Module 2 Culminating Task - Collabroation

Collaboration is important in a school setting as it allows students and teachers to work together towards common goals. Staff members can use collaboration to share strategies and support each other in helping students succeed. Collaboration is also important for guidance counselors as they help students make decisions about their future and act as a bridge between students and teachers. Open communication and collaboration among staff members is crucial for supporting students' individual needs and fostering healthy relationships. Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of Teacher Talk, the podcast. On this week's episode, we are going to answer some listener questions from last week's episode on collaboration. For those of you just tuning in, just to reemphasize what collaboration is, it's just the process of a few people working together to accomplish the same goal, usually involved some type of communication with one another. So the first question we've got is, why is collaboration important in a school setting? This is a great question, I love this question. I think collaboration can be used in all areas of the school, whether that's student-to-student collaboration, if they're working on a project together, whether that's teacher-to-student collaboration on a way to figure out maybe some learning goals, maybe give some students some voice and choice in the classroom, maybe they could be using it for assessment. So having a conversation about maybe what a student was thinking on a quiz or a test or an assignment to calculate a more accurate grade for them. And then staff-to-staff communication I think is the big one, just allowing teachers and other staff members to collaborate and communicate with one another in order to find ways for themselves to best support students, maybe discuss ways that have worked well for them in the past in supporting students, maybe get some information from some other staff on how they've supported students or some information about students. But it's just a great way for everybody in the building and the school setting to share information and hopefully help each other out a little bit. The next question I had was, how can staff members use collaboration? And this is another good question. And I think staff members collaborating with each other is such an important, you know, way that we should be going about our days in the school, you know, whether that is one teacher talking to another teacher about maybe a lesson that worked well for them or an activity that worked well for them in a classroom setting. Or maybe that's, you know, something a little bit more serious like, you know, teachers in part of the student success team communicating with one another if they have a transition meeting maybe with some in-risk or at-need students. So talking about maybe some strategies that have worked well in the past in their elementary schools if they're coming to high school or maybe as they're transitioning from grade 10 to 11, so things that have worked in the past for some of their teachers or maybe some challenges that have seen or, you know, maybe there's something going on at home with some students and the student success team needs to share information with one another. So it's staff members can use collaboration in a ton of different ways. I think most importantly is them doing it in such a way that is going to help students out, benefit them, share information because, again, the goal and the whole reason why we're all in the education industry and field is, you know, to help our students be successful and to find ways to make them a little better. And then our last question here is why is collaboration important as a guidance counselor? So the guidance counselor is often the one who helps make a lot of decisions in terms of, you know, the programming and pathways that students are taking, you know, whether they're helping them figure out whether they're going to, you know, go to college or the workplace or university after high school, you know, maybe which pathway they're taking, you know, after grade 10. Are they going to be in the college pathway or the university pathway or the workplace pathway? Are they going to take co-op? All those things. And so then, you know, as a guidance counselor, it's important for us to collaborate, one, with our students and find out, you know, maybe the things that they're interested in, what's going on in their lives, especially with respect to pathway planning. And maybe also if there's some external factors going on. So if they have some stuff going on outside of school, if they have health issues going on, you know, maybe if there's stuff going on between their parents or guardians, you know, they're at a couple different houses. So you know, taking all that information in when we're chatting with our students, you know, and then deciding which information we need to relay to the rest of those student teachers in terms of what's going to be relevant to them and their teaching practice, you know, maybe if they have to, you know, assess a student differently in one way because, you know, they had to pick up nights just at a job to help pay rent or something like that. So the student-to-guidance counselor collaboration is super important to kind of, you know, be that bridge between students and the rest of their teachers sometimes, between students and admins sometimes, and sometimes even student-to-student if they have to be some type of mediator in certain situations. And then also as a guidance counselor, you know, making sure we have open communication with the rest of the staff in the building. So you know, if we know that there's something going on with a student, you know, that may affect their attendance or may affect their, you know, their performance on tests or something like that, if they have test anxiety or if they've been diagnosed with something recently or they're on a new type of medication, you know, making sure that in a professional manner we're collaborating and communicating with the rest of the staff in the building and relaying that relevant information to them so that, you know, they maybe can adjust their practice accordingly, you know, and maybe have a conversation with their students being like, hey, you know, I heard what you're going through or I heard this is going on. I just wanted to check in with you because we've all seen that the communication is really good from, you know, teacher to student that helps build those relationships, which, you know, is what education is all about, fostering and building healthy relationships. So really making sure that, you know, the teachers are made aware of these situations and, you know, allowing teachers to maybe foster and build better relationships with their students, again, through that collaboration process and kind of being that bridge between students and the rest of the teachers or staff like EAs and in the building. So I'd like to thank everybody for those questions that they wrote in with. Thanks for checking out this week's episode of Teacher Talk, and we will chat with you guys later.