How to build a teacher alliance

We don’t call our group that exactly. Officially, our meetings are called “Teacher Mentorship.” (Our group chat is called “mentor$hip.”) But an alliance is really what it is.

I’ve known teachers who worked in schools where they felt entirely on an island. All their colleagues were burnt out, disillusioned, and entirely uninterested in building relationships of any kind at work. The teachers at places like that who are seeking connection simply cannot survive.

Recently I read an article by a teacher I used to work with, Mr. Ismael Jimenez, about fostering connection and the sanctity of the present moment in the classroom. He writes, "Teaching from a worldview of interconnectedness means we cannot separate our well-being from that of our students. It means we cannot pursue 'success' if it comes at the expense of truth, community, or integrity. And it means that we must continually ask: What am I centering in this work? Is it fear or courage? Control or connection? Performance or presence?"

I've been thinking a lot lately about how that interconnectedness within the classroom just can't happen in the truest and deepest way if there is no interconnectedness across the school. My teacher squad gets together once a week to collaborate. We mostly focus on the newest member of our team and what support she needs with her lesson planning and development of systems in her classroom, but lately we've been putting our heads together to come up with a set of policies that we can hold in each of our classrooms so that kids have more consistency and be held to higher standards.

You might be wondering why we even have to do this in the first place. Don't schools have policies that all teachers are supposed to implement? You know, school rules? Sometimes I forget that that's a thing, I've gone so long working in places that ask each teacher to set the tone in their own classroom, by themselves, with no input from administration and no structured discussion amongst teachers or anyone else. It's in places like this especially that we need each other.

I try to focus on what’s positive about teaching in a context with so little regularity across classrooms. At least I can say for sure that I’m not micromanaged. It’s at least somewhat freeing to be able to set policies myself, and there’s never an instance of a child questioning my rules in which all I have to say is, “That’s just the way it is.” I can talk in depth about why I’ve chosen each policy, routine, or value that’s promoted in my room.

Whether your school has strict policies you’re expected to enforce, or whether you have to set the tone in your classroom alone, teachers need each other. I encourage my student teachers and new teachers to ask a lot of questions when talking to other teachers. Ask questions whether you want to get an answer for yourself, or whether you want them to get an answer. You might see teachers doing things you don’t agree with, and you want to change the culture of your school. Ask people what they do in their classrooms and how it’s working. You might find them asking you the same question back. Together maybe you can solve each other’s problems, maybe even with the same solution, but even if you’re both still doing the same thing at the end of the day that you were at the beginning, at least you’ve begun to forge an alliance.