the second largest school district in the United States, serves 572,855 K-

12th grade students, and employs 25,430 teachers (L.A. Unified, 2018). Based on the available

data I can surmise that the local community is primarily comprised of low-income families.
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Teachers hold a tremendous responsibility to their students in that it is up to us to affect change

within our sphere of influence and create a positive environment that improves student learning.

Developing Shared Purpose

Before teachers can begin to create change in their schools, we must first look within to

see what drives us to become teachers. “Leaders in the social sector have a special responsibility

to pursue through education the moral imperative of societal development: balance innovation

and continuous improvement, build teams with focus and efficacy, and manage toward deep

outcomes” (Fullan & Quinn, 2016, p. 136). This means that the moral imperative of teaching

should be to develop a constantly improving school culture based on collaboration and mutual

respect. A study on the moral beliefs of secondary teachers found that the best way to help new

teachers is to help them develop their own moral identity by utilizing moral language in teacher

development, and introducing curriculum that promotes their imagination (Joseph, 2016).

Teachers alone cannot create change that affects their entire school. It takes a school-wide shared

purpose to support student learning. School leaders need to provide teachers with the support

they require to be effective educators and take the responsibility to acknowledge that if the

students are not learning then they have failed to provide adequate support (Salina, Girtz &

Eppings, 2016). This is not to say that teachers are not responsible for their students’

achievements, but that they are not alone. Administrators also have a responsibility to their

students to foster collaboration in their staff and develop a share moral purpose. Having a moral

imperative alone is not enough. Like students, teachers need to see their progress, “humans need

to experience success to keep going; they need to understand and experience the conditions that

advance the cause” (Fullan & Quinn, 2016, p. 17). The same way that students become

discouraged if they don’t see progress in their education, teachers can become discouraged by
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the same lack of improvement. As an educator, I gravitate towards social reconstruction as my

own moral imperative. Social reconstructionism is a belief that educators should promote

education that teaches students that they can create a better world by discussing world issues and

showing them how to solve them in order to gain the confidence that they can make their world a

better place (Parkay, 2016). In order to realize my own moral imperative, I must consider the

moral imperatives of my fellow teachers to create a unified goal that is agreed upon by all. In

order to create a unified moral purpose, administrators should seek one-on-one feedback so that

they can take in their faculty’s opinions, organize and create common goals from their feedback,

and together, create a schoolwide moral imperative that promotes student success (Salina, Girtz

& Eppings, 2016). This constant loop of taking in teacher feedback and having administrators

implement agreed upon change will create a collaborative environment where the school can

continually improve which will encourage teachers and therefore help support the learning of all

students so that they can succeed.

Developing Shared Learning Goals

Shared learning goals need to be approached through school-wide collaboration just like

a school’s moral imperative. According to Fullan and Quinn (2016), the main issue with school

wide goals is that there are too many which does not allow for depth and hinders their chance at

succeeding due to a lack of interconnectedness. From the information described thus far, the first

school-wide learning goal should be collaboration. Collaboration with the entire school staff at

Magnolia Avenue Elementary. Collaboration allows staff to have shared goals and purpose so

that students can be supported by the entire school and not just their current teacher. Another

learning goal for the school should be to create an environment of independent learners. This

could impact student learning by helping students become self-motivated in their learning
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process with other students a lead to students that strive for excellence through their own desire

to achieve. A third goal that is based around my own moral imperative is that students should

become community participants. This can positively impact student learning by teaching students

to respect others and advocate for the needs of those around them. By taking part in serving their

community they can become more engaged which leads to collaboration with their communities

and help them self-motivate. In this way each of the learning goals are interconnected with the

school’s moral imperative. The process of finding common goals in a school begins with

collaboration. Salina, Girtz & Eppings (2016) write that “ensuring that teachers feel safe with

each other, have something to offer each other, and are willing to take time to help each other

requires the use of structured processes directed by administrators” (p. 9). This is not an easy

process, as the staff at most schools will have faculty that may not get along with one another. To

create a true culture of collaboration the administrators at Magnolia Avenue Elementary will first

have to convince their staff that any difficult interpersonal issues will be directly addressed and

resolved (Salina, Girtz & Eppings, 2016). Staff in the school should first be assigned to teams of

teachers of the same grade levels or specialties and be encouraged to move from a level of

complacent agreement to collaborative commitment (Salina, Girtz & Eppings, 2016). At

