Page's Paper

I found Page's (1999) paper very enlightening,  I love the way they broke down the way to adopt a collaborative approach at a school. I could actually see myself implementing some of these applications at my schools, again the reinforcement of administrators being critical to the success of it was highlighted but I also liked how they indicated that teachers were critical to implement it. I found this a key aspect about teachers - in my schools if the teacher is not interested in collaborating then it doesn't happen. I even have it where a teacher is interested but as I am only there one day a week it makes it hard to set aside time - even our own. But back to Page (1999), the first Phase of "Establishing Systems and Structures" (p. 208) where it is important to identify the strengths and weakenesses of your own area then the other aspects of school and it identify the 'key' people. Then to look at what you have versus what you want it to be and define your role to the staff in a number of ways. The concept of the plan and using topic sheets was something that I could utilise in my schools, I had started it in a very informal way through email and mentioning it to staff at meetings but to actually have a sheet that identifies the topics for the term in the different key learning areas that all teachers fill in and then indicate if they want planning time for cooperative learning I thought was a great way to start. It also added to records to keep for referring to.

I also thought the communication aspect was vital in my position of only being very part time in my schools, it is something I am trying to improve upon and it was great seeing how important it is in establishing this collaborative plan. But the best thing I liked was the concept of starting small - it was something that most other papers didn't recognise (whether they thought it was implied or not needed due to a whole school approach) as in my position I can only work with one teacher in this detail and for the time required to begin with so to actually have a paper point this out and say it is where to start and not try to change everything at once was great.

This paper is something I can see my future plans revolving around, I am looking forward to outlining a plan using the different phases and components of the phases for my schools. Also to be discussing this with my principals - it gives me somewhere to start specifically. I feel more positive about implementing a collaborative approach now than I have with previous papers.