Teacher Collaboration Experiences: Finding the Extraordinary in the Everyday Moments.

In this report of a phenomenological study, the co-director of a U.S. early childhood program describes and reflects on the interrelationship of his collaborative work with teachers, staff members’ documentation of children’s work and school events, and his own professional development activities. The author presents and discusses three events that took place over the course of a year. In the first narrative episode, his recent professional development experience at a program inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach enables him to support a teacher who is feeling discouraged about challenging situations in her classroom. Together they plan an after-school event that engages families in reorganizing parts of the classroom. The second narrative episode centers on the author’s documentation of a complex construction made by two children in a new space that was created by the reorganization efforts. The final narrative episode consists primarily of a reflective conversation among the author, the teacher, and two colleagues, during which documentation panels created by the author and the teacher are the basis for collaborative discussion about the events of the preceding two narratives. Each narrative is followed by a discussion and brief analysis. The paper concludes with reflections on resulting insights about collaboration, documentation, and professional development. Background The phenomenological study discussed in this article took place at a universitysponsored, full-day early childhood lab school program in Portland, Oregon, USA. The author and participant-researcher is a co-director of the program. The other educator-protagonists include Marsha, an experienced teacher of 3- to 5-year-olds, Suzy, the program’s studio teacher, and Sheryl, another researcher who was involved in a related project. The report begins with an excerpt of a retrospective, collaborative, reflective dialogue involving Marsha, the author, Suzy, and Sheryl. This conversation occurred a year after the series of events that will form the body of this report. Marsha discusses classroom situations that had come to a head a year previously. One parent had expressed concern that her 5-year-old child was upset about two classmates reportedly saying that they did not like her because her hair was “frizzy” and she was “ugly.” Another parent who had been with Marsha’s class for two years was frustrated with Marsha’s co-teacher’s communication style. Other parents were seeking to become more involved in the classroom, and Marsha found their complaints “daunting to her spirits.” Marsha: I remember this parent that had just been unhappy for two years, and I had this other one whose child said all this stuff about others not liking her because of the way she looks, and then later the child denies this happened as we try to bring the hurt out in the open…. We could never really figure out who really said what from that trio of children, although we tried to mediate the situation with parents and the children. I would just live this dread every day, and … try to figure it out. It was amazing and difficult.