Teaching is a Team Sport
Originally Published January 2015
Over the past few months, we have been working on district goals that impact instruction and services to students. We have identified three instructional goals, and we are working on two board of education goals that impact the academic world: gifted services and middle school schedule. Through that work, I have been asked about the role of the individual teacher in education. How does one teacher meet the many needs of the learners in his class? How does a teacher have time to teach all the skills and content that students need to learn? How do we implement the new and more rigorous state standards, which demand more of both teachers and students?
Can one person do it all?
The answer is no. One person, one teacher, one principal, one administrator cannot do it all. Why? Because teaching is a team sport!
Traditionally education has been characterized by the responsibility of the individual teacher. I am given a class of students, a classroom, and a resource, and I am to teach all of the students on my list. But how do I effectively do that when there is so much to teach? I have to be on a team. I need to collaborate with my colleagues and administrators to plan, to share students for instruction, to teach.
The current focus on individual teacher value-added scores has done much to keep us in an individual focused world. I fear it has caused us to make decisions that are more about the adults and less about the learning of our students. We must resist the thinking that our practices are to be guided by what others tell us we must be. We know that we need to work as a team. We know that we are better together.
The most successful athletic teams and military units operate as teams. They know that each individual has a role, but they must work together with a common mission and concern for one another. In schools, we must do the same. Define our own success. Operate as we know we should. Support and collaborate to maximize learning for all of our students. Be a team!
