At the Colegio Menor San Francisco de Quito, an elementary school in Quito, Ecuador, the biggest challenge facing teachers is the development of a curriculum that supports child-centered learning, a new concept for Ecuador's traditional society. To strengthen their own teaching and educate parents, a group of teachers at the school began by collaborating among themselves. Through their students, they involved the parents. The result has been a dramatic increase in the students' love of learning.
The school, a project of Universidad San Francisco de Quito, is committed to preparing students for the 21st century. The environment is bilingual; students are exposed to English as a second language (ESL) for approximately 80 percent of the school day. As project director and workshop coordinator, respectively, we facilitated the 1st grade teachers' collaborative efforts. In part, a Global Grant from the University of Cincinnati made this possible.
Starting a Study Group
In a study group of 1st grade teachers, participants included four English-speaking teachers who taught all subjects except social sciences in English, two Spanish-speaking teachers who were responsible for teaching social sciences in Spanish in two classes, and one ESL teacher who planned with the four primary teachers and who divided her time in all four classrooms working one-on-one with students. There were also four teachers' assistants and one project coordinator.
The study group sought to use theme cycling to teach students how to learn. In a theme cycle project, students raise questions about a topic that interests them, use resources to seek answers or information, organize what they have learned, and present this information to others (Altwerger 1994). The concept was new to most of the teachers.
The group gathered every week to discuss readings and share experiences. Each participant contributed ideas, shared experiences, and offered encouragement to others as they strengthened their knowledge of the learning process.
At first it was difficult for them to visualize how to put collaboration and new instructional theories into practice. Some resisted these ideas about learning, criticizing them as being too idealistic. This demonstrated the importance of the collaborative study group approach.
It was important for the teachers to understand the ongoing process of learning that they were experiencing. At the meetings, they reflected on their experiences and listened to the perspectives of others. A vision that reflected the values of all in the group began to take shape. Everyone was able to acclimate his or her own way of thinking to this collective vision. The interaction among the members allowed them to better understand their own intrapersonal intelligence (Gardner 1993). This helped them to learn the conditions under which they worked best. Often they found that they taught best the way that they learned best.
As each participant came to understand the ways in which others worked best, all came to value the enrichment offered by different perspectives. For example, one of the teachers preferred to work alone, while another preferred to work with a partner. When tensions developed between them, the strategies they used to resolve the situation became a useful learning experience. The two were able to combine their strengths and provide a variety of instructional activities for their students.
After several sessions, the classroom teachers were ready to begin theme cycles. This did not come easily, because the group was still exploring the ways in which students learn how to learn. This next phase would prove to be a test of the abilities of the teachers to put their new theories into practice.
Taking the Plunge
One teacher took the plunge first and began a theme cycle on insects, using resources provided by the Global Grant Project. This teacher documented her experiences on videotapes, which became a visual resource for the group. After watching the tapes, the other teachers felt more confident to attempt theme cycles in their own classrooms.
Things worked very differently, however, for the next teacher to implement the theme cycle. She did not feel connected with the topic and was afraid of discouraging her students. After one week, she was ready to stop. We asked her to finish the work that she and her students had already started.
This teacher continued to talk with the other teachers in the group. Eventually, she invited students from the 7th grade, who were also studying insects, to work with her class. When she did, the students became very excited about the topic and the way they were learning, and the teacher caught their enthusiasm. The cycle lasted four months, as the students created new questions and sought answers to them.
As the members of the group began to analyze the processes that the first two teachers had followed, they came up with more ideas for implementing the theme cycle on insects. Some began to work together during the week as well. The teachers who taught in English and those who taught in Spanish began to work together as a team. This was important because they shared the same group of students.
While the teachers who taught in Spanish faced the difficulty that most of the resources were in English, the study group found that the students did not care whether the material was written in English or Spanish; they were more interested in the information itself. Students searched for information in books not only at their own reading level, but also at higher levels. When students had trouble with a word, they would try to figure out its meaning from the context. If they could not, they would ask for help. Once they understood the meaning of the text, they would share the information with others.
While the topic and materials were the same for each class, and each classroom became filled with books, drawings, paintings, and sculptures of insects, each teacher tailored the implementation of the theme cycle to the needs and interests of his or her own students. Two of the teachers invited middle school students to visit and answer the questions of the younger students. One teacher had her students interview other teachers about bugs. Some students discovered information on the Internet.
Each class organized events to share what they had learned with their parents and other students. These events included a bug party, a bug fair, and an exhibition of insect houses.
Involving the Parents
The teachers found that getting the parents involved was a powerful tool in helping the students to learn. As students asked their parents for help in searching for information, the two groups learned how to become team researchers. The parents found themselves learning from their own children.
In their final meeting, the study group members shared what they had gained from working together. They realized that the group had helped them to reflect on their experiences, learn new ideas, and improve the quality of their teaching. By sharing, they had learned how to learn from one another. Each acted as a model for the others and helped them to take risks. The members had begun to use each other as resources to spark their own imagination, creativity, organization, and research.
As a result, these teachers became more self-motivated. They came to realize that learning does not happen suddenly; it develops over time. Becoming a successful teacher depends not only on acquiring theoretical knowledge, but also on reflecting on experiences and sharing those of colleagues. Both teachers and students benefit from collaborative learning.
Some teachers from other grades saw the power that the 1st-grade teachers had gained from the study group and decided to start their own study groups. This will help to ensure ongoing innovations in teaching at Colegio Menor.
Only one of the teachers in the group found the theme cycle process to be hard. She said that she would not do another one, at least for that year. Her students, however, had become so excited by this way of learning that they demanded she continue to do theme cycles. The students had become intrinsically motivated, confident, and responsible about their learning. For them, reading and writing had become tools for learning rather than ends in themselves.
