02 CR A IG G E MMELL HE A D O F SCHO O L craig_gemmell@brewsteracademy.org
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CULTURE OF COLLABORATION The Brewster Culture: In this, my first year at Brewster, I’ve quickly become steeped in a professional culture long shaped by profound and unwavering collaboration. I sit in meetings where time-tested methodologies are employed intuitively by all involved (excepting me: I’m trying to un-learn engrained habits still), and problems are solved effectively because the very means of introducing and deliberating on the topic of the day — shuffling the schedule to accommodate a special event or changing a policy to make expectations of students clearer, more appropriate — leverage individual strengths within a group in order to advance institutional needs. Consequently, our capacity to evolve while holding firm to abiding values is stunning, and I have come to believe that any challenge is not insurmountable given how our innovation is supported by the collaborative culture we work to support and augment daily. This culture did not emerge by accident. In fact many schools and many other organizations, suffer from “siloism” in which stakeholders defend areas of interest and institution-wide decisions are slow to happen and change is both halting and painful. Here, teachers and administrators alike have had to figure out how to develop structures to enable systemic collaboration and new teachers systematically learn how to collaborate. These coherent institutional practices are critical because they allow us to serve our students powerfully. Our Students: Our mode of collaboration about policy and practice informs us in our most important work: how we meet kids where they are and narrow the gap between present performance and promise. Instead of a single advisor trying to move the dial on student performance in isolation, teams collaborate regularly to share information, develop consensus about action plans, and ensure that those action plans for changing student trajectory are monitored through time closely. I knew I wanted to work for this school when I saw my first team meeting on a beautiful fall day in 2014 during several days of on-campus interviews, and I’ve come to realize that this practice of planning broadly agreed upon strategies in support of students is a cornerstone practice of all we do so well. In the Classroom: After my fall and early winter of immersion in administrative processes, I’ve started spending time with the six academic teams and, in
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so doing, I’ve come to see that the wellevolved modes of collaboration that were long ago developed in service to institution and students alike are also taught in extremely effective ways. Students learn how to collaborate through leveled learning groups, through group projects, and through our Project-Based Learning program. They come to understand quickly how to play an assigned role in a group effectively: how to be a leader, a collaborator, and a follower. They learn to leverage each other’s capacities in service to shared goals. And, perhaps most importantly, they learn to leverage the cognitive diversity inherent in any group to produce results that are greater than the sum of the parts. Beyond Brewster: Our students will graduate and enter a world in which collaboration is happening in colleges at an unprecedented rate. That our students are skilled in this mode of learning upon matriculation both places them in an advantageous position and renders them more likely to both lead and thrive in the classroom, and I conjecture that Brewster students’ impressively high retention rate in colleges (96 percent matriculate to their sophomore year whereas the national average is about 70 percent) is one of the many drivers behind this. And that our students are armed with collaborative abilities also positions them well beyond college for companies that seek collaboration as a central “soft skill” in the workplace. The Upshot: I’ve come to realize just how fortunate I am to be at this fine school because of its purposefulness, and key to its purpose is to force evolution in all dimensions — complex work. A culture in which collaboration is both practiced and taught is just one facet in the wonderful complexity I’m encountering, appreciating, reflecting upon. Of this I’m sure: the degree of intentionality with which we prepare students to live great lives of meaning and purpose, accomplishment and commitment to that which is larger than the self is the end game, and I’m confident that we are delivering, and such is the greatest feeling one could have as a first year head. / BA /