It took a few tries, but I had the good fortune to land in a community that offered some interesting conversation. I know that I will continue to engage in some of the dialogues we've begun and learn more. In his article, Collaboration: Oiling the System, Matthew Taylor says, " Teacher to teacher collaboration is the key part of school partnership. For teachers to work with other teachers on inquiry based collaboration should be seen as an essential element of their professionalism. Teachers must always be learners and they learn best by working with colleagues to solve practical challenges. (2013)."
Collaborative inquiry can be both a planned process and an organic experience. As I sat in my office this week, fresh back from a very lengthy five-week faculty strike, I listened to the sounds of organic collaborative inquiry taking place. It was music to my ears - faculty teeming with ideas and recommendations, working together to frame curriculum quite differently and propose solutions that would help to resolve delivering course material in an abbreviated semester. This is a great example of the exposure I have in my own workplace and I am much richer for having the opportunity to work with a very collaborative team.
External to my college community of practice, I have begun to grow my network and was fortunate enough to become a part of the #tlleap Teaching and Learning EAP community on Facebook. There certainly are some great opportunities and challenges when one leaves the comfort of their home community.
I enjoyed our group discussions and one of the big pluses of course was having the opportunity share a learn with a completely different set of peers - English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers throughout the world. An example of newly acquired knowledge
would be a discussion I participated in related to EAP professional development. I learned about a website, The Virtual Linguistic Campus from a peer and this led yet more professional development opportunities - and they were free!
A number of individuals in the group were from the United Kingdom, so I was able to gain perspective from a more international school audience. I liked the interactive nature of the group. Responses to the posts were generally very quick and that helped to make the experience more engaging. I like the back and forth nature of Facebook groups and Twitter feeds. The online dialogue has a more ebb and flow feel to it, like a natural conversation would.
We had the opportunity to chat about plagiarism and teacher evaluations. Plagiarism in the EAP community has always been a challenge and having the opportunity to discuss how other institutions worked with their learners to help them appreciate the serious nature of academic misconduct was informative. One of the group members posted an interesting article related to academics who plagiarize, what a twist on the entire concept!
Again, one never can anticipate the sharing that will take place in a community of learning, that is the beauty of it - unanticipated reflection of practice.
I am now much more committed to the idea of professional communities of practice. Of course, I subscribe to newsletters, professional practice website that help to inform my practice, however I now know that opportunities to collaborate and learn can lie in and on many different platforms. I would never have imagined Facebook as a tool for professional engagement. As a final note, I have to give a shout out to new favourite Twitter account that I discovered in this last semester. Please take a moment to follow George Couros on Twitter.
His posts have been very engaging and so positive! Another benefit of seeking out collaborative opportunities, you never know where they will take you!
Taylor, M. (2013, September 5). Collaboration: Oiling the system - RSA. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/matthew-taylor-blog/2013/09/collaboration-oiling-the-system#
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