I am an effective collaborator in every aspect of my teaching.  Beginning with planning and ending with assessment, every aspect of my philosophy of teaching encourages communication and collaboration.  During my student teaching I have utilized my cooperating teacher as a valuable resource for lesson planning, classroom management, valid and reliable assessment, conferencing, surviving administrative observations, and even learning how to handle criticism and frustration.  Furthermore, the remainder of the English staff as well as the other faculty in our teacher's lounge have identified themselves as equally viable resources of information and support.

One of the courses I taught during my student teaching was an American Studies course for tenth and eleventh graders.  The curriculum prescribed that the students were to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck in association with a historical study of the Depression and Dust Bowl.  Every day in that class is a collaborative effort because I must work with the history teacher to cover the literature within the relevant historical context.  Specifically within this unit I utilized collaboration because my content mastery does not extend to all disciplines.  I met with Mr. Skelly, my partner history teacher, to discuss major characteristics of the Dust Bowl and I used this background to guide a discussion in our opening lesson plan of the unit.  In addition, my partner teacher suggested that we allow students to adopt roles of characters and participate in reading the dialogue.  The students instantly became more engaged with the text and developed a sense of ownership for the material. (This artifact also fulfills NCTE standards 1.1-1.4, 2.1-3, 2.5, 3.1.2, 3.3.2, and 3.5.1)

I also encourage effective collaboration with my students.  My ninth graders studied a unit on Romeo and Juliet and I wanted to begin the unit by learning basic information about William Shakespeare and Elizabethan England.  However, as part of my philosophy of teaching, I believe that students often learn best when they are contributing members to the construction of knowledge.  Therefore, rather than beginning with a mini-lecture, I constructed a wikispace for the students where I posted a treasure hunt activity.  Each of the students was responsible for using the guided activity to create a post on their personal page answering the suggested questions.  They had to explore the internet through suggested sites to find answers.  Then, each student was responsible for sharing their discoveries with the class so that we developed classwide comprehension of the desired content.  Here is the lesson plan for the opening activity. (This artifact also fulfills NCTE standards 1.4, 2.1-6, 3.3.1, 3.3.3, 3.4.2, 3.6.2, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.5)