Why Collaboration Matters: A Call to Action (Reflections on the 6 Cs - Part Two)

Last September, OESIS launched its XP Pathways initiative to help educators apply ideas from OESIS network resources to their classrooms. OESIS Network Leaders are continuing to work on curating content by selecting videos & resources that can aid the OESIS user in learning more about specific competencies, such as Critical Thinking, or in this case, Collaboration. With this in mind, I wanted to share a blog post I published on the OESIS website about the value of collaboration. What follows is a Call to Collaborate (if you don't have time to read, at least skip to the bottom for the call to action).

Why Collaboration in Schools is so Important​

1. Knowledge is a collaborative enterprise
Descartes once offered the analogy of the architect to make the case that an individualist enterprise yields better results than working on a project collectively (Discourse on Method, Part Two). It was a radical notion that made perfect sense in a world where few were educated, but I wonder if today’s scientists would agree, considering that most advancements are the result of a community of engaged thinkers and learners working together (which is probably true of contemporary architecture as well). Although we could characterize the last century of education as a Cartesian one (Individualism over Collectivism; Reason over Emotion; Mind over Body), perhaps we’ve come full circle on how we value collaborative enterprises. We know we need to prepare learners for a world that is connected, where experts are abundant and have much to share with each other, and students need the skills and experiences necessary to thrive in such collaborative environments, and this is true for teachers as well.

2. Collaboration inspires lifelong learning
I entered my first classroom as an independent school instructor 14 years ago. Fresh out of graduate school, my eagerness was obvious: I couldn’t wait to spread my love for literature, and surely my passion would be contagious, right? With a sense of Cartesian heroism, I selected my reading lists, prepared lectures & frameworks for class discussions (based on years of training in my content area), and proceeded to teach in the likeness of my graduate professors who helped shape in me a sense of individual competency and expertise. What was I thinking? As if secondary education is about the transmission of knowledge from expert to amateur (hint: it’s about so much more!). You might be able to guess what happened next: to put it mildly, my spirits were crestfallen. Why weren’t my students as fascinated as I was by this undeniably valuable content? Why were they so disinterested and passive? The content was fantastic, by the way, but my pedagogy was limited, to say the least.

Frankenstein Student Conference, 2017

Fast forward a few years, I started to understand more about student centered learning, realizing the importance of designing curriculum where skills were at the forefront. I attended a conference and heard Pat Bassett, NAIS President at the time, speak about the importance of the 6 Cs, and by this time, I had made a resolution: I was going to focus on the idea of making learning more collaborative in my classes. That was the ‘C’ I was going to focus on. My idea, however, was still a traditional one: I was going to host a paper conference for high school students from various campuses, which was less of an ongoing collaborative practice and more of an event that would serve as a wonderful memory for all involved. The real turning point for me was an email I received while preparing for this upcoming project. Joel Garza, Upper School English Chair at Greenhill School, suggested we have our students start collaborating right then (the conference was months away). The email startled me: How would we collaborate? I’m not very savvy with all this digital technology. But I realized something. My demands for students to collaborate meant they had to get out of their comfort zones, and that’s what Joel was demanding of me, meaning I had no choice. I had to say yes. Our classes blogged together and visited each other’s campuses. Students traded podcasts and answered each other’s inquiries, and they began to do so for reasons well beyond a single grade. It was transformative, but it only worked as well as it did because we as teachers were transparent about our collaborative efforts as well. Since then I have grown exponentially as a teacher, in ways beyond the single competency of collaboration. However, it was “the first C” that started it all. The call to collaborate got me out of my comfort zone, which was frightening, but because of this, I discovered the joys of being stretched by others to accomplish something that could never have been done by a single person. 

The inter-institutional paper conference was a huge success, by the way. In fact, it's become a tradition of sorts in the DFW area. This year marks our 7th iteration as The Hockaday School prepares to host students from around the area for the 2019 Sandra Cisneros Colloquium, this Wednesday, February 13th.

