By Ashley Rhodes

ELEM 6550

A process to reach goals that cannot be achieved individually.

Includes jointly developing and agreeing to a set of common goals and directions, sharing responsibility for obtaining those goals, and working together to achieve those goals, using the expertise of each collaborator.

Improve the quality of education of students◦ Expand student learning to real-world experiences

◦ Encourage critical thinking

Make teaching/planning more effective◦ Common educational goals

◦ Stimulation of ideas through discussion

◦ Shared decisions

◦ Joint planning, implementation, and evaluation of instruction

Time

Communication

Administrative support

Attitude/willingness

Trust

Budget

Involve all key players so that collaborative decisions and activities receive widespread support and recognition.

Ensure that the collaborative’s leadership is visionary, is willing to take risks, and facilitiates change rather than directs it.

Establish a shared vision of how the collaborative should progress and of the expected outcomes.

Build ownership at all levels. Commitment to change must be initiated at all levels.

Establish communication and decision-making processes that accept disagreement among participants as part of the process and establish ways to address conflict constructively.

Institutionalize change by encouraging staff to include collaborative goals at their own grade levels.

Share your strengths and resources to plan lessons and generate a wide range of activities for targeted skills.

Give each other ways to cope with the daily task of helping struggling students.

Generate awareness on different ways of achieving goals and different approaches to teaching methods.

Collaboration requires effective communication to others

Both collaboration and communication are essential to leadership

Leadership facilitates collaboration through the use of communication