Collaborator

The story of this week has been me, collaborating. My assistance was requested by the ICT teacher for her integration on the Year Two storytelling unit. She's doing stop-motion animation with the kids, and she wanted to know if I would be able to help the kids make their characters and backgrounds. And since this is a PYP school where collaboration is key, the answer was a resounding, "Hell yes!"

So last Wednesday I joined her for two blocks and observed/assisted her instructing 2C for a double block on how to use the technology for a stop-motion animation. Between then and now they went into the classrooms and made storyboards, and in my classes this week, they created the characters and backgrounds in groups the classroom teachers assigned. Sounds pretty great, right? Except here comes the major problem I've had with group work (let's face it: collaboration is just a fancy word for group work) my whole life: people don't always do their share, you can't always count on them to have their shit together. Thus, some of the teachers sent their kids in in an orderly fashion, in their assigned groups with their storyboard in hand. Some of the teachers forgot to tell me the groups and/or send the storyboards. A couple of them got the number of groups they were supposed to create wrong. And one teacher didn't even have storyboards. So it was a small bit of chaos. I also prefer to teach in a more structured way, and I just couldn't see how to do it besides sitting back and letting them rip. I kept up with them the best I could, but I tend to be a little anal retentive and I wasn't completely at ease with the level of completedness all the students made it to.