Challenges and Opportunities by cb2

Managing Conflict

cbroderick7 — 2023-11-29 16:26:50 UTC

[Colleen] I have a team of educators, each with very strong personalities. They are amazing teachers, but can never reach agreement as a team. This is challenging because it takes a lot of my time managing their emotions and I'm frustrated that I can see the potential but they can't. Kids are also losing out as they notice some of the dynamics as well. I would love to talk through a decision: should I reconfigure the team now, wait until the end of the year, or keep working with them?

Support teams

2023-12-07 19:32:10 UTC

I have a new ESS teacher this year and she doesn't want to make her schedule to support teams. This has been a real challenge as I didn't hire her but she was hired by the ESS director. When we planned for teams this year we were counting on her and her aide supporting all teams.

Iterate

abalt — 2023-12-07 19:32:26 UTC

My current state is that we are in that weird time of year in education where we have a whole lot of this year left, but we are also planning for next year. I am trying to take the lessons we have learned in this first semester and implement plans so we can expand teams wall to wall next year. This is a combination of change management, too, I think. It is important to me that we get it right. I would love to hear about some of the structures or tools you used when you expanded teams.

Trust/Conflict

kdavis363 — 2023-12-07 19:33:20 UTC

I have a team that is departmentalizing and also doing intervention time between the classes. They are a team of 4 and not all get along. They need me to facilitate every meeting they are in. I am pushing them to work together in different pairs and groups and providing team builders but it doesn't go beyond that. I also want the team members to trust each other. They will choose students over teachers and it make for an uncomfortable position for some teammates. It is important to me because they are piloting this for the building and I don't want it to "spoil" the model.

Planning

2023-12-07 19:33:46 UTC

Melissa

I am grappling with how to coach support educators with a planning process that does not overwhelm. It's challenging because I have several novice teachers and educators new to this model so planning looks different. It's important because the planning is the how and it determines so much of what we do. I would like the group to share how they conduct planning conversations with their teams.

Change Fatigue

2024-01-18 19:23:11 UTC

We have moved towards 9th grade teams, some 10th grade teams, standards based learning and then next year we are doing block schedule, 10-12 teams, and pathways work in the 25-26 school year.

Accountability

2024-01-18 19:23:45 UTC

We have some teams that are struggling with holding each other accountable.

Hiring new teachers to the teams

abalt — 2024-01-18 19:24:02 UTC

Aidan

One of the things I have been working on for the last few weeks is how to bring new people into the teams for next year. I am working on an "in-basket" activity around team teaching. We have a job fair coming up. My challenge is that it would be nearly impossible for me to have the whole team with me for all of the interviews. Ideally, that would be the perfect setting it to have them interview with the whole team, but logistically, not sure how to make that happen. Trying to think about ideas for alternatives to that or logistics for interviewing, hiring, shadowing, etc.

CCD

2024-01-18 19:24:15 UTC

Linzee -

Cross-Curricular Design is challenging because PLC's want to be on a common track, it is important to me because, through the sense of the student, there are opportunities to make connections through intentional lesson design as a team.

It would be helpful if this team could help share experiences or ideas on how to plan as a team within a cross-curricular team as well as a PLC.

Expansion of teams

2024-01-18 19:24:23 UTC

Moving towards school wide structures of teaming, you have a group of staff that thinks this change will not happen and we will wait out the principal. Well the time has come. How do you handle those staff that do not want to get on the bus?

Lee

2024-01-18 19:24:30 UTC

As our enrollment changes we end up having to restructure our teams and how they are staffed. It's hard to keep full teams going when we have less staff. We are now doing multi-grade teams. It's important to us to continue to have teaming practices that support students, but we are running out of creative ways to do this with less staff. It would be helpful to learn from other sites what they are doing to deal with staffing on teams.

Structure

kdavis363 — 2024-01-18 19:24:45 UTC

The challenge I am grappling with is having our team teaching model mirror a school at ASU too much and it not being tailored to fit our school. It is challenging because we are going to move to 3rd and 4th grade now and I do not know what structure to do for them. Should we have the same structure school wide or by teams? It is important to me because I want to tailor this to the needs of our students. It would be helpful if this group could tell me how their expansion process was and how it looks school wide.

Support & Training for Teams

hahorne — 2024-01-18 19:25:52 UTC

I am finding that it isn't always easy to build perfect teams....how do I provide the necessary training to do this work and provide that constant support so we can be successful without hiring teams of people who are already ready to do this work. This is important because I know the benefits of teaming are so very needed on my campus and I can't wait for opportunities to build perfect teams.