No single educator should be held responsible for student success. Many students work with multiple adults in a school setting. Collaboration amongst teachers and specialists is essential not only to ensure each child’s academic progress, but also to support inclusion and equity in the classroom.
What is Collaboration?
Collaboration is an effective tool that helps teachers, specialists, administrators, and other school personnel work together to meet each student’s individual needs. Collaboration supports all students, including the 1 in 5 with learning and attention difficulties. The National Center for Learning Disabilities defines the primary purposes of collaboration as “identifying and sharing effective academic, behavior, and social-emotional instructional practices, ensuring that practices are consistent across all providers, and ensuring that the students benefit from those practices.”
Collaboration allows each professional working with a child to share their unique knowledge about the child and their progress with others in order to meet learner variability. For example, a general education teacher may collaborate with an occupational therapist to develop a classroom plan that supports a student with their fine and gross motor development in the classroom. The teacher and therapist may implement accommodations and modifications such as the use of pencil grip and/or Theraputty (a putty-like material that can be molded and stretched to build hand strength and develop fine motor skills) and heavy work activities targeted for proprioceptive input such as being assigned jobs to help carry heavy items on a regular basis. By collaborating with specialists, general education teachers are able to consistently implement differentiated strategies, accommodations, and modifications that will not only ensure success for a child with learning differences and encourage inclusion and equity, but will also benefit all students.
What Does Collaboration with Specialists Look Like?
The opinions expressed in Montessori Life are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of AMS.