3. Modeling: Collaborative teaching leads to collaborative learning
When I first encouraged students to embrace the idea of collaborative group work, I usually concluded such endeavors feeling frustrated. Students always found a way to “divide the labor” and simply complete the minimum tasks required for his or her portion of the project. It wasn’t authentic, but more importantly, I wasn’t appreciating what they had to go through. When reflecting on our collaborative experiences, Joel Garza offered an insight that sometimes we gloss over too quickly when encouraging people to put themselves out there: “Standing in the way of successful collaboration, in my experience, is a tremendous amount of ungrounded fear and anxiety that we don’t even want to name” (“A Tale of Three Classrooms” K12 Online Conference 2014). It’s so true, and it’s what makes things so challenging. Teachers, like everyone else, fear the idea of failing publicly as well as the idea of not being in control. Collaboration, however, requires us to embrace these possible outcomes. When I began to model for students successful collaborative practices, not only did they begin to collaborate more authentically, I too became a more empathetic teacher. I knew what was being demanded of them, but more importantly I felt it as well.

Teaching methods model for students the kinds of behaviors and habits we want to see them practice. What does Cartesian individualism, for instance, model for students as a method for teaching, lesson preparation, etc.? One might suggest that it inspires students to be confident individuals as well. I would caution, however, that it could serve the opposite end, namely communicating to them that there is an individual expert in the room, thereby encouraging the learner to be a passive recipient of the expert’s construction of the content. This is the same passivity I confronted in my early years of teaching. To me such modeling runs contrary to the kind of skills we want to cultivate in students to prepare them as leaders in the collaborative communities of their future careers. Students need to see us collaborate with peers so that they understand we don’t have all the answers, so they realize that to be successful one must network with others and participate in a community of lifelong learners. This is how we make space for them to become individuals in our classrooms. I would argue that it is only by way of collaboration that we discover our confidence as individuals. The binaries are not exclusive.
​

A CALL TO COLLABORATE

For those who might be interested, I'm looking for teachers and students who want to collaborate with my classes. Currently, I teach 4 sections of 10th grade literature. From Feb. 20th to Mar. 8th, we'll be reading 4 dystopian short stories that confront the question of technology (either directly or more subtly):

1. E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (Feb. 20th-26th)
2. Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" (Feb. 25th-28th)
3. Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" (Feb. 27th-Mar. 4th)
4. Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match." (Mar. 4th-8th)

Go here to read more details about the unit, but the basic idea is to get students from different campuses to read the 4 stories collaboratively using Hypothes.is - a platform that lets readers annotate collectively any text that can be found online.

If interested, leave a comment or reach out to me via Twitter (@jcolley8) or email (jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org), and I'll send you a link to our hypothes.is reading group. I'd love to evolve this idea more, so I'm also open to suggestions. After all, for students to collaborate effectively and successfully, they need to see teachers do it as well, so email me and help me make this project even better.

Student Choice in Reading: Let Students Decide Whether They Want to Read a Shakespeare Tragedy, Comedy, or History Play

One thing is certain: when students are given choice—whether limited or wide open—they read and write more.  -Kelly Gallagher, "Moving Beyond the 4x4 Classroom"

Why Is Reading Such a Chore?

What makes something a chore? Is it the essence of the activity itself, such that mopping the floor, for instance, is inherently more chore-like and more obligatory in nature than doing something else, such as watching a movie? Is it really that ontologically simple? Surely not. The idea that something is a chore due to the nature of the act itself is an obvious oversimplification: it fails to account for the importance of context. That's why cleaning the house can also be therapeutic, perhaps even fun. The word chores functions, not as a label for a certain set of activities, but as a description for how one feels about the activity he or she is engaged in. The question has more to do with why one is engaging in a given activity as well as how one came to be motivated to do it in the first place.

As teachers of reading, this is exactly the kind of oversimplification we are battling when students enter our classrooms and say, "I don't know. Reading is just not my thing. It's such a chore." They have become convinced that reading is one of those activities that falls under the category of chores.  How can we convince them otherwise? How can we get them to experience the joy of reading again?

What happens when, over time, an activity that one used to enjoy begins to feel more like a chore? Whether it's something that's leisurely or something that demands a large amount of work, an activity risks becoming a chore, in my opinion, when one (or all) of the following factors starts to seem amiss:

1. Agency in the form of having a choice in the matter.

2. Purpose in the form of knowing why you are doing the thing in question.

3. Relevance in the form of appealing to one's interests and/or passions as an individual

Even things we enjoy doing can become a chore when we no longer feel a sense of agency, purpose, or relevance, which brings up the important question for all teachers:

How can we make students see reading as something other than a chore? How can we prevent what Kelly Gallagher calls Readicide, namely the "systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in our schools"?

