The Connected Educator - Chapter 4 - Camryn Juckett

        The chapter begins with explaining how sometimes you may have to change your values and beliefs to create connected learning with others. If you are not optimistic with things, you will never be open to view others opinions. That is not a great mindset to have, especially when you are involved in a connected learning community. There seems to be a lack of re-culturing and education on collaborative culture in today's world. 

        The chapter moves onto the topic of "Putting Relationships First'. "Fostering, nurturing, and maintaining positive, congenial relationships is the first step toward building collaborative cultures - in your school and in a more global connected learning community" (page 59). It is important that educational environments, such as schools keep congenial and collegial relationships. The slight difference between these two is congeniality is "the polite, friendly relationship we have with one another" (page 59). Collegiality is defined as "a shared belief that none of us is as good (or smart) as all of us, and we can all contribute to improved individual practice" (page 59). Collegiality helps others collaborate together to get perfect their group work. Collegiality can be hard to establish but with hard worth ethic and knowledge you will have expertise on the subject your group is collaborating on. On the other hand, Congeniality is more of a social relationship. It means keeping good conversations about things people have in common and just having general conversation. However, these friendly relationships can lead to more helpful collaborative professional relationships as well. 

        Creating trust plays a big role in these collaborative relationships. While giving feedback to others, they expect honest feedback and truthful responses. Building this trust creates a lot of respect for one another and develops proper etiquette within these communities. 

        The book then moves onto the discussion of genuine collegial relationships and how to create them. This is an important topic since these types of relationships are difficult to form. The first step to an easy and healthy collegial relationship is sharing ideas and cooperating with each other with the goal to cooperate rather than debate these topics. Making time to meet face to face to interact and discuss shared ideas and practices is a helpful way to create this trust and bond for this relationship. 

        Understanding the stages of collaboration is mandatory. The four stages are forming, storming, norming, and performing. The forming stage is defined as members getting to know one another on a basic level since the trust is not formed yet. Storming is the stage of getting to learn how one another works and how to adapt to it. It causes disagreements and frustration, but without this stage the collaboration would not be as strong as it is with this experience. Norming is learning how to work as a team for one project when the deadline is coming up. It is mainly the stage of learning how to get the work done together while in a timely manner. Lastly, performing is when "the culture of collaboration has been established" (page 67). The conversations during this stage of collaborating is how to achieve the groups' goals. 

        Applying this chapter to my college career is very easy for me because I had to adapt to a new environment and new people. Being in one place for so long is difficult because once there is one change you have to adapt to it fairly quickly. Being a freshman this year, it was not hard for me to adjust but it was just eye opening to see the difference between high school and college. Whether it be the workload, professors, or the people around you. There was a lot of change, but now that I am comfortable in this space it is easy for me to work with new professors and classmates. 

        Foreseeing my future career as someone who wants to work in the medical field, this chapter really applies to me. Being in the medical field will be a big adjustment for me, seeing things I have never seen before, working with people with more experience than me, or people who are older or younger than I am. It is definitely going to be a big change but as time goes on I will be able to handle it with those four stages. Nothing is ever perfect without practice and learning how to work with others even if it is something you are not used to. This chapter really helped me understand how to keep an open mind with everything and taught me that collaborating with others is not easy but it takes time to perfect it. 

Have any of you faced a challenge with collaboration this year?