Restart your drive for collaboration, with Matt Roberts.
When I began my teaching career just over a decade ago, I never planned to become a podcast host. I didn’t even know what a podcast was! However, almost 100 episodes later, my podcast has become a precious part of my life. It has brought so many opportunities and helped me make so many incredible connections.
How it came to be and how it has changed my life is for another day. However, the podcast has helped me to realise the importance of networking and connecting with like-minded individuals. I can honestly say that my teaching career would not be the same without the opportunities to connect and collaborate.
Social media, blogs and in-person events have completely shifted the paradigm of my practice and make me even more excited for the future of education.
The great thing is you don’t need to start your own podcast to benefit from the power that collaboration with other practitioners can bring. If you want to benefit by learning from others, you can begin by taking small steps, e.g., joining a social media platform or reading a blog post a week. Even the smallest of steps can take you on a transformative journey.
3 reasons to get collaborative
Here are just some reasons why either beginning or restarting your drive to collaborate is well worth your time.
Impact 1 – Ideas
I said this recently to a colleague and I’m certain the same will be true after another decade in education:
“Every one of my most successful or most impactful ideas came from someone else.”
Adapted, adjusted or reformed for my context, yes, but the essence of my best ideas have, more often than not, come from someone else. Sometimes the legwork of that initiative was done by someone else too! In such a time-poor profession, the ideas and materials that others generate are such a valuable resource. As such, it only makes sense that the more connections you make and platforms you interact with will shape and mould your practice more and more.
Innovation is the life-blood of education – as we become more connected, more of those fresh new ideas will become available to us.
Impact 2 – Support
During my career, I have had some real low points, like I’m sure many of you reading this will have. Whether it be personal circumstances or work-related stresses, no one will be immune from challenges and difficulties in their practice. We should reach out to loved ones and close colleagues in these difficult times – no amount of social media contacts or professional networks can and should replace those important outlets. However, the more connections we have, the more strength of others we can draw on. Due to my efforts to connect and network, I have a lot more people I can now reach out to and it is more likely there will be someone who may have been through a similar experience.
I liken it to a spider’s web – if I have many strands and connections, if some of those strands fail, I will still have enough to hold the web together and keep me in place. Support and strength is something which is sorely needed in this profession and finding more ways to build that will only serve you well in the times ahead.
Impact 3 – Motivation
This final boon of collaborating with more like-minded professionals through professional networks, social media platforms and other opportunities is that of motivation. If we are not careful, we can find ourselves going through the motions. In the busiest periods, we may find ourselves just reverting to what has worked before, entering a survival mode.
Working in collaboration with others can fuel our intellectual curiosity. This, in turn, can bring enthusiasm and excitement for what we do. Remember that you have the potential for impact and influence on the lives of dozens of young people (at the very least)! Not to mention the people they will influence: their families, friends, others in the school community and who knows who else in the future.
I think back to my Year 6 teacher to whom I attribute the source of my desire to start teaching. Did he know then that the enthusiasm he approached his teaching with would instigate an educational podcast that would influence thousands upon thousands of listeners? The very thought of what we could be an influence for, leads me to want to try a little better to be an inspiration.
Summary
Collaborating with other educators has so much potential to influence us. It really would be worth our time reflecting on how we can extend our reach further – if not to benefit us, then for the benefit of the children in our classrooms.
Author
Matt is an Assistant Headteacher with responsibility over KS2, assessment, curriculum and maths. He has completed an NPQH, currently leads a Maths Subject Leader Network in a local authority and is the Primary Education Voices podcast host and author of the book with the same name.
