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Interim meeting | Perspective:Change
2009-02-18
Interim meeting
Charlotte and myself volunteered some extra time on the project to sit and chat about our collaboration outside of the work with the children. We talked at length the week before I was due to come back into the classroom. It had been very difficult for Charlotte to find the time for the weekly meetings yet I felt that without them, she and I didn`t have a collaborative partnership.
In fact the collaboration was with the children more than with the teacher. This isn`t necessarily a right or wrong approach - it depends greatly on the relationships of all involved. However, once Charlotte and I both agreed that we would prefer to have more dicussion together, she to have more clarity of direction and I to have more input from her in terms of interests and curriculum, it became easier to discuss the work itself.
We both also admitted feeling a pressure, in terms I think of both feeling we were working alone - she in having the pressure of delivering the curriculum, a new school, an inspector, I of working very openly with the children and not directing or controling the process or outcome, of not having the teacher as a working partner, of having the pressure of open days and public attention to the process and work.
We agreed to ignore all of the above, and to try to remove pressure altogether.
It was a really important conversation to have had. Charlotte and I now talk more and more indepth about the project and individual children`s responses, as well as future plans and how to deliver them. Even if the relationship with the children is open, trusting and energetic - collaborative, a good understanding and constant mutual communication with the teacher is just as important.
But now begs the question...who am I collaborating with? It seems to be more, and very comfortably so, with Charlotte and less with the children, though they are no less engaged with the work. This constant experimenting with approaches to working is proving more and more interesting and yet less and less clarifying!
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