Rachel McCrum

Block B Folio
Community Collaboration
This semester, collaboration has had a huge impact on every aspect of my teaching.
From collaboration within Jordan Hall at Butler to within Mrs. Jones Third Grade
classroom at Central Elementary, I have benefited and grown with each
collaborative encounter. Through these experiences, I have reflected upon my
strengths and weaknesses and hope to achieve future goals based on these selfobservations.
I truly feel that teacher collaboration has been crucial to my growth this
semester. Without these relationships, I would not be as aware of my successes and
more importantly, areas for improvement. I have been blessed by honest and
detailed feedback from my professors, and hope they have felt benefited from my
suggestions and ideas.
Not only have I had the opportunity to collaborate with my Professors within
Butler, but also engaging with my peers. I really appreciate the amount of peer
collaboration I have had in Block B classes and feel that it has helped me develop
skills in working with others by increasing my patience and broadening my ability to
see different perspectives on a topic. This type of collaboration is parallel to the real
world!
Peer collaboration with my enrichment co-teacher, Emily Amon, has been
such a positive growth experience this semester. By coming together and sharing
our ideas, Emily and I created a more engaging and effective set of lessons, in a
much more efficient way, than if the lessons were not collaborated on or co-taught. I

have learned so much from being able to observe Emily during our teaching
sessions, and noted positive things that she models during lessons (i.e. being
genuinely enthusiastic about every teaching point, so that the kids get excited
about the learning too*) that I would love to implement into my own future
teaching.
Without community collaboration, I wouldnt have the opportunity to co-teach
with Emily, or have any practicum experiences for that matter. Community
collaboration at Central has been responsible for much of my professional growth
this semester. In Professor Schmids courses, I was introduced firsthand to all of the
incredible resources available in our community! These opportunities allowed me to
gather resources and to gain motivation to research available opportunities in my
community in the future. I also learned that many community members are willing
to come to your school if you cant come to them. The most valuable thing I will
take away from those experiences will be the idea of bringing the outside world in
to students. For example, creating lesson plans based on museum exhibits helps to
provide unique learning opportunities for all children. Also, finding opportunities to
get kids into nature during science lessons is necessary because many may only
observe nature through the media and pictures in books.**
In future collaborative endeavors, I hope to ask for and provide more
constructive feedback to my peers, in order to create an even more enhanced result
or product of our efforts. I also want to continue to keep in mind that understanding
how your peer thinks and teaches and adjusting to/complimenting that helps to
create a cohesive collaboration between partners. I also plan to broaden my
connections and knowledge of community resources in order to enhance my future
teaching to the best of my ability.

Figure 1* Through peer

collaboration, I observed that
Emily Amon's genuine passion for
teaching is reflected by her
modeling of enthusiasm for
learning to our students!

Figure 2* Through
community collaboration, I
learned that nature
experiences in the
community can bring
science learning to life and
provide all students with
unique opportunities to
learn!