Rhea Matar Hedda Meadan SPED 426 April 10, 2013 Improving Collaborative Teams A.

You are in your first teaching position and would like to improve collaboration with some of your colleagues. Describe the strategies and activities you would use to improve collaboration. Support your ideas with class readings. As a special education teacher, it is essential to have positive and collaborative relationships with your paraprofessionals as they are often the colleagues you work closely with and/or work closest with your students. I want my paraprofessionals to feel like important and respected members of the team, as well as have them be open to talk to me or receive feedback from me. One activity that I would put in place to help facilitate these relationships would be a Friday Open Ears meeting before school. Every week, someone could sign up to bring in coffee or breakfast food and it would be a very open, laid back and general meeting between the staff to discuss successes, concerns, struggles and new ideas. These meetings would be meant more to build rapport and have a more informal conversation about things that I would take written note of to be discussed at a formal problem solving meeting after school the following Monday. Being supportive by setting aside time to quietly listen to peoples concerns while also building up a trusting and enjoyable relationship can help the cohesiveness of a team that has effective communication (Pugach et al., 2002). These more informal Friday meetings would then feed into a formal problem solving collaboration meeting on Mondays after school to discuss how we are going to address the needs of our students and staff. I would use this time to go over concerns from the previous week

regarding things from the effectiveness of an instructional strategy to difficulties one of my staff might be having in the gen-ed room with a student. This time would also be when I would provide formative feedback to my paraprofessionals either collectively or individually to make sure that as a team and as individuals, we are meeting the needs of our students to the best of our abilities. This feedback would be based on my observations of their performance and will be given in a very objective and non-judgmental manner. The meetings will be run as positive and productive uses of our time, even when the content of the meeting may be difficult to talk about or be a part of. French (2003) identifies that meetings such as these should be consistent, honest and frequent. They will be rescheduled for another day if they are missed to ensure frequency of collaboration and that everyone is on the same page. When working in a co-teaching situation, an important component of the relationship is for the special educator to be familiar with the content and the methodology of the general educator and that the general educator is familiar with the strategies and techniques used by the special educator (Gately & Gately, 2001). Since true co-teaching does not divide the students between the two teachers based on their ability level, both teachers should be transparent in their practices and able to overlap their expertises into facilitating a truly inclusive environment for all students. As a new teacher to co-teaching, I would hope to have time to meet with the general educator a few days before school starts in the summer and that we would have a set collaboration time each week to problem solve. Having this collaboration time before school starts and set during the school year can help ensure that both teachers are confident to address the needs of all the students in their class interchangeably and that the relationship is strong enough for the teachers to lean on each other. B. How would you address issues and barriers that might come up among the team members?

Like in any human relationship, there will be times of disagreement and conflict with team members. I believe that despite differences however, being positive and respectful should be the qualities at the forefront of any conversation or situation that may involve issues or barriers between team members. If the issue is something that involves the whole team, then I would ensure that it was taken care of at a scheduled meeting where everyone necessary was present to discuss the issue at hand and how we are going to go about fixing it. Sometimes, it may be more appropriate to approach team members for a one on one discussion so that the conversation is more private and the person can be more comfortable receiving feedback or sharing a concern. When managing many staff, it is important to be conscientious of the staff members strengths, preferences and struggles. For example, I had a cooperating teacher who worked out the schedule to have one of her paraprofessionals who was uncomfortable in the gened room to spend more time working one on one with a student in a self contained setting. She easily could have disregarded this paraprofessionals preferences but instead made an effort to be considerate of this paraprofessionals strengths. I believe that this kind of consideration can significantly reduce issues among staff and increase employee satisfaction with their work environment. When working with other special education personnel such as social workers, psychologists and speech-language pathologists, I find that the biggest cause for issues and barriers is lack of scheduled opportunities to collaborate. While they are all considered to be part of a schools SPED team, I dont feel that there is much consistent unity in discussion between these staff members (many of which provide services to the same children) which can lead to a disconnect regarding scheduling, delivery of services and generalization of services throughout

the day. If weekly meetings werent already in place, I would advocate for a scheduled time of week for this team of professionals to meet (preferably with an administrator present) to collaborate on the needs and variety of service delivery for the students in their care. For myself personally, I would want to be a team leader and member that is approachable, positive and easy to work with so that when issues or barriers do arise, my colleagues feel comfortably working through it with me. Obtaining and using feedback from team members in a meaningful way is a would help me make the members more comfortable with change or adjustments that occur as a result of collaboration and being sensitive to the needs of team members would make them feel more valued and less likely to resist any changes (Friend & Cook, 2013).

C What methods would you use to evaluate the success of your relationships with your colleagues and the activities/strategies you implemented? I think that while there are many ways to evaluate the success of relationships via implemented activities and strategies, frequent one on one conversations and written documentation are two of the most important ways. One on one conversations could be a quick, informal chats in the hallway between myself and my gen-ed coteacher or in the morning with my paraprofessional while waiting for the students to arrive. I would be sure to have specific things to discuss during our scheduled Monday meetings to get more general feedback from the team on the collaborative relationship (e.g. Is everyone okay with getting together at this time every week? or How have things been going since we changed the schedule with the gen-ed teachers? or Do you have any more ideas of how we can get more done during these meetings or communicate more during the week?)

A binder can also be in the room for teachers, SPED team members (e.g. social work, etc.) and paraprofessionals to write down concerns they have and want to talk about at the meeting so that it can be on record and remembered to be discussed during the weekly meeting. A more structured and formal measurement could be done for co-teachers by using a rating scale to determine how productive and cohesive the relationship is in the co-taught classroom (Gately & Gately, 2001). As long as my co-teacher is comfortable using it, I think it could be a really good tool to use to help us identify our strengths and weaknesses and prioritize what we need to work on as a team.

References: French, N. K. (2003). Monitoring and Evaluating Paraeducator Performance. Managing Paraeducators in Your School, 145-154. Friend & Cook (2013). Chapter 9 Gately, S. E. & Gately, F. J. (2001). Understanding coteaching components. Teaching Exceptional Children, 33, 40-47. Pugach, M.C. & Johnson, L.J. (2002). Collaborative Practitioners, Collaborative Schools. Denver, CO: Lore Publishing Company.