FIAE- Chapter 15

This chapter was really about tips and ideas on how to support your fellow colleagues and friends as they continue to move forward toward practices and methods for differentiated classrooms. Being able to talk to those that you work with, means all the world to your success in the classroom and your students’ success in the classroom. You learn something new everyday from a number of people and this provides the opportunity to further your ideas and thinking on how to better the classroom and your personal teaching. Exploring together is always more beneficial than exploring alone.
Some tips that I found within the chapter that would be especially helpful when dealing with fellow teachers/colleagues are:

• When disagreeing- assume that you are on the same side
• Try to seek first, then to understand
• If you are feeling stressed then most likely your colleagues are too
• Reflect on the bigger questions as well as those at hand
• If there are a majority of people who are embracing a new grading and assessment approach but a minority are not, focus on the majority
• Create an atmosphere where there is a little pressure to re-examine grading and assessing ideas
• Create opportunities to discuss ideas and story sharing/make use of communication using e-mail/mailboxes
• Model, model, model
• Find funding to accomplish those amazing ideas put forth by teachers/ pursuer additional training
• Have multiple copies of books and materials
• Use HUMOR
• Establish your own core values and make yourself aware of others’
• Staff health- physical, mental, and emotional

Beyond all of these ideas, this chapter really showing me how important it is to continuously keep learning. As a teacher you don’t stop being a student and become this morphed body, you are still a student but you are an example of educational ability. There is always an opportunity to learn from someone in your life and as I have learned, the students will teach you something new everyday. “It still takes a spark to get a fire going, and as colleagues, we can be both flint and kindling for one another.”