curriculum

Build Clear and Collaborative Relationships

Critical Content

  • Develop individual team and inter-team collaborative relationships that support leadership for improving teaching and learning.
  • Develop clear understanding of school and district leaders' roles and relationships with regard to the work of improving teaching and learning (where we are "tight" vs. "loose").
  • Give information, get information, and put it into action, with a focus on learning improvement results.
  • Understand and practice attributes of highly effective teams:
    1. Embed collaboration into routine practices of the school and district with a focus on learning.
    2. Time for collaboration built into the calendar.
    3. Focus on key questions.
    4. Products of collaboration are made explicit.
    5. Team norms guide collaboration.
    6. Teams pursue specific and measurable performance goals.
    7. Teams have access to relevant information.

Expected Outcomes

  • Well functioning teams who also have strategies for helping the work they do in the Academy translate back to working with larger teams in their home district.
  • Teams who have developed new or strengthened existing, norms for working collaboratively and coherently across classrooms, schools and central offices in service of improving teaching and learning.
  • Teams implement strategies in their home context for meetings, professional development sessions, communication strategies, that are in alignment with characteristics of effective teams.

Strand Texts