Importance of Partnership

Jean Clark is an Instructional Coach in Maryland who has worked with Sherry Eichinger for the past year. Below is a vignette (an edited version of what Jean told me in an interview) in which Jean explains, beautifully I think, just how beneficial it can be to have a collaborating teacher who can support you as you work to improve instruction in your school:

Jean Clark talking about Sherry Eichinger:

Faith
In the years previous, it used to be that I was training to be a professional developer. But I had this fear that maybe I don’t have good people skills, perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this. I kept running into these adults who were getting really ticked off at me. I kept thinking, well you know, I’m just getting more and more awkward here as I’m aging and I’m not able to get these folks to work with me as I used to. So I was just about ready to get out of this field and just go back to the classroom.
But what I’ve been discovering is that I can do this really, really well as long as I have partners. I see that when I have a partner like Sherry. She was a Christa McCauliffe scholar. She has a Masters in Special Ed and in transitions and she will not back off for those kids—she will do lots of work. I gained a great deal to suddenly be around someone who works like that. She started coming to me and asking, “Well how would you teach a kid that really didn’t understand how to read,” and “I don’t understand how to do this,” and every time she asked me a question I had to think about it and as soon as I started to think about it I started thinking about how I learned.
The two of us work so well together. We disagree with one another but we’re both working for the same thing; we’re both working for the kids and an understanding with the kids. I can’t do it by myself and I see that she can’t do it by herself. We support one another. She supports me emotionally when I’m really depressed; she tries to keep me up. And when she’s really depressed thinking, “OK, I’m not going to do this another year, everybody’s at my throat,” I talk to her about it and remind her how far we’ve come. So we support one another both cognitively and emotionally. Because it’s hard to do this work without a partner.
Being a change agent you can weather it, you can weather what happens to you if you have enough folks talking to you—not just talking to you, but giving you things to think about, and letting you see their growth, like I’ve seen her growth. Having her there it has given me faith.

You can download a free copy I've written about the partnership approach to professional development at Partnership Fieldbook

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