Hi my name is Rikki Fresu and I am a WKTEP student! I was fortunate enough to participate at my old highschoo JL Crowe Secondary for my extended practicum. Even when I was a student here I always found that the staff had a strong team mentality! They always seemed as if they were on the same page and supported each other through out the whole school year. Even through very difficult times within our community, the staff appeared to face every obstacle as a whole.

Therefore, I wasn’t surprised that on my very first day of practicum a new strategy was being tried out to make the team even stronger! Therefore, my first “artifact” to show contribution to the profession and engage in collaboration had to be the Collaboration days! One day every other week is dedicated to professional collaboration. The staff is broken down into groups within their subject and as a team they come up with an inquiry that they want to experiment with. For example, in my collaboration group, we were trying to recreate the grade eight Social Studies curriculum. The idea was to make it more project based in order to increase engagement within the classes. Other groups were working on effective essay writing, and backward classroom theories.

For me collaboration days were wonderful. This was the time that I could get away from my tiny little desk in the back of the room and discuss teaching with those who have done it for years! All the teachers seemed more then willing to share their ideas and strategies because they knew it would benefit the kids in the long run.

I hope that which ever school I end up with has a similar strategy because i really believe that this would promote a solid team within the school community.