Will’s issue is that even though we’re in an age when we can recognize the value of having our students collaborate on and publish their work–those great 21st century skills we hear so much about at staff development events–teachers are still reluctant to actually share their work:

When I ask teachers to talk even in general terms about the experiences their students have had previous to arriving in their classes, most sit quietly and scrunch their shoulders. I know, I know…there is a time factor involved in doing this, or least a perception of one. But it just seems amazing to me that at this point there is no realy shift towards publishing more of what we do, more of what our kids do, not only to expand our own knowledge base but to model for our students that potentials of sharing.

And he’s right, kind of.  I see, in my office, a lot of collaboration and resource sharing.  Just this morning, Mary Beth passed me two pieces about The Great Gatsby that I might give out to my Am Lit I students tomorrow (get psyched, guys!).  And Dave and I had an awesome conversation about the teaching of mythology a couple of weeks ago that led to the creation of my new unit on The Hero’s Journey.

So I’m not sure that I entirely buy Will’s assertion of non-sharing among teachers, but I see what he’s getting at.  We should be doing more sharing.  There’s a file-sharing system set up already for the Social Studies department, and we in English will be getting our own in the next few months, or so they say.  Assuming people use it, I imagine it’ll be really nice to have a space on our school network where I can go to, say, see what my colleagues have developed for The Odyssey or whatever.  Definitely a cool thing.

But sharing can’t only be about handouts and lesson plans.  There needs to be a lot more communication between teachers about their actual thoughts and ideas in the development stages of planning.  Far more useful to me than a pre-made worksheet would be a blog entry about where that worksheet came from–what was the thought process behind it, what were the teacher’s goals, etc.  And no, union people, I’m not pushing for a written rationale for every lesson plan you decide to share with others.  But wouldn’t it be cool (again, union people, I’m not actually suggesting we do this) if teachers had blogs where they actually recorded some of their thoughts and what they were dealing with?

My students do this already.  I’m currently trying to get a student, who is out on an extended medical absence, back into the fold by having her read her classmates’ blogs, and to have her classmates leave her feedback on her own entries.  I want my students to use their blogs as an extension of class discussion sessions.  You should hear some of what goes on in our Am Lit I class about Gatsby.

Anyway, sharing is caring, I guess, but we need to be smarter about what and how we share.  Final products are great–who doesn’t want to be able to print out a ready-made worksheet for those mornings when nothing seems to be working out right?–but to share the thought process, the drafts, the mistakes, that’s where the power lies.