Chapter 4 The Connected Educator

 Chapter 4 of "The Connected Educator" by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach had a specific focus on the benefits of collaboration along with information about creating healthy relationships with others. Collaboration is extremely important as multiple minds are always better than one. In fact, I would argue that one of society's greatest feats is collaboration, and examples are laid out in history. Everday whether you realize it or not you are very likely to collaborate with another no matter who you are. Collaboration is not only the key to completing tasks but also for brainstorming and finding the greatest solutions through debate. This is a skill I will need to improve on as my future career as an educator can greatly benefit from it. I will not only need to collaborate with other educators but also my students so that I can not only educate them but also become a greater educator myself. There are four steps to collaboration that will increase its effectiveness and these are forming, storming, norming, and performing. The first step forming is about getting to know each other and attempting to form trust. Storming is about communicating to form greater ideas and to help other members improve. It is important to stay open to constructive criticism in this step as criticism can actually improve someone's skills down the line. The third step norming is about normalizing behaviors that are beneficial to the group so that they may be successful in their attempts. The last and final step is performing which is essentially when the group is comfortable enough with each other to perform tasks together and to listen to others to improve on themselves. The chapter also contained a focus on relationships. Relationships are vital to collaboration. It is important to familiarize yourself with someone else because it will validate their criticisms. People generally do not take advice from people they don't trust. As an educator, I will need to form healthy relationships with other educators as it will aid my ability to focus on helping my students learn the materials. Putting aside all of my issues will help me focus on what is best for my students. Establishing trust and transparency are both very important in building healthy relationships. Transparency means being open, communicative, and also accountable. Each of these three are important aspects of becoming transparent because people need to that you can be given constructive criticism and take responsibility for failure when it arises. All in all, collaboration is an extremely important action to part take in and the best collaboration occurs when there is a healthy relationship that contains trust and transparency. One question that I will ask the readers of this post is what would be a great group exercise for people to quickly become comfortable with each other.