Collaborative Inquiry

Dear my fellow teacher candidate Alex,

Thanks for the countless ways you have been my support throughout my practicum experience. Who knew that getting a ride with you to and from our practicum school could lend itself to such priceless times of debriefing and sharing our teaching experience? Not only is it a pure blessing to start every morning and every afternoon of our practicum visits together, but to have you next door as my fellow teacher candidate is another level of support and sense of comfort.

For this week, we had to read Collaborative Inquiry: Empowering teachers in their professional development by our prof Shnelley. Funny to say, reading this article reminded me of our Team Bear meetings and our spontaneous meetings.

STRUCTURED SUPPORT. Every Tuesday during "prep" block, our team had a staff meeting. This was a time for us to discuss any upcoming events, co-teaching lesson plans, particular students who need pressing needs, and check-in with others how they are doing. I must say, it was pretty nice to sit around all our team staff to discuss and build that professional relationship with one another.

CULTURAL AND SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL SUPPORTS. Another reason why I appreciated the team meeting is because of the social-emotional aspect of it. As a teacher candidate, I certainly felt a little foreign to the school culture and vibe. But to sit down in a meeting and join in on an important discussion about teaching and students validated me as an educator. It was also affirming for me to share and listen into some our students whom we struggle to engage in class. It helped me to normalize my sense of stretch as a developing teacher.

LEARNING AND PROCESS SUPPORTS. While this is not part of the team meeting, another thing too, is that we got to attend a school-wide staff meeting where we conversed with other teachers about the new emerging teaching practice. This was a form of professional development, one among many that we are offered in the year. These professional developments help us to hone in on our inquiry and learning as developing teachers. It is also helpful to that we have access to the entire UBC e-library, where we can read up on articles, and textbooks.

TEACHER OWNERSHIP/AGENCY. I can think of this aspect of collaborative inquiry being incorporated in to our program by coming up with my own inquiry proposal. There is a sense of support I have thus received from my professors, instructors and colleagues especially when we had that one particular meeting where we came together as a cohort to discuss our inquiry questions and build on another. While there was a strong sense of community here, there nevertheless was also a sense of ownership and autonomy as a teacher candidate.

To summarize, this has been a great experience. As the research suggests, "teachers make and sustain valued changes to their practice when they collaboratively construct, monitor and adapt context-specific approaches to address their goals. In collaborative inquiry teachers work together to define problems, co-plan, co-teach, co-monitor and interpret outcomes, and then consider together "what's next".

I personally have experienced this throughout my program thus far, and I continue to look forward to seeing my inquiry question develop.

---

Schnellert, L. & Butler, D. (2014). Collaborative Inquiry: Empowering teachers in their professional development. Education Canada. 54(3), p.42-44.