Magnolia Avenue Elementary I would be placed in a team of eight as there are eight third grade

classes (California Department of Education, 2017). As the teams begin to collaborate and see

that our needs are being met by the administration, we will also become self-motivated. “This

alignment creates an avenue for coherence, thereby enhancing learning goals and instructional

practice and reducing the experience of being fractured and overloaded” (Salina, Girtz &

Eppings, 2016). As teachers are given the freedom within their own teams to find ways to

enhance student learning goals then the students will have the team they require to succeed.
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Developing School and Parents Collaboration

As my students first educator, parents are an important part of the educational process

and therefore it is imperative that they be included in the collaborative process. “All parts of the

organization, including unions, classified staff, students, and parents, must feel they have a place

in the process” (Fullan & Quinn, 2016). Parental engagement and effective collaboration lead to

parents being aware of not just how their child is doing in school but why they are achieving at

their current level and what can be done to help their child improve and how they can help at

home. The first step to improve parental collaboration is to change the way we routinely interact

with them. As a team, we need to come up with a list of ways that parental collaboration has

failed in the past and agree on how what changes need to be made. One of the most revered

interactions with parents takes place during parent-teacher conferences in which teachers

dominate the conversation and parents seemingly take a passive role (Elias, Bryan, Patrikakou, &

Weissberg, 2003). These common but one-sided interactions need to be changed to include the

parent as an active participant and not a passive observer. My colleagues and I could change this

kind of interactions by frontloading parents with information beforehand. We could develop a

program where we exchange information such as what they want to know about their students’

educational needs, and we could find out more about their home culture and how it can be

implemented into the homework and over all learning. By achieving this, students would have an

education collaborator at home and at school. Another step my team could take is to learn more

about the parents work and routines so that we have a better picture as to how parents can best

manage helping with homework, studying, and even participating in school events (Elias, Bryan,

Patrikakou, & Weissberg, 2003). The same way that teacher collaboration begins with

addressing any issues of animosity, so to must teachers rectify any such issues they may have
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with their parents. Another way to develop effective collaboration with parents is to assign roles

within the team. For example, my team of third grade teachers can work together to identify their

areas of strength and create leaders within the team in charge of areas in which they excel;

teachers who enjoy making home visits can go out into the community to meet with parents

while others who excel at data analysis can assess the gathered information to present to the team

as a whole (Salina, Girtz & Eppings, 2016). By dividing the tasks by team members strengths,

we are better able to serve out students. It also serves to prevent complacent participation as each

member of the team has their own role to play for the common good. In bringing parents onto the

collaboration team we are better informed as to how to serve the students and are in a better

position to provide families with resources that promote their child’s education.

Developing Teacher Collaboration

Thus far in this paper I have described methods I can use at Magnolia Avenue

Elementary to identify our school’s moral imperative, create shared learning goals, and increase

collaboration with parents. This all began with the creation of collaborative learning teams. Now

I will describe how my team can create a collaborative school culture that supports student

learning and improved instruction. Salina, Girtz & Eppings (2016) talk about creating a

collaborative environment with counselors so that they feel supported enough to try new

techniques with no chance of feeling like one failure will cause them to lose that support.

Unfortunately, at Magnolia Avenue Elementary there are no academic, social/behavioral, or

career development counselors and instead list .94 psychologists and .60 nurses (California

Department of Education, 2017). This does not mean that school wide collaboration is

impossible. The same way that roles were assigned before, each team can have a leader that

exchanges information with other groups. Team members with communication strength can
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become advocates for students that are not their own and act as counselors that frequently

communicate with students about their learning goals and if they are being provided with help to

improve those areas (Salina, Girtz & Eppings, 2016). The members of each grade team that take

up the role of counselor can create their own team to exchange data on what students of different

grades find helpful and implement them in their own grade. For example, our team of third grade

teachers can learn from what fourth grade students find helpful about their teachers and

implement it in our own classrooms. “The senior leadership team must develop a common

language and approach that is sustained and communicated consistently across the system”

(Fullan & Quinn). Because of the staff limitations at Magnolia Avenue Elementary, we teachers

will have to choose team members to act as our administrators while respecting the principal’s

authority and guidance.

