Meeting April 7
Present: Marta Cabral (Staten Island); Amy Haas (KCC); Lea Fridman (KCC); Kristine Polizzotto (KCC); Midori Yamamura (KCC)
Teachers who use “Team as Support” will find their students, at the end of the semester, very happy with the approach. Universally students will say that “Team as Support” made their class more fun. But it also means a commitment on the part of the professor to continually find ways to support teamwork and “Team as Support.”
“Team as Support” grew out of two intensive trainings that Lea took: Team Based Learning which is widely recognized across the academy and the Landmark Team Management and Leadership Program, an approach to teamwork that has been adopted by the largest and most innovative businesses including Apple, Google and more. Lea’s approach incorporates elements of both within a model that emphasizes support. This element – the emphasis on “team as support” – has improved the success of the team in her classes over a number of years.
The role of the Team Leader is especially important. Students take this role seriously and put their hearts into it and into
supporting one another, which is the purpose of everyone in the team being on the team chat. The Outgoing Team Leader Report which is sent to the professor at the end of the week of leadership, is especially revealing. In it, the Team Leader assesses their team and writes about their own creative interventions in their team. Teachers find that they get a glimpse into what is going on beyond the “walls” of their classroom.
How does a professor support teamwork in cases where a team is not functioning well or a student is reluctant to be a Team Leader? Lea simply tells the student that teamwork and taking a turn at being the Team Leader is written into the syllabus of the course and is a requirement. Overall, she saw reluctant students, especially the shy ones, blossom.
It is not easy to deal with a team that is in breakdown or functioning at less than capacity. But that is actually a moment of opportunity, a moment to sit down (or zoom) with a team and ask what is going on – in a non-judgmental way. Given our student body, the issues often involve work and responsibilities of various kinds. Where there is breakdown, in other words, that is the space for extra support, exploration, empathy. In some cases, the students of that team may do better if they move over to other teams that are more active. In one case, students in a team that was in “breakdown” refused to move to other teams and
started working together in powerful ways. They eventually became the top team in that class.
It is important to create team-based assignments and break-out rooms in zoom classes in order to foster and encourage teamwork. We look forward to sharing ideas for such assignments at our meetings.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
… [Trackback]
[…] There you will find 57334 more Infos: kctlpossible.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2021/05/02/session-2-team-as-support-summary-of-april-7th-fig-meeting/ […]