Teachmeet Collaborate - Wednesday 25th September 2013 - 5pm-9pm

“If you want to walk fast, walk alone.

If you want to walk far, walk together.”

This proverb, happily ‘borrowed’ from a Steve Munby presentation at the Festival of Education, is a pithy reflection of the philosophy that underpins Teachmeet Collaborate.

A biannual event this teachmeet, itself a collaboration between Canons High and Park High schools in Harrow, has twin aims.

The first of these aims is to bring individual educators, departments and schools together to share their experiences of effective collaborative working. On the evening these contributors will give eight minute presentations to explain the ideas behind their collaborative working, their actions working together with others, the results of these actions and the impact of these actions upon their students, staff and schools.

The second aim of Teachmeet Collaborate is to bring individual educators, departments and schools together in new collaborative ventures. On the evening these contributors will have five minutes in which to pitch their ideas behind a proposed collaboration, explain their suggested actions and identify their intended outcomes and impact to the audience.

Following the ten presentations and six pitches David Weston of the Teacher Development Trust, a group that has recently established the National Teacher Enquiry Network (NTEN) and led calls for the establishment of a Royal College of Teaching, will deliver a keynote address. This talk will help potential projects within the room identify ways in which their future collaborations can be research-rich, methodologically sound and demonstrably effective.

Following the keynote there will be an opportunity for all attendees to meet with those giving presentations to find out more about their past collaborative ventures or an opportunity to meet with those giving pitches and make connections that will lead to future collaborative projects between schools.

It is our hope and intention that ideas pitched at the first Teachmeet Collaborate will lead to successful cross-school collaborative work that will become presentations at future events hosted by our two schools. In this manner we believe that TMCollaborate can generate a virtuous circle of school-to-school collaborative networks that enrich the professional capital of those working in our schools.

And the reason we want to establish these networks is because in education the time has come to stop walking so fast. We are far more interested in how far we can walk together. Above all else we hope that contributors and attendees alike will reflect, evaluate and share findings from the ‘walking far’ collaborations that start out at TMCollaborate.

In the coming weeks we will provide some suggestions about the kind of ‘Collaboration Presentations’ and ‘Collaboration Pitches’ that contributors may wish to give but we would also love to hear early ideas from you. As TMCollaborate has pedagogy at its heart possible areas of focus might include collaboration in areas such as curriculum planning, questioning for analysis, marking and feedback strategies.

We hope you can join us for this event and that it is the start of a great collaborative journey for you and colleagues you may not even have met yet.

Keven Bartle (@kevbartle)
Canons High School

Hélène Galdin-O’Shea (@hgaldinoshea)
Park High School

(reblogged from http://dailygenius.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/teachmeet-collaborate/ )