Kelly Gallagher suggests several things for combatting the phenomenon of Readicide. One suggestion that's challenged me to grow as a teacher and designer of curriculum is the idea of providing more opportunities for student choice, thereby getting students to exercise agency in determining what texts or books seem most relevant and purposeful to them. 

Core Texts: Community at the Cost of Agency?

I am a big fan of building a learning community around the collaborative study of a core text, whether it be classic or contemporary, but I slowly have come to realize that, if that's all I'm doing, students will inevitably lose sight of one (if not all) of the above three factors (namely, a sense of agency, purpose, and/or relevance).  Community is important, but so is agency. In agreement with Kelly Gallagher, I think there needs to be a balance, but in no way can I claim to have made room for choice to the extent of a "20/80 model" like that in Gallagher's class. 

On a quick side note, I personally think there are strategies one can employ for purposes of empowering student agency even when one is reading a singular text as a class. I suggest the following ideas:

1. Let students choose to be a certain kind of "expert." Sometimes I'll create four reading groups: Group 1 reads for setting, historical/authorial context, etc.; Group 2 reads for character development and analysis; Group 3 reads for theme analysis and development; and Group 4 reads for rhetoric and literary style. Each group is responsible for being the experts in the room when it comes to discussions that relate to their topic of choice (Go here to read more).

2. Allow students to have more direct influence over what you discuss and how. There are so many technological platforms that make this possible. I often use google docs as a back channel for students to make clear to me what they want to talk about and address in the novel we're reading (go here to read more). My friend, Joel Garza, often uses hypothes.is to amplify student voice and particularly to empower the quieter students in his classroom (go here to read more).

3. Gamify the experience for the students. I've written extensively about the pedagogical benefits of gamification, which can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

4. Allow students to persuade each other and to choose democratically a core text for the class to read.

I don't think that assigning core texts necessarily implies a lack of agency, purpose, and/or relevance for students, but it does demand us to be intentional and creative as teachers. On the flip side, promoting student choice for reading also doesn't need to be seen as a threat to cultivating a sense of community in a collaborative classroom. There are ways to foster community while allowing students to direct their inquiry more independently, whether limited in nature or in a completely open framework.

Student Choice in Reading

A couple years back, NCTE published the article "Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in Reading" and the first reason the authors identified was the idea that "Choice empowers students":

School is sometimes a frustrating place for students. Their technology-rich world is robust with opportunities for decision-making and choice, but when they enter the classroom, the opportunities for choice are much more limited. When students are routinely assigned books to read without any opportunity to act on their own judgment, many end up dreading the reading and often fail or refuse to complete it. But when we provide students with choices (even within parameters), they make their own decisions and they feel empowered and important. (Campbell, Dubitsky, Faron, George, Gieselmann, Goldschmidt, Skeeters, and Wagner)

I emphasized the 2nd and 3rd sentences because I think this gets to the heart of how choice connects to relevance and purpose, especially for the 21st century student. Our students' technologically-laden world is one that constantly invites them to make choices, to interact, and even to manipulate the things that capture their interest. This is why school can seem so frustrating at times: They don't have that same sense of agency.

*****

This year, when designing my latest unit on William Shakespeare, I was debating whether to do a Tragedy, Comedy, or History play, and it occurred to me: Why not let the students choose? I knew I would limit it to a 3-option choice, meaning there were still strict parameters when it came to exercising student agency. Despite how minimal it was, a significant change in student engagement was immediately evident due to a simple gesture on my part: I trusted them to make a choice based on what sparked their individual interests the most, and simply put, that excited them.

Ss are exploring the first scenes of the #Shakespeare plays they’ve chosen to read. Already, I see more interest & engagement b/c Ss have a choice in the matter #engchat #aplitchat #edchat pic.twitter.com/TfZEb1EJTU

— Jared Colley (@jcolley8) January 12, 2018

Working off the thematic question of What does it mean to be the Other?, I selected three very different plays: Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Richard III. On the first day, I framed each text for the students (we watched movie trailers for each one as well...). We also identified common themes across the plays, and I encouraged them to explore each option a little more by getting on YouTube, Google, and other platforms to find out more information.

