by Jan Duffy
In teacher Jan Duffy’s last two entries, she has detailed the story of her students’ choreography of many dances this year, and how impressive the end result was. She wrote about the process of creating the dances and the significance of engagement in order to produce such an excellent result. Here, in the final installment, Jan reflects on how collaboration plays a part in her teaching.
I can’t continue to talk about what made this year so special without mentioning the professional collaboration that went on all year between the teacher of the “Beatles Fans” and myself. This collaboration began before the school year, when Roberta Carrasco-Taylor and I attended Project Zero Classroom in July 2010 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
A firm believer in “Writer’s Workshop”, with some appreciation for the idea of Multiple Intelligences, whose classroom hummed with activity in different learning stations scattered about the room, Roberta didn’t know anything about Project Zero when I asked her to come with me for professional development, but by the end of our first mini-course she claimed she “totally drank the PZ Kool-Aid.” We resolved to try to Teach for Understanding and use Visible Thinking techniques, and most importantly, get together to talk over and reflect on what we were seeing in our classrooms-which was particularly helpful since ¾ of her students were mine as well!
Right from the very beginning of the year, Roberta and I were not only on a shared quest to uncover the personal strengths of her students-we were bound and determined to help them develop their thinking skills and group dynamics too. I shared with Roberta what I was seeing among her 13 dancers, and heard how those dynamics shifted within her larger class of 17 boys and girls, and across the different subjects she teaches in her classroom, how they interacted during their “free time”, and what their numerous transitions were like as they all navigated those together between activities, and as well as between the eight 40 minute periods of each and every school day.
Roberta can’t teach dance or choreograph at all, and she thinks she can’t act, or write children’s plays as easily as I do, just like I’m sure I can’t teach writing or math or social studies, or do much of anything she does so easily and well in her classroom. But we’re somehow able to more or less accurately reflect back to each other what the other one says, and allow each other to reflect on that without judging each other, even when we disagree. We help each other find the good in our students and in what we’re trying to do with them, and celebrate and commiserate during our ups and downs, and you can’t ask for much more than that.
I helped Roberta’s class by writing an outline for their class play, which the kids wrote themselves, and helped with staging, making a prop, and brainstormed with her some ways that her kids could make very easily moveable sets. And in return, Roberta voluntarily loaned me her para-professional, Judy Gorman, who has an excellent eye for theater and dance, to help me with the various recital tasks that I enjoy, but that tend to pile up on my desk, like hair accessories that need gluing, etc.
While Judy helped me out with those tasks, she never failed to watch the rehearsal, and was always willing to give us constructive feedback. She backed me up whenever I insisted that some part of a dance needed extra cleaning-a difficult concept for most Primary age students, who tend to think dancing is like riding a bike-once they get the hang of it, they’ll never forget any of it-(but of course, most of them usually do, and what a shock that is for bright children)!
Half the challenge of teaching dance to kids who learn most things quickly is getting them to realize the necessity of going over some parts of the choreography “one more time” just for the sake of one or more of their classmates, or for the look of the Team’s effort onstage as a whole. The last month of rehearsals I sound like a broken record: “It doesn’t matter if you know your own part well, if the dancers next to you are still making mistakes, it’s time to fix things–otherwise the result is not going to be anything that Any of Us will be able to take real pride in onstage. As a Team, what do you want us all to create together- a Disaster, or a Dance?”
Roberta, I think, helped her class all year the same way she often helps me – just by taking a deep breath and modeling restraint to all of us on countless occasions-and not jumping in to impose her will or her perspective on any of us unasked, even when she very well could. She gives her kids room to find their way, the same way she does me-asking probing questions to make us think. I love it when she leans back and lifts an eyebrow, and laughs a little bit whenever we need some extra prodding!
In return, I hope I’ve helped her to better understand the kids in her class who share my louder, more dramatic, and occasionally impulsive ways-even if I just provided extra practice on a adult she can immediately and freely ask, “What makes you say that”? , “Where’s your proof”? , Or “What in the world made you do that?” and even, “Come on, is that the best you can do-can’t you think of something better than that?” She may really listen to the answers, but I like to think I helped her figure out what questions to ask too, just because I’m still such a goofy kid myself sometimes.
I like to think her class advanced by leaps and bounds in their understanding of what it means to be there for each other, collaborate together and really perform too, because between the two of us, and Judy, we reinforced all those same important lessons just about as many ways as it was possible to reinforce them.
As I write these words it suddenly strikes me how funny it is that I never noticed before now that the way Roberta and I’ve interacted in our periodic “reflective conversations” this year is surprisingly very much like how her students and I ended up interacting too. That also has to be the major difference between her class and all the others I spent 12-14 weeks in creative collaboration with this year.
Even though we’re very different people, teaching very different subjects, the particular way that Roberta and I learned to communicate with each other this year as we made the extra effort to help each other Teach for Understanding, use Visible Thinking techniques, and Make Learning Visible in our classes, is what Really made this year with her students seem more like a collaboration between all of us, and something greater than I could have ever created all by myself. I’ve come to believe that’s what catapulted the “Beatles Fans’ into being able to connect with each other despite their differences, and with every member of their audience too, and not just with their very own families and friends.
I don’t know what next year will bring, but I’m firmly convinced that collaboratively choreographing with our young dancers is one of the best educational opportunities I can offer them. I’m looking forward to collaborating again with Roberta and Judy, and I hope other teachers will want to collaborate with me, and with our dancers too, for the benefit of all of us, as well as all of our students.
