Episode 69: Building Collaborative Learning Cultures

Available April 1, 2025

Professional development is an important part of educational leadership, but not all professional development opportunities are equally effective. When we’re seeking to improve teaching and learning outcomes in our schools, are we developing classrooms or cultures? Siloes or collaborative communities? Guests Elham Kazemi and Jessica Calabrese, co-authors of Learning Together: Organizing Schools for Teacher and Student Learning, join host Morva McDonald to share how they worked together on a novel practice that built community, improved student outcomes, and changed how both teachers and learners thought about their work.

Guests: Jessica Calabrese and Elham Kazemi

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We think about what it is that we want to try with students, but then all of us go into the classroom together. Instead of going separately into our own individual spaces, we collaboratively go into one space where we know the kids, where we're invested in their learning, and try to learn with them. So we'll pose the tasks. We'll think with the kids. We'll tell the kids that we're there to try something out and learn from the children themselves. And we pause when we need to make sense of what to do next or something that we see that we didn't anticipate, that now we can take advantage of because our real children are there with us.” (7:52)
• “We have to redefine our identity as teachers, that my job isn't to get kids to do things. I can get you to do things, but you are not left with something new in your understanding when I walk away. So if I'm truly teaching you to be a learner, like we talk a lot about teach the reader, not the book. Teach the mathematician, not the math. And it takes a lot of reassurance from leaders for teachers to believe it's okay to do that, that I am not being judged by what I can get kids to do, things in a moment or on a day of a test. And I find myself saying that a lot of like, we're growing children, not test scores.” (37:51)

Related Episodes: 67, 58, 49, 45, 32,19

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