"Teachers First, Collaboration is Key" toward effective 21CLD

Imagine and picture this:

Imagine in every schools that every teaching staff are passionate to improve their teaching instruction through collaboration between teachers in their school but also given permission to collaborate with other teachers from other schools. It’s not something that should be force, but it is something that schools’ society naturally do - rather hesitate to do collaboration as to see other teachers as competition. I believe these sort of collaboration will gives a lot benefit such as to identify and solve “teaching challengers” to actually help learners and effectively to redesign their teaching towards 21CLD approach.

It is common in Brunei to practice Whole Group learning or professional development while also committed to attend workshops and seminars conducted by the Ministry of Education through their varies departments. However, some strategies are yet to be introduce and practice in each school internally or schools within a cluster. These strategies include: Small-Group Training, Teachers observing Teachers and Individual Coaching.

Currently, I’m in my three year training (2 sessions every year (2014-2016)) with ClassPoint Consulting (Singapore) on Cognitive Coaching (Individual Coaching) on Assessments for Learning organised by the Department of Schools, MoE. This training will not only help us to effectively give feedbacks to teachers, but also help the coachee to identify their own strength while also helping them to see what they can identify by themselves to improve their teaching instruction. It’s 100% Coachee’s point of view with no judgement by the coach. I've tried few times with one of my teacher, and it does help to set goals and improvement in teaching's instruction!

About a month ago, I viewed a video published by Bill & Melinda Gates foundation where Mr. Bill Gates had a chat with Washington State Teacher of the Year Katie Brown. In the video she explained how her school adopted several strategies how teachers learn and collaborate with other teachers. It’s a very inspiring video to all schools and it is clearly proven effectiveness.

Please visit her blog : http://mycoachkatie.com/index.html

Ingredient: All teachers want to improve; Open-mindedness; Leaders to embrace collaboration. Giving teachers time to do collaboration. Understand what, why and how to collaborate.