Leadership and Followership

Leadership / Followership.

Leadership simply put is an act of motivating other people to achieve a common goal. Authentic leadership is when someone is open-ended, visionary always reflective and hopeful. A good leader to me is being true to oneself.

A healthy balance between leadership and followership can nurture the school environment.

Some of us are followers most of the time and leaders some of the time. Others are the opposite; leaders most of the time and followers some of the time.

There is a misconception that real leaders don’t follow…. I disagree with this. A good leader knows when to follow and when to lead. They can see the potential in the collaboration and creativeness in working together.

In Social Media these day - we “follow” lots of things. Where we sit and passively wait for things to appear on our screens from them. That is not true to life.

Followers are not passive, together with their leaders they show a highly skilled process of collaboration.

There are many different types of Followership in schools. For example; a “Weak Follower” - these kinds of people can be restrictive to the learning pathway and direction the school is on.

A Self-Serving Followers - They have their own agenda and are not fully part of the collaborative team thriving for the best for everyone around them. A follower who is fighting against the leader can alter and change the course of learning. A good follower can help steer their leader, who may be off balance and stabilise them.

Following is being adaptable to be able to come up with responses and innovations that genuinely fit the circumstances around us.

Personal Steps To Effective Collaboration

After a year of collaboration I feel these are important to me. 

• Build relationships
• Observe the best
• Ask questions
• Share
• Come prepared
• All of the students are "our" students
• Ask, " What will the children get out of this?" "Will this further their learning?" "Why do it?"

Successful collaborative teaching incorporates the strengths of multiple viewpoints so that no single member of the project could have completed independently. It also provides opportunities for different teaching styles that may connect with more student learning preferences and styles. 

Collaborative teaching allows students and teachers to benefit from the healthy exchange of ideas in a space defined by mutual respect and a shared interest in a topic. At its worst, collaborative teaching can create a break down or an uncomfortable environment in which teachers could  undermine each other and compromise the learning community. 

Partnerships

What Makes a Strong Partnership?

Strong co-teachers provide seamless instruction for their students. Both teachers must come to a mutual agreement that they are equals in the classroom, and students must perceive both teachers as invaluable members of the classroom community. This can be particularly difficult for teachers who have taught alone for many years. Sometimes we don't realise how many decisions we make alone in our classroom on a daily basis. Making decisions as a team is key to a strong partnership, but it is often an adjustment for veteran teachers.

This happens quite often at first. Strong co-teachers do not always agree on everything, but they realise that the time for disagreement is not during class.

Finally, strong co-teachers solve problems together. In fact, that is the best part of co-teaching; you're never in it alone. 

Benefits of Co-Teaching

Having two minds in a classroom community allows students to connect with different personalities. Collaborative allows more opportunities for small group and one-to-one learning, and stronger modelling during lessons. The co-planning process encourages two teachers to bounce ideas off each other in order to deliver the strongest, most creative lessons. Partnerships can model behaviour and positive peer-to-peer interaction for students. When students experience their teachers working together, they understand the power of respect amongst peers.

Let's not forget the most important part: it is nice to have another adult in the room! I loved the community we develop in our class. Teaching is overwhelming, but collaborative teaching can provide a support system so that we can do our jobs, yet remember to have fun along the way.

5 Tips!

1. Say this mantra: "All students are our students."
2. Come to planning meetings prepared (with an agenda) to maximise co-planning time.
3. If you feel something, say something! Open communication is the key to a successful partnership. (At the right time, not in front of the class)
4. Realise that the success of your class depends on the strength of your teaching relationship.
5. Use a variety of co-teaching models to help maintain equality.

Collaborative Teaching

When I mention the word Collaborative Teaching and describe my teaching space that I share with 3 other teachers I am immediately told that i"t is exactly as it was 10+ years ago! ""Open Plan Classrooms are back!" or "I was taught in one of those." "The wall will be back up in a few years time." 

Collaborative teaching can be defined as “two or more people sharing responsibility for educating some or all of the students in a classroom” (Villa, Thousand and Nevin, 2008, p. 5). They suggest that it “involves the distribution of responsibility among people for planning, instruction and evaluation for a classroom of students (p. 5). As we move into modern open learning spaces teachers are once again examining how teaching collaboratively can impact on student learning and outcomes. I feel there is a little resistance towards collaborative practice, at times from the history of open-plan.

Villa, Thousand & Nevin (2008),  report four different models of co-teaching, (developed by the National Centre for Educational Restructuring and Inclusion, 1995). These are supportive, parallel, complementary and team teaching. 

Supportive teaching describes the situation when one teacher takes the lead instructional role and the other moves around the learners to provide support on a one-to-one basis as required. 

Parallel teaching is when two or more teachers are working with different groups of learners simultaneously in different parts of the classroom.

Complementary teaching is when “when co-teachers do something to enhance the instruction provided by the other co-teacher(s). For example, one co-teacher might paraphrase the other's statements or model note-taking skills on a transparency” (Nevin, Thousand, & Villa, 2007).

Team teaching by comparison is when two or more teachers do what teachers do for a class, to plan, teach, assess and take responsibility for all the students in the room, taking an equal share of responsibility, leadership and accountability.

Here It Begins......

Since the beginning of 2015, I have been working in a collaborative space with another teacher and 44 children. We are slowly moving towards 4 teachers to 90-100 children.

At the beginning of the year we set up our spaces to accommodate all types of learning- independent, small groups, partnerships, quiet areas and creative areas.

My collaborative partner and I spent days planning and organising our first week, which would include a hype of activity and excitement.