Final Leadership Response

Collaboration is undoubtedly one of the most fundamental elements of any successful endeavor. Coming from a filmmaking background, I am more than aware of the fact that no one person can produce something truly important by themselves. Even the most controlling of directors has to rely on, and communicate constantly with the camera department, the actors, the set designers, the costume designers, the producers (those in charge of the money and the time), and numerous other individuals.

All projects really worth working on are collaborations to some degree or another (and filmmaking to a very high degree). A couple famous collaborations jump to mind here: Marty Scorsese and Robert DeNiro (or Thelma Schoonmaker his editor), John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Laurel & Hardy, Rogers & Hammerstein, Penn & Teller, Ben & Jerry, Han Solo & Chewbaca, Hall & Oates, Conan & Rickter, Martha Stewart & Wall Street, Ren & Stimpy, penut butter & jelly, Brtiney & Crazy... the list goes on and on.

Teaching is never done in a vacuum. Every day is a collabortation between teacher and student, teacher and teacher, teacher and team, teacher and administrator, teacher and curriculum, etc. And as long as a teacher does not comprimise themselves or their integrity in the process, great things can happen in the collaborative process.

I have included here an exerpt from a journal I wrote about 6 months ago, while doing some student teaching at Mountain View High School. I was working with a Freshman English teacher named Katie Rotchford (also a C of I alum), and teaching the first lesson that I had designed. The lesson involved a layered cake analogy that I had devised as a way of helping students visualize the three significant layers of narrative (The surface layer of the story, the implied meaning of the story, and the author intent). Since the lesson had only been written a couple days previous to the teaching, it had some kinks to be worked out and Katie provided some essential input that made my lesson much stronger than it had originally been.

It was with the short story “The Chaser” that I think I had the biggest victory of this lesson. For the class I had come up with this analogy of a story as a layered cake. My original conception of the analogy had been the first layer (the cake itself) was the plot of the story, the essential structure, the second layer (the filling in between the layers of cake) was our distance for the story, our ability to pick up on irony or other narrative devices because of our distance from the story. The final layer (the frosting) was the meaning or themes presented by the work as a whole. I actually presented this analogy to the classes before the song, but we used it the most during the short story. Now in the first class I simply drew the picture of the cake on the board and explained it to them, but in my haste I didn’t really give the kids the graphic that they needed to really grasp the idea (as I recall all I did was draw a pretty ugly cake with 3 different arrows point to rather obscure parts of an obscurely drown cake with the words layer 1, layer 2, layer 3 on it). During the break Katie told me that she really liked my analogy, but that we probably needed to give them their own copy of it to look at and write on, so she threw together a quick worksheet and we printed out copies for the next class to have for the readings. In doing this she also did something that although I first I was a little upset that she changed my idea, but in retrospect I found brilliant; she simplified the cake to just be three different layers of cake stacked on each other rather than attempting to make rather obscure connections with the difference between the cake, the filling and the frosting (which not only had confused me, but would certainly be difficult for the kids). Along with looking much better and less complicated, this allowed for writing to be done in each “layer” of the cake and gave the kids an assignment that they were responsible for turning in at the end of class, so those kids that would prefer to just sit there and doodle or daydream now had to pay attention while we were discussing the reading (at least a little bit ☺).

This is just one small example of how collaboration has already been of great importance to my teaching. I am sure I will have many more by the time I am through with this internship.