Once students selected the play that perked their interest, they received the following instructions:

(1) Based on who chooses what play, you will form “reading groups” with other students who are reading the same text as you.
(2) On the class calendar, each reading group is scheduled to lead a class discussion on various days on a weekly basis.
(3) Groups will lead class discussion only on the due dates for completing each Act of the play (meaning there will be five scheduled presentations for each group).
(4) On those scheduled due dates, each group is expected to present their ideas in a 10-15 minute period of time. Each presentation will be followed by a 10 minute harkness-style question and answer session, and all reading groups are expected to participate.
(5) Presentations will be based on the questions related to the themes that are listed below. Groups may use the same question (or questions) for multiple presentations as long as each presentation develops the revisited question further.
(6) Expectations for each presentation:
     (a) They must be at least 10 to 15 minutes in length
     (b) They must address at least 3-4 of the questions that are related to the themes
     (c) Students must turn in presentation notes, outlines, or scripts
     (d) There must be multiple citations of the text to provide evidence
     (e) Presentations must be cogent, prepared, and collaborative: everyone has to talk
     (f) Optional: Students may use media, visual aids, etc., to enhance the presentation

My school's schedule operates on an ABABC block schedule, meaning I get to meet with students for 80 minutes on either A or B days, and I see every class for 45 minutes at the end of the week on the C day's modified schedule. The reading plan looked something like this (with a few improvised adjustments along the way...):

For each play, we identified 7 common themes we wanted to talk about: (1) Prejudice towards Otherness (2) The idea of Bonds, especially with Family (3) Marriage & Love (4) Hatred (5) Honesty & Trust in a World of False Appearances (6) Gender Politics and (7) Justice vs. Vengeance. There were 3-5 questions for each theme that potentially could be applied to any of the three plays, and students could use any of those questions to frame their weekly discussions on the days they were assigned to lead the class meeting.  (Go here to see the complete google doc that contains the questions as well as the rest of the resources related to the project)

It was very much an experimental risk on my part. How would it go with students talking to each other in class discussions while reading different texts? Would it fall flat? Would students make interesting connections? Overall, I was blown away, watching students teach, challenge, and make connections for each other in organic conversations that were purely student led. By giving them choice, the students gave back as well both to me and to each other. There were days, no doubt, when it was dry, and by the end, I think we were all ready to move on. However, with a few adjustments to the calendar and to the volume of discussions, I will definitely be doing this again next year.  As the authors make clear in "Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in Reading," providing students with more choice (whether it be limited or open) empowered them to have more meaningful conversations, to deepen relationships with both peers and the teacher, and to think more independently as developing learners (Campbell, Dubitsky, Faron, George, Gieselmann, Goldschmidt, Skeeters, and Wagner). I saw all of this at work on a daily basis when students took ownership of their choice to read a Tragedy, Comedy, or History play, and although there were a lot of student-led discussions and presentations, there was also time for independent reading, group preparation, and small group discussions with the teacher. 

For a final project, students had the following choices as well:
1. Team up with 1 or 2 other students from your class section (or from another section).
2. Decide whether you want to partner with peers who read the same play or with people who read something different.
3. Select one of the seven themes from the student-led class discussions.
4. Choose to either create a digital essay (using sound, image, & text) or a podcast episode (using sound and voice) that explores the theme you selected.
(Again, Go here to see the complete google doc that contains the final project instructions as well as the rest of the resources related to the project)

We examined examples of both mediums and discussed their merits and flaws, and students were let loose to make their compositions, and overall, the final products were creative, funny, and diverse. You could tell they had a good time: With all the options, I think it felt less like a chore and more like an opportunity to take a risk and be creative. (One of my favorites was a podcast created by 2 sophomore boys where the episode would periodically be interrupted by Shakespeare-era adds like the one from the company "2 Murderers for Hire"). I will say, I had no idea what to expect with the digital essays; it was new territory. Overall the products were beautiful, and to demonstrate, I leave you one on Richard III created by Rosalind K. & Reagan L:

Works Cited

Campbell, Bridget, Andrea Dubitsky, Elizabeth Faron, Deborah George, Kelly Gieselmann, Brooke    Goldschmidt, Keri Skeeters, and Erica Wagner. "The Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in the Reading." English Leadership Quarterly, National Council of Teachers of English, 2016. Accessed 27 March 2018.

Gallagher, Kelly. "Moving Beyond the 4x4 Classroom." Kelly Gallagher: Building Deeper Readers & Writers, Gallagher & Associates, Inc., 15 July 2015. Accessed 27 March 2018.

Gallagher, Kelly. "Reversing Readicide."Educational Leadership, ASCD, March 2010, Vol. 67, No. 6. Accessed 27 March 2018.