I am a control freak by nature. I think there is a small piece of control freak in all of us teachers. It is what draws us to the profession. Ironically, I am also a huge fan of group work. Not for myself mind you, but rather for my students. So when I first learned that we would be working to design a unit of study for a project based learning opportunity for my students I was thrilled. Then came the dreaded "group" word.
My initial reaction comes from my past experience working with groups. I have not had good collaborative experiences. My experience has always been someone telling me what to do and me doing it. I tend to be a good worker bee. I don't speak up much and I tend to blend into the background. Corin already noticed that when she said I was "watching" my group. Ironically, I felt like this is the one group I have been involved in that I really feel like we are working in a collaborative group and I actually feel part of this team.
Jen, Sam and I work together very well. For one thing, we all seemed to have a similar vision for what our project would be and a solid grasp of the standards that would apply. The initial planning of the project has gone very well. Jen has an amazing ability to just jump right into a new program and go for it. If it doesn't work the first time, she is more than willing to do what it takes. On the few times we have actually gotten stuck, we are all happy to ask for help from some other expert in the room. It is the type of relationship that I hope my students have when they do group work.
Sam has this incredible ability to see the fine details. She can dive right into a lesson and tell you what it will look like and what you need to make it happen. I'm more of a big picture girl. I'm the one keeping us remembering things like formative and summative assessments as well as reminders that we have to make a rubric and what about the prior knowledge piece. I think we all have strengths that compliment each other well. When we have conflict, we talk it out and look at each person's views. In fact this is the first group I have been comfortable enough to speak out in. It is a refreshing change. We have created mutual respect and a safe place to talk openly.
As far as any problems we have encountered thus far, I would say that our only problems have been related to technology and time. There is nothing we can do about the time piece. There are only so many hours in a day and so many days in a short summer institute. But the technology piece has been frustrating. While all the tools we are using are great resources and I know that I will utilize them in the future, technology does come with the "bugs" we have all come to accept and expect. Today Jen and I nearly pulled our hair out waiting for "Google Docs" to type out our lesson objectives. Literally it slowed down to a snail pace, entering our commands in some alternative universe time where one character at a time would come up with a space of about 30 seconds in between. I don't know why this happened. It just did. That is where the frustration is in our group. Working within the limited resources our tools have to offer.
All in all I think it is going so much better than I have expected and I am so happy to have a much better frame of reference for the next time I hear the words "group work."
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