6 Benefits of Teacher Collaboration

If you’re a teacher, you probably hear a lot about the benefits of teamwork and collaboration. But when you’re faced with the reality of hectic schedules, lesson plans, parent meetings, and constant time crunches, it can be tough to find time to sit down, exchange ideas with other teachers in your school, and make sure you’re on the same page.

That’s why we love small anecdotes like these—stories of real schools that made a few relatively simple changes so their teachers could reap the benefits of collaboration. This one, from a Pennsylvania school superintendent, is adapted from Strategic Co-Teaching in Your School: Using the Co-Design Model, by Richael Barger-Anderson, Robert S. Isherwood, & Joseph Merhaut. See what they did to improve collaboration among the teachers in their school—and discover 6 ways this increased collaboration helped both educators and students succeed:

What does your school do to facilitate teacher collaboration? What, in your experience, is the biggest barrier to teachers working together and sharing ideas? Add your thoughts in the comments below!

• Brookes author Elizabeth Potts weighs in on finding a teaching mentor and sharing resources.
• Two co-teachers share how they team up in the classroom and make their partnership work.