At their worst, collaborative teams can seem like yet another burden to bear – perhaps even a frustrating waste of time in a school day already overflowing with commitments.
If your team doesn’t know how to use its time productively, and is expected to work collaboratively with little support or knowledge on how to do this, it’s difficult to use the power of the group to have any real impact.
Do you find your team focusing on the wrong things? Is it unclear how ongoing professional learning fits into the work of teams in a professional learning community (PLC)? Or maybe there’s just members who aren’t buying into the collective responsibility of the team.
In this illuminating program, designed for principals, assistant principals, collaborative team members, leadership staff, classroom teachers and specialist teachers, you’ll learn how to apply the essential evidence-based actions high-performing collaborative teams implement.
You’ll leave with new insights on how to overcome common challenges, measure impact and use clear processes to plan and conduct successful collaborative team meetings.
This retreat shares key information and tips to create a bridge between the PLC research and what it looks like in schools.
This webinar focuses on specific aspects of the collaborative team process – to help teams work more productively and efficiently on the right work.
A highly structured process for observing collaborative teams in action in order to provide them with specific feedback that accesses the team’s current reality and shapes their future direction against the Collaborative Teams That Work process.
Find out more about the actions required to address the critical Professional Learning Community (PLC) questions.
Investigate these 12 actions and their associated tasks, and find out how to apply to them to your current work as teams.
Discover the true work and focus of high-performing collaborative teams.
Develop insights into how to overcome the common challenges associated with working as a collaborative team.
Equip yourself with a clear process for planning and conducting collaborative team meetings that will lead to better results.
Learn how successful teams genuinely measure the impact they have on student learning and what to do about it.
Gavin Grift is the Founder and CEO of Grift Education. Gavin’s passion, commitment, humour and highly engaging style have made him one of Australia’s most in-demand presenters. Through his keynotes, seminars, and coaching services, Gavin connects with national and international audiences on how to cultivate authentic collaboration, build success in others and genuinely commit to reflective practice. His belief in the development of defined professional autonomy for educators both challenge and connect the head and heart of his audiences.
Having taught in schools and coached educators for over 25 years, Gavin understands the specific challenges teachers face. He is one of Thinking Collaborative’s most in demand Cognitive Coaching Trainers, having delivered the Cognitive Coaching Seminar® for the past 10 years, working across three continents. He has used his passion and belief in what educational leaders do, collaborating with Jane Danvers and Heather DeBlasio to design the Five Ways of Being leadership program, focusing on leaders who feel ill-prepared, overwhelmed, and sometimes lack confidence in the impact they’re making.
As a leading Hawker Brownlow Education author he has combined his beliefs, research and experiences on the importance of collaboration and coaching to co-author numerous books including 5 Ways of Being, Teachers as Architects of Learning, Transformative Talk, and Transformative Collaboration.
Colin Sloper is a leading expert and author on Professional Learning Communities. Colin works with systems, schools, leaders and educators to transform them into high-performing professional learning communities, and build their capabilities to operate as members of highly effective collaborative teams. Colin’s skills as an educational leader, speaker and coach – alongside his practical advice and knowledge as someone who has transformed schools – are highly sought after by educational organisations across all sectors.
He is co-author of numerous books including Transformative Collaboration: Five Commitments for Leading a Professional Learning Community, Collaborative Systems of Support: Learning for All, Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work® (Australian Edition) and Professional Learning Communities – Voices from the Field for Hawker Brownlow Education.
Colin has previously served as a principal and director in both schools and business, including Hawker Brownlow Education and Solution Tree Australia. He was instrumental in leading his school to become the first recognised PLC at WorkTM school in Australia, which subsequently led him to supporting other systems and schools across the country in their PLC journey.
It took me six years, through trial and error, to figure out what this book will explain to the reader in a logical and effective multi-stage process. This book is a gift to anyone who wants to support the development of strong collaborative teams, but simply does not have the access to the insight on how to do it.
Grift and Sloper have provided the practitioner with a guide that I would have given my right arm to have access to in 2001. I encourage anyone who has access to this book to read it carefully and apply the lessons that are so masterfully laid out in this brilliant, research-based manifesto on producing the most valuable asset in any effective school: strong collaborative teams.
Schools are institutions, not islands. The more we harness the power of WE, we will never understand why we ever chose to work in isolation.
– Anthony Muhammad.
