I am not going to lie, I was NOT a fan of group work/discussions, brainstorms of any kind before I became a full time STEM teacher. I could come up with any rebuttal you could think of a to WHY I could not utilize group work/collaboration in the classroom: there’s not enough time, I have too many standards to cover this WEEK, all they do is argue, only one person ends up doing to work anyways, Common Assessments are next week, it gets too loud and if someone comes in, they will think my kids aren’t doing anything… on and on the reasons go. I am also a but of a control freak, thinking that if my students aren’t listening to ME, they couldn’t possibly be learning, right??? However,as the focus on STEM began to shift in the county, and an emphasis was placed on integrating STEM into the content standards, I realized that STEM was merely a mindset and effective teaching tool and collaboration was the key to its success. I also began to realize that collaboration was not only effective and meaningful, but it was NOT group work exclusively. When I really let this sink in, I began to understand how much my students needed to HEAR one another be be HEARD. Being a 21st Century Teacher offers us numerous strategies to let our student’s voices be hear in the classroom and allows us many way to let our students learn from each OTHER in all grade levels, from elementary to high school, both digitally and non-digitally.
I’m curious- how comfortable do you feel about implementing collaboration in to your daily schedules? What do you think is the biggest barrier you may face?