Teachers often get stuck in an “egg-crate” model of schooling—sequestered in their classrooms, with few opportunities to interact and exchange ideas with each other.
When it comes to professional development, teachers value learning from each other. A growing body of research shows that when educators work more collaboratively, student outcomes improve, job satisfaction may rise, and teachers may stay longer in their jobs.
But finding dedicated time for meaningful collaboration isn’t easy for school leaders. They must fit it into their schedules when teacher planning times overlap or decide to start school later to accommodate these meetings. If teachers plan to observe other classrooms, principals must manage coverage and ensure that teachers from different grades and disciplines can also meet and plan together.
Despite the challenges, principals are keen to get teachers together: they recognize it’s one of the best forms of professional development and work that teachers enjoy.
“It’s one thing for me to develop and deliver professional development and meet with teachers individually,” said David Wiedlich, the principal of Radnor Middle School in Radnor, Pa. “But I think teachers learn best from one another, and they’re willing to take academic risks to try different things in the classroom.”
Three principals shared with Education Week how they structure teacher collaboration time. Here’s what they said.
Flip the faculty meeting
Principals can repurpose their monthly staff meetings to give more collaboration time.
At the high school in State College, Pa., the leadership team turned one faculty meeting every quarter into a collaborative space where 200 teachers from across disciplines and grades could have “organic conversations” about student growth, said Danielle Ambrosia, the 9th grade principal at the high school.
The administration was determined to pencil in time for teacher collaboration rather than leave it to the occasional lunchtime conversation between teachers, Ambrosia said.
While administrators don’t interfere with or choose the topics teachers might discuss, they put out prompts or ideas before the meetings to guide the discussion—for instance, the best ways to communicate with parents or how to differentiate lessons for students at different learning levels.
These interdisciplinary meetings are a great way for administrators to get feedback, too, Ambrosia said. Last year, she noted a gap in communication between 9th grade elective and core subject area teachers. Elective teachers had no opportunity to share with math and English teachers how they held students’ attention in a French or auto shop elective class. Ambrosia started to include the elective teachers in the 9th grade level staff meetings to share.
“That was a really good wakeup call for me,” Ambrosia said. “We started intentionally using elective teacher feedback, and I think elective teachers really appreciated that.”
Wiedlich, the middle school principal from Pennsylvania, has also tried to “give back” as much time as possible to teachers. If there are no pressing agenda items, he encourages teachers to convert any meeting times with him into collaboration opportunities.
Should principals structure collaboration?
A later start time has also helped school leaders find dedicated time for teacher collaboration. The Verona Area High School in Verona, Wis., starts two hours late every Monday to accommodate professional learning communities (or PLCs) to work on lessons and assessments.
The practice started soon after the pandemic. After a steady decline in student achievement, last year, the school saw improvement in student achievement levels on standardized exams. Cox linked this to the dedicated collaboration time on Mondays.
“We didn’t just give them time and say go off and do x, y, or z. We structured it in a way where we prioritize our work around the standards [and align] lessons and assessments,” he said.
The more than two dozen PLCs that meet every Monday are content specific, rather than divided by grades or larger subjects—so all the teachers who teach algebra or pre-calculus, for example, can gather to discuss how they can teach to the standards and what challenges they face.
In Pennsylvania, Wiedlich checks in regularly with department heads on topics or challenges that surface in the PLCs. These PLCs are grouped according to grade level and meet a few times a month. At these meetings, teachers assess how students performed in benchmark assessments and discuss instructional strategies.
Every PLC or teacher collaboration meeting starts with a defined agenda, a requirement set by Wiedlich. He asks department or team leaders who lead these meetings to go over specific topics—like new books during a curriculum audit—with teachers and record their responses and ideas. Wiedlich also does “temperature checks” with department heads and teacher leaders to ensure the collaboration time doesn’t feel rushed.
Outside of scheduled time, all three principals said they encourage more informal opportunities for teachers to collaborate, like observations of a colleague’s classroom to pick up ideas for their own work.
Cox said principals should always be on the lookout for smart ways to carve out teacher collaboration time: “If you can squeeze three to five minutes a day from maybe your passing times, from a lunch here or a recess there, you can start to piece together what would be potentially an extra half day for teachers to get together.”
