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=The Fire and the Rose =

Collaboration


=== Collaboration resides at the top of many lists of 21st century skills for our students, but how do we as independent educators create productive moments of collaboration in our classroom without compromising true (traditional) learning? How do we function best as facilitators during the natural peaks and valleys of productivity? “Putting our teacher stories” aside, how can we change our methods in order to help students develop this important skill? How can we more effectively facilitate learning in our classroom? Regarding the range of our students, how can we balance the prompts and needs of overachievers and those working below their potential? Because one has to move away from planning a lesson for a range of learners working independently, what new skills do teachers need in order to plan for top performing teamwork? Likewise, as we adjust our mindset as educators, how can we also help our students adjust their mindsets, given that most of their learning life they have been striving for personal success—an A on the unit test, rather than group success? ===

=== After a brief presentation covering some successful and unsuccessful examples of collaborative projects, join our wide-ranging discussion about how best to involve students in productive partnerships. During this session, participants will work in small groups to create a wiki page on the Internet which will help collect notes from our session and help launch future collaborations. Teachers unfamiliar with wikis (e.g. Wikipedia) are most welcome and will leave proficient users. In the spirit of collaboration, lower and middle school teachers will be asked to share some collaborative methods that upper school teacher may have forgotten. ===