Deepening Learning and Securing Accountability

Collaboration and shared goals help teachers communicate effective teaching strategies

and give each other guidance when needed. Lesson study is another approach to professional

development among teachers as it “involves a small group of teachers co-planning a series of

lessons based on a shared learning goal for the pupils, with one teacher leading the co-

constructed lesson and their colleagues invited to observe pupil learning in the lesson. The team

then develop their practice further, based on feedback” (Murphy, Weinhardt, Wyness & Rolfe).

With this method, as the feedback is gathered the lessons are modified and then teachers are able

to teach the lesson in their own classroom after having witnessed what worked about the lesson.

One way to employ the lesson study at Magnolia Avenue Elementary is to divide our team of

eight teachers into two groups. The first obstacle that would have to be addressed is the coverage

of the classrooms. Who will be with my students as I observe someone carrying out the
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collaboratively created lesson? The carry out our own lesson study our group of four teachers

would first create a lesson based on the standards. Using the 3rd grade standard which states

“Determine the unknown whole number in a multiplication or division equation relating three

whole numbers” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2019). Using this as an instructional

objective we can create a direct instruction lesson and a worksheet that the students can fill out at

the end of the lesson as a formative assessment. Based on the CAASPP mathematics scores

described above we can expect poor results in the assessment. One possible modification to the

lesson we can make is changing the way the information is presented by using what we have

learned about their community and families to create examples that implement their community

culture. For example, we can ask how many buses would be required if the whole school was

going on a field trip, or how many students would be in each bus if there were evenly distributed.

We could also incorporate student interest surveys to modify the questions in the assessment. If

the students are still having trouble, we can try a concept-development model that builds on prior

multiplication and division knowledge. The benefit of a collaborative school culture is that if we

decide to try something different and fail, we can communicate what aspects of a lesson failed so

that the whole school can be informed as to what is likely to work and what is not. Our lesson

study team of four can also try a different approach than the other half of the third-grade

teachers. Using this method, we can try an older proven approach and a newer approach so that

we can then consider combining the two models to a more effective teaching strategy that works

with our population.

Conclusion

When attempting to implement this kind of school-wide cultural shift towards

collaboration teachers will require the help of their administrators. As teachers it may be difficult
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to develop a shared purpose alone but not impossible. Going into a new position will require that

similar teams be created to help me along the way. I will have to initiate the discussion of the

shared learning goals and use the other third grade teachers as a resource to help guide me. By

opening myself to their guidance I am also opening the door for collaboration. This collaboration

between teachers is just as important as the collaboration with parents. By using all the

information available from fellow teachers and parents we can deepen learning and be

accountable with one another for our successes and failures. As teachers we need to be able to

constantly find way to improve so that as we spend more time in the field we do not close

ourselves off to new strategies but experiment with them in order to combine them with our own

and share what we know with the rest of the school so that we are accountable to one another and

create an environment of shared collaboration.

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References

California Department of Education. (2017). School Accountability Report Card

Reported Using Data from the 2017-2018 School Year. Retrieved from

http://search.lausd.net/cgi-bin/fccgi.exe?w3exec=sarc20172018&which=5055

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2019). Grade 3 » Operations & Algebraic Thinking.

(2019). Retrieved June 15, 2019, from

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/3/OA/

Elias, M. F., Bryan, K., Patrikakou, E. N., & Weissberg, R. P. (2003). Challenges in creating

effective home-school partnerships in adolescence: Promising paths for collaboration.

The School Community Journal, 13(1), 133-153. Retrieved from

http://www.adi.org/journal/ss03/Elias et al 133-154.pdf

Fullan, M. & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts and

systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Joseph, P. B. (2016). Ethical reflections on becoming teachers. Journal of Moral Development,

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d=68431&FileName=Fingertip%20Facts2018-19_EnglishFinalDS.pdf

Murphy, R., Weinhardt, F., Wyness, G., & Rolfe, H. (2017). Lesson study: Evaluation report

and executive summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation. Retrieved from

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/L

esson_Study.pdf
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Parkay, F.W. (2016). Becoming a teacher. Boston: Pearson.

Salina, C., Girtz, S., & Eppings, J. (2016). Transforming schools through systems change.

Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.