When contemporary teachers decide to collaborate, they have a daunting task: to create and utilize curricula to make sure that each child has access to, that is an “entry point” or “stepping stone” into the learning, so that each child can be successful.

Under the leadership of school principal Serge Marshall Davis, PS/MS 95, teachers at the Sheila Mencher School have taken up the challenge of collaboration with a mission: to provide enhanced opportunities for student learning. The challenge is motivated from the heart: the teachers’ sincere desire to improve the students’ deeper learning and by the mind: the intellectual quest to find ways to teach children, to enable them to experience being a reader, a writer, a scientist, an artist, a learner.  Coaches Dr. Desline Brown, Michelle DiRenzo, Andrea Faulkner, Nadim Farooqi, Anna Massaro and Brandi Nankivel work on many techniques such as blended learning, promoting peer questioning, tech buddies, vertical planning and “setting the frame” for sharing ideas, with systematic practice to assist the teachers in improving student skills.

The National Education Association is proud of teachers who connect, engage, share, collaborate with each other in moving learning forward. Collaboration at this school has many facets. Teachers collaborate through the mechanisms of peer observations, inter-visitations and meetings with coaches, small and large group conversations and scheduled formal meetings to discuss their collective students’ progress, class tests, student accountability, teacher professional readings on methodology and their enjoyment of small and big moment successes through individual conferencing with children.  They also track student skill development through various technological programs such as Google Docs, Mastery Connect and I Ready.

Middle school students receive assignments, do assessments and projects and are marked on their work using technology. Middle school teacher David Horn poses the questions: “How does the improvement of teaching happen? How can we use face-to-face meetings, technology and other methods to get to deeper learning? How can we meet the needs of the students who are struggling?” He and his colleagues search for ways to meet the students’ needs and address them in each lesson plan. Kevin McMahon brings strategies across the curriculum to give cohesion to the lesson planning process, which he calls “an organic collaboration” with Mr. Horn and others. Melissa Perez, dance teacher of the Elite Dance Team, finds cooperation throughout the whole school with colleagues, administrators, parents and school groups and utilizes these connections to solve problems and support the efforts of the dancers to put together their shows.

A stellar example or centerpiece of collaboration at PS/MS 95 is the Computer Coding Project which introduces young children to basic computer programming skills. According to Steve Jobs, “programming a computer teaches you how to think.” This project involves teacher collaboration, fifth grade-to-first grade student collaboration, computer teacher to classroom teacher collaboration and teacher to administrator collaboration, where administrators facilitate access to the equipment, materials, logistics and educational evaluation.

This computer curriculum puts the children through the paces of steering characters through a maze. Students need to concentrate on sequencing, direction and other math skills. Students participate in the elements of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in this mental activity.  The project involves the presence of older children (fifth graders), to assist younger children (first graders), on a one-to-one partner basis.  The partners sit side-by-side at a shared computer and, step by guided step, first graders build a program, mentored by fifth graders. Parents can check out the website code.org for a sense of what the program looks like. (Get ready for some angry birds, naughty pigs, zombies and other animated characters!)

The collaborating teachers, including the computer teacher Amanda Barelli and the fifth and first grade teachers, as well as the grade level administrators, have a vision of how the students should be working, and facilitate the activity on a weekly basis.  They see an improvement in the students’ abilities to make strategic choices, to think and to collaborate with fellow students.  The experience fosters leadership skills of the fifth graders and develops a passion for the subject.  A first grader said, “I like it because at first I felt nervous but when I got into the game I knew I could learn it.”

The new schools chancellor is quoted as saying that, among other things, school must pay attention to “leadership, teaching, curriculum and joyful learning.”

School Leadership Team Chair Francheska Ceballos sums it up by living the creed that the mission is “to be there for the students and their families, with a clear vision and unity across the board.”

At PS/MS 95, teacher collaboration is celebrated – and has it all.