Collaboration

What does collaboration mean to you?

Collaboration is just a word holding a definition until a group of people make it mean something! To collaborate is to work together as a team, discuss ideas, and achieve a common goal.

Group projects has always been something I dreaded doing. I always ended up being the one stuck with all the work while no one else said anything. I remember my first semester in college I was assigned a group project and presentation. My group all exchanged numbers and planned to meet up in the library on numerous occasions. I was the only one to show. I ended up completing the entire project and presenting in front of the classroom by myself while my group stood to the side and then thanked me after class for pulling together such a wonderful project. Everyone got an A because of my work. I was furious and hated group projects since that day.

When I heard we had to do a group lesson plan and teach as a group I became very nervous. After meeting with my group I felt completely different. Everyone had such great ideas to contribute. We all had the same common goal in mind and would do anything to achieve it. We always showed up for group meetings, we met after classes, before classes and even had a Sunday pizza dinner together while completing our planning. Everyone contributed evenly and we all came to mutual agreements. Everyone had different experience that contributed to our lesson and made it better. It was great to work with such awesome future teachers.