The art of a team

Collaborative teaching, team teaching and team work is no new thing. My own schooling was full of team-taught environments, as those big open plan double classes of the 1980s were experimented with. Nor is the understanding of what it takes to build, make or break a team in many environments, theorists have been investigating and studying teams for many years, consider the premise of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing proposed in the 1960s and still finds it way into many organisations and management courses today. Other in-house management courses I've been to have featured or relied on different theories and has resulted in participating in any number of team building tasks, discussions, personality tests or role plays. A succinct outline of several teamwork theories can be found here http://teamworkdefinition.com/theories/ or http://www.teambuilding.co.uk/team-building-theory.html. Ultimately, the success of teams is never guaranteed but for the end consumer, be they a student, a customer or a tourist, the team's success can make a vast difference in the product or experience that they receive.

In my time at HPPS I've been involved in 2 different teams and am entering a year where the team will be different again. For the first time, I feel I know the team members I'll be working with but this has given me time to reflect on what this means for the team and team building.

Entering both 2015 and 2016, management had suggested plenty of talking and this is vital. While the true test of your team will come later in the year, the foundations are in the forming of a vision or goals for the time ahead. Even this can look different. For some teachers the need to form systems, outline roles and prepare plans may dominate thinking, for others the relational aspect of getting to know each other might be uppermost. The key in the last two years has been the initial discussions that focussed on what we wanted our learning common to look like (vision not aesthetically) and what we wanted our students to be like. In 2015 the vision setting was more informal, in 2016 our management team proposed that we form team building agreements that included some notional arrangements for how we would work together also.

Why is setting your vision so vital? Could collaborative teaching be successful without it?

Answering the second question helps to understand the first.

Successful teaching looks like a safe and happy environment, with engaged children and learning taking place that leads to achievement progress. This is possible without a shared vision. Your goal as a teacher is to achieve these things, our personal reasons for teaching demands it and the Education Council expect it through the Practicing Teacher Criteria. In a single teacher environment this is easier. You have a vision for your classroom and you set up your classroom, planning and resources to achieve it, working within the values and systems of your individual school. However, in a collaborative space you have teachers with different values, boundaries, experiences, passions and styles, working alongside each other. Without a shared vision, the team may seperate out the students, decide on plans and timetables and then engage in more cooperative approach to teaching where you merely share the space. Successful teaching may still be taking place, but possibly not successful in the context of collaborative teaching.

With a shared vision comes understanding and purpose, it allows each member to drive their own teaching experiences steadily forward in pursuit of the teams objective. It provides freedom, but with an understanding of permissions, expectations and responsibilities that help the team to achieve the overall goal. It is in this zone that collaboration is happening, each member adding value for the benefit of the team and a greater outcome is possible than each just doing their own thing.

That is to say, that a shared vision is absolutely essential for the success of both the children and the students in a collaborative space.

I look forward to the team I'm going to be working with in 2017. It's going to be exciting, demanding, educational and beneficial for my career development.
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The above was typed as I approached the end of 2016, with my excited puppy phase clearly on. As we begin week 4 at Hobsonville Point Primary I must share that I'm loving everyday with my new team, they are bringing out the best in me and helping me build the areas I need to improve.

We have a shared vision, a shared passion for the children in our common and a desire to make sure that our children get the best of us. That's a team I want to be part of.