What does Collaboration Really Mean?
Collaboration means working together for a greater purpose. It means
finding common ground with your neighbor, your partner, your community members
to work toward a common vision. When creating a school-to-work partnership,
this is sometimes easier said than done. However, if we truly have a vision
and a solid purpose - collaboration can take on a life of it's own.
In the case of creating a school-to-work system that truly includes ALL
learners, it means learning to color outside the lines. It means working
hard to include stakeholders from a wide variety of community groups. It
means that we can no longer work in isolation with a singular purpose, but
that our purpose must be a long-range plan to develop a system that includes
everyone. We must model that through our collaboration on our school-to-work
local partnerships.
How to do this? Here are a few strategies your local school-to-work partnership
can use to get started:
Include everyone who is interested or wants to be involved.
All partnerships- whether a full committee, sub-committee, school board
or City Council - can become unmanageable . However, the issue rarely stems
from how many people are involved or how large the partnership has become.
Usually the problem lies in whether or not the members have taken the time
to organize a good internal structure for meeting and getting work done.
Work with your partnership to develop a good structure for teams, for implementing
action plans, for dividing responsibility. Try it for a while. If it doesn't
work, just admit it doesn't work and reevaluate your strategy.
Develop an orientation packet and process for welcoming new partners.
The packet should include information about school-to-work, the purpose
of your partnership, legislation related to your purpose we, and anything
else that will help new partners become effectively involved. This information
can also be used to market your work with the community at large - with
local newspapers, the chamber of commerce, and with recruitment of businesses,
parents, and others.
Assign a partnership member to each new partner and have them act as
a mentor by answering questions, providing guidance, and helping the new
partner feel at ease. This will not only help them to feel welcome, but
will increase the chances that your new partner will return to the next
meeting. This is most important with student members.
Rely on a team approach to get the work done.
Many partnerships are too dependent on one person - usually an elected
chairperson - to get the job done. A chairperson can provide a model of
good leadership, but all partners need to share responsibility for accomplishing
goals and implementing activities.
One way to promote the team approach is to divide your partnership into
teams around the goals you have established. You may or may not want to
identify team captains to provide minimal leadership to each team. Captains
can report on progress, issues, and help make sure all team members have
equal opportunity to contribute and participate.
Another way to promote the team approach is to have rotation of responsibility
for planning and facilitating partnership meetings. Use your partnership
list to identify a lead group to plan the next meeting, to implement activities
at the next meeting, and to provide a solid foundation for getting work
done. This team can be made up of different people for each meeting - or
can remain the same for a specified amount of time - on a quarterly basis,
for example. The team can meet by teleconference call to plan the meeting
and assign responsibility for activities at the meeting.
This can help to spread responsibility throughout your partnership and
gives everyone a chance to provide a leadership role in meeting your goals
and objectives. It also removes the problems that arise when one or two
people are made responsible for all follow-up and all planning.
Include young adults as leaders in your school-to-work activities.
Young adults make wonderful partners. They want to be included, not only
as particpants in school-to-work activities, but as leaders on school-to-work
local partnerships. Young adults can and will take responsibility to help
develop and to help implement school-to-work systems, opportunities, and
options. Your partnership and your activities will be more interesting and
much more successful if the people you are planning for, become the people
you are planning with..
Your collaborative partnership meetings will also become much more fun!
It will also hold your school-to-work partnership accountable for ensuring
that what you are planning, actually addresses the interests, needs, and
dreams of the children and young adults in your community. Including young
adults as leaders in your collaborative efforts will change the way your
partnership does business - from business as usual - to creative problem
solving and action-oriented results!
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is this: building a school-to-work partnership and developing
a school-to-work system is not a competition. School-to-work is for every
learner - male or female, for those who speak English as their second language,
for those who have disabilities, for those who are gifted. Each learner
crosses over the boundaries we have defined, to make them the unique
person they are. We can support them in their dreams and goals by crossing
over the boundaries of our work scope to look at the bigger picture. We
are all valuable, insightful partners with much to offer.
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