However, empowering teachers to collaborate on school-wide tasks and to work with one another on becoming more effective requires that a new relationship be forged between administrators and teachers. Implementing this kind of program is never easy. If collegiality has not existed before, resistance is likely to come from all quarters. Still, the benefits warrant the effort. The following factors should be considered in thinking about how to create a sense of collegiality in a school.
Time is our most precious resource.
Sufficient time must be allocated for collegiality. When is unimportant. The important thing is that teachers and administrators meet frequently enough and for sufficiently long periods to enable them to discuss their educational philosophies, long-term issues, and ways they can work together. Faculty meetings are too often perfunctory, covering information that could be disseminated in a school bulletin, or they are held in response to a crisis situation. Collegiality stems from discussions about students, instruction, and curriculum, and such discussions take significant chunks of time.