Running Head: COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 1

Effective Communication and Collaboration

Patricia Moormann

Regent University
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 2

Introduction

Communication is extremely important for having a positive classroom environment and

a positive working environment. As a teacher, you need to have a good student-teacher

relationship with your students where they know that you care for them. You also need to have a

good working relationship with the parents of your students. It is important for them to know

who you are and know that they can reach out to the teacher with questions. It is very important

to have good communication and collaboration with the other teachers in your school to have a

positive working environment. All of these aspects combined make up a proper communication

and collaboration that a teacher needs to be successful.

At Brandon Middle School, we focused on having communication and collaboration

between the 8th grade Math teachers for Core Math 8, Algebra 1, and Geometry. The teachers

would meet every Thursday during the planning hour to collaborate with one another on what we

need to complete, fix, and update. At Oscar Smith High School, communication with the

students and parents are just as important. Parents receive emails and phone calls from the

teacher often regarding how their student is doing in the class, both good and bad! This allows

for good, effective communication where students and parents know what is being done in the

classroom.

This paper includes the welcome letter that was sent out introducing myself to the parents

of the students at Oscar Smith High School. The letter is important to inform parents and

students on who is going to be in the classroom with the students, and allows parents to reach out

with any concerns regarding how the classroom will operate with the student teacher there. This

paper also includes the notes from a professional learning community (PLC) meeting held at

Brandon Middle School with the Algebra 1 teachers on the work being completed and areas of
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improvement. This is important for teachers to continue to improve the material being used for

the students and proper distribution of the workload among the teachers when working in a

collaborative setting.

Rationale For Artifacts

The first artifact is the welcome letter that was sent out to the students’ parents regarding

myself being introduced to the classroom. This was done so that the parents were kept in the loop

about what was happening in their child’s classroom, and so the parents could get to know the

student teacher a little bit. This creates a good parent-teacher relationship which is extremely

important to the success of the students academically and developmentally. In Not just

communication: Parent–teacher conversations in an english high school, the authors wrote,

“Epstein’s theory emphasizes the family, school, and community —three overlapping spheres—

as important interacting systems affecting a child’s development,” (Bilton, Jackson, & Hymer,

2017, p. 233). Research has shown us that the parent-school relationship is very important when

raising a child. Therefore when a new teacher who will be there for an extended period of time is

introduced to the classroom, it is important that the teacher reaches out to have open

communication with the family.

The second artifact is the notes taken during the Algebra 1 PLC meeting. These notes

show the collaborative efforts being taken by the teachers who teach Algebra 1 in Brandon

Middle School to improve the understanding and knowledge of the students. During my time

there, we wanted to improve the scores of the Law of Exponents unit in Algebra 1. Working in

the PLC with the other teachers to come up with ways to improve the scores of our students was

a very important part to the planning of the unit. In Moving beyond the barriers: Supporting

meaningful teacher collaboration to improve secondary school mathematics, Jao and McDougall
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wrote, “researchers assert that collaboration is a viable means for educational reform and an

integral component of the reform process.” (Jao & McDougall, 2016, p. 558). If we want to

make a change in how our students are doing in the school, it is important to collaborate as

professionals. When you collaborate as a team, more ideas and hands are able to be used to

create a more effective environment.

Reflection

Throughout my classes at Regent University, we had talked about how critical it is for the

teacher to be in communication with the family. Looking at some of my prior experience when I

was in school, I had teachers that never reached out to my parents. Therefore, my mother did not

know what was going on in the classroom, for either good or bad reasons. This made it difficult

for my family when I would come home from school with stories of what took place that day.

Effective communication is essential to the learning process for students. In “I feel much more

confident now to talk with parents”: An evaluation of in-service training on teacher–parent

communication, the authors wrote, “When effective, communication between teachers and

families provides the two parties with a deeper understanding of mutual expectations and

children’s needs, thus enabling both to effectively assist children and to establish the basis of

cooperation,” (Symeou, Roussounidou, & Michaelides, 2012, pp. 65-66). As a teacher, I want to

make sure that I have good communication with the families so that the students are able to grow

and learn more than just academically in my classroom. Something as small as a welcome letter

to the parents can make a world of a difference, as it shows that you are actively going out of

your way to establish a connection with the parents, which is extremely important.

During my time at Regent University, we learned about collaborating with other teachers

in our activities in many different courses. Over that time, I was able to get more experience with
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how to work with others that thought about math differently than myself. During my education

courses, I was the only math major in the classes. Therefore, it was interesting to see how I can

collaborate with others who bring many different ideas to the table because their experience is

very different. While at Brandon Middle School, I saw this same concept show up in the

classroom, as every teacher comes from a different mathematical background. Therefore, I was

able to work with others with ease since I had the experience. While at Brandon, we collaborated

on notes, activities, lesson plans, reviews, and tests. While this is difficult with so many different

ideas, we were able to determine what we fundamentally wanted in our materials, but also have

the ability to individualize all of the materials to allow for a good collaborative environment.
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Works Cited

Bilton, R., Jackson, A., & Hymer, B. (2017). Not just communication: Parent–teacher

conversations in an english high school. School Community Journal, 27(1), 231-256.

Retrieved from

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.regent.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&

sid=ac2ed18f-e0b7-44e6-ad2c-620a9a699f08%40sdc-v-sessmgr01

Jao, L., & McDougall, D. (2016, August). Moving beyond the barriers: Supporting meaningful

teacher collaboration to improve secondary school mathematics. Teacher Development,

20(4), 557-573. Retrieved from

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.regent.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&

sid=12705367-b28b-4801-9bcc-073d8a4c4dc9%40pdc-v-sessmgr03

Symeou, L., Roussounidou, E., & Michaelides, M. (2012). "I feel much more confident now to

talk with parents”: An evaluation of in-service training on teacher–parent

communication. School Community Journal, 22(1), 65-87. Retrieved from

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.regent.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&

sid=038a7443-e473-48ae-9313-0e25dfac15d2%40sessionmgr4007