It Takes a Village: Lessons Learned from the 2015 Teacher Summit in Costa Rica
“Collaboration is valuable because it helps us transcend our individual limits and create something greater than ourselves.”
― Bob Sullo
Every summer, I have the good fortune of running Professional Development Programs in Latin America for World Leadership School, in which teachers from North America experience the same sort of immersive international experience our student programs while simultaneously exploring the tenets of Global Education and Project-Based Learning. Each year, I have the opportunity to facilitate adult growth, which is an endlessly fascinating and growth-filled adventure for me as well. With the goal of helping teachers see the world differently — and thus envision their classroom practice in new ways — these programs are a highlight of my year.
We try to include a Teacher Summit of some kind in most of these PD Programs; we bring together local teachers with the traveling educators and spend a day doing collaborative inquiry, sharing practice, and working together to solve our shared challenges. It hasn’t been easy to pull off, however; we’ve often struggled to get volunteer participants from local schools in the communities we engage, as the majority of rural schools have no substitutes to cover teachers’ absences (and Saturday Summits haven’t been an effective alternative). The North American teachers generally outnumber the local teachers, and it can be challenging to move participants toward a collaborative mindset — even the local teachers often attend these summits thinking the North American participants are there to teach them how to be better teachers, rather than seeing us as partners who have as much to learn as to impart.
This July in Costa Rica, we took a different approach to the Teacher Summit, and it was one of the most successful programs we’ve ever run. The North American teachers were a small group of elementary educators from the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, NY, and for the first time we had more Costa Ricans than travelling teachers. This was thanks to a new approach thought up by Meghan Casey, our in-country coordinator. This year, instead of just inviting local teachers, she also invited regional supervisors for each of the discipline areas, as well as the national technology integration specialist for the Ministry of Education in Costa Rica. The results were extraordinary, and they reaffirmed my belief that these events can be vibrant, engaging and deeply collaborative experiences. This new approach not only boosted our number of local participants, but it also offered the traveling teachers broader insights into education in the region.
We started by exploring the skills, knowledge, values and behaviors that an ideal “global graduate” needs to thrive in a VUCA World (VUCA is a U.S. Military acronym for the current state of the world: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). The list created was astounding; it contained some of the same points often made by educators when I run this workshop in North America, such as the need for students to be problem solvers, critical thinkers, good communicators and collaborators. But the brainstorm also elicited several new points: students need to allow themselves to learn from and be guided by others; they need to live out their own rights without forgetting their responsibilities nor impacting the rights of others; they need to respect others in order to be respected themselves.
After the brainstorm, we tried the Chopstick Challenge — an activity in which participants have to work together and use the same 21st Century Competencies we’d just claimed our students need most. I’ve run the Chopstick Challenge many times, but something unique happened this time that reshaped several elements of the experience for everyone. Once each table had mastered the challenge, someone suggested they try to master it as a full group with all 16 of the participants in one big circle. This had never happened in a workshop before — and I loved the idea that small group collaboration should move us toward larger community collaboration.
Even more notable was what happened next. A few moves in, when one participant dropped her chopstick for the second time, one of the Costa Rican participants suggested that we eliminate participants who couldn’t do it well enough. This is more or less what traditional classrooms tend to do, pulling kids out of experiences they aren’t good at rather than encouraging them to practice toward mastery. I immediately disagreed and insisted that no one would “win” the challenge until everyone in the group was successful, just as every child should be given ample opportunity to practice toward mastery. There was a little grumbling from those participants more focused on success than collaboration and growth, but it took them only a few minutes to reach mastery — five full circle chopstick passes without a single one falling.
Coming back to our Global Graduate list, we explored which of the competencies we’d had to engage as participants in the activity — and had a rich conversation about encouraging risk taking and helping students become comfortable with “failing forward” in their pursuit of mastery. Just as an artist or an athlete has to work at a skill, so do our students — and our Chopstick Challenge had just helped to emphasize the idea that we should never leave students out or behind because they are struggling with a new concept or skill.
We followed this experience with a new approach to Problems of Practice; I collaborated with Meghan Casey to develop six questions relevant to the efforts of educators in Central and North America, and we put each on its own poster in both English and Spanish:
- How can we increase student engagement and motivation? ¿Cómo podemos incrementar la motivación y hacer que se sienten más comprometidos los estudiantes?
- How can we use technology to improve student learning? ¿Cómo podemos usar la tecnología para mejorar el aprendizaje de los estudiantes?
- How can we make using classroom technology easier for teachers? ¿Cómo podemos hacer que sea más facil el uso de tecnología para los maestros?
- What kinds of collaborative projects might we do between our classrooms through technology? ¿Cuáles tipos de proyectos colaborativos podemos hacer entre nuestros aulas por medio de la tecnología?
- How can we ensure students stay in school and feel successful? ¿Cómo podemos asegurar que los estudiantes siguen estudiando y sienten exitosos?
- How can we plan our lessons to ensure we reach our educational goals with all students? ¿Cómo podemos planear nuestras clases para asegurar que cumplimos con nuestras metas educacionales?
Participants moved among the posters in small groups to brainstorm solutions, and then posters were shared out to the larger group. We were able to address quite a few big, meaty topics in a short time frame, and many participants were struck by how much we think alike no matter where we work as educators. Over lunch, I encouraged teachers to continue the conversation about collaborative projects, in the hopes that several global partnerships might come out of our day together.
The afternoon was one of those collaborative experiences facilitators dream of. We set up a flat-screened tv with various hook up options, and participants took turns sharing technological tools they use in the classroom. They shared student products, pedagogical strategies used in tandem with the technology, and much more. Most importantly, the session was filled with meaningful dialogue — educators asking each other nuanced questions about how technology has become a tool in their work, sharing websites, applications and resources. Everyone had something to learn, and everyone had something to share.
There are a few key things I learned this year about bringing together educators from different countries and educational settings. As in any professional development setting, the participants need to be there voluntarily, or to see the intrinsic value of the experience. They have to be able to see each other as partners in change and improvement, and that means breaking down the real or perceived sense of differences between them. Whether we work in rural schools in Sarapiquí, Costa Rica, or a private school in Brooklyn, New York, we all want the best for our students. We want them to thrive in the VUCA world they’re already enmeshed in — not just survive it but really thrive as leaders and change makers.
Most importantly, educating students isn’t a solitary act or even the responsibility of one team of educators inside one building. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and these Teacher Summits continue to demonstrate that two villages working in collaboration will always be more successful than just one.
— Jennifer D. Klein, Director of Professional Development
