Last week, I mentioned how inspiring it was to discover that I had some colleagues at my school with whom I could collaborate as part of a Critical Friends Group®. I think collaborating with teachers outside our individual disciplines or subjects can be really helpful. Secondary teachers can be awfully focused on their subjects and forget what we share in common with all teachers; as a result, they lose out on some pretty helpful collaboration and perhaps, even more important, some supportive friends.

Still, it does help to connect with colleagues in your subject matter. I am glad that my friend Glenda Funk, who lives in Idaho, and I have started collaborating on AP Literature. Both of us are new to the subject this year. We connected via Google Hangout and talked a bit about our respective course outlines and our experiences in AP training this summer. We pooled our resources in a shared Google Drive folder. One of the things Glenda is really good at (and I’m not sure if she realizes this about herself or not) is lighting a fire under others. The Hangout was her idea, and we already have some other ideas cooking (all hers). She is also really good about reminding me to do my Slice when I haven’t. She’s not just a great collaborator but also a great friend. Knowing that she is out there and we can connect easily means I have someone I can run to with the quick question about something I might want to try. We also bounced some other ideas off each other. I told Glenda how I had planned to start off with a chalk talk in my classes and what I thought might be some good questions to ask, and she said that gave her an idea for a lesson tweak she might try on the first day as well. Even better, Glenda mentioned our collaboration on Facebook, and as a result, we’ve invited a couple more friends to join in.

I’ve been working my way through King Lear andA Thousand Acres. I plan to start the year with an introduction to AP—some analysis tools, some practices with both writing and multiple choice, learning how to read, use, and apply the rubric—and my unit on Home and Family with Lear and A Thousand Acres at the center will follow. I am really excited about teaching these pair texts. It has been a while since I read either of them, and they are so rich and powerful. I have been working a bit on a unit, but I realized I needed to finish reading both books completely before I could make progress (and I need my Folger books, which are at school, and I haven’t had a chance to go get them recently).

I think talking with Glenda has energized me, and I don’t think I’d be spending as much time on a unit that is probably about a month away if not for the fire she lights under me. It’s funny how subtle she is about it, too. I often don’t realize she’s prompted me to do something until I’m in the middle of doing it. We all need to have friends like that in our lives. Thanks Glenda!