Collegiality, Collaboration, Community

Collegiality, Collaboration, Community. These three words, I believe, are fundamental to holistic educators. They impact our relationships with all learners—fellow teachers, instructors, professors, and, most importantly, students. Through collaboration with colleagues at the WLU Literacies for All Summer Institute we are able to reaffirm our beliefs that what we do is in the best interests of learners of all ages. And frequently we are able to discover, or only just be reminded, of ways to excite those learners to greater achievements.

While each of us has our individual techniques for establishing community in our classes, reflecting on and discussing with colleagues George Ella Lyon’s wonderful presentation caused me to change my original plans in an elective Creative Writing class in my high school. One of the first activities is to begin to establish our community. Creative Writing is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, so even though we are all from the same school, we need to come together. We began our writing this semester with our own “I Am From . . . “ poems. Once written, poems were shared and discussed in small groups. Then each group wrote a collaborative “We Come From . . . “ poem. The results were interesting, to say the least, and I would like to share two of the poems with you.

We come from a lifetime of living in Mundelein.
Lives filled with mundane details.
Filling our minds with provincial ideas.

We come from diverse backgrounds:
German, Italian, Austrian, French Canadian, Native American,
Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.

We come from being our daddys’ little girls.
Enjoying every moment of our time together.

We come from households stressing the
importance of education.
Encouraging our collegiate dreams.

And

We come from . . .

Second period,

History, Anatomy, Spanish, Math
We walk down the halls
Always the same path
We all meet up in A114
Where Mr. Szymkowiak
Keeps it so fresh and so clean.

Once published, our poems were displayed around the room and became the source of discussion. Collegiality, Collaboration, Community.