Last week I revealed that my #oneword for 2017 will be collaboration, following on from provocation, advocacy, and resilience. I collated some resources on the one word concept and apparently I’ve chosen an active word because I’m in a season of growing. This makes sense to me as I still feel like this year is on track to be my most successful year in my 21 years or so in education.

I chose collaboration because I still feel like there are more opportunities for me to grow as a teacher by working with other excellent educators, and I think it will be a great way to get to know the leaders in my field by creating something with them.

We can not accomplish all that we need to do without working together – Bill Richardson

My aim with collaboration is twofold. I want to seek out and find opportunities for me to work with other educators and I also want to create opportunities that will allow my students to collaborate with their peers. If you check out the infographic below you’ll see that I also plan on collaborating in three different areas.

Within my school: Although I get to collaborate with some great teachers within my health department I can definitely improve upon this, particularly when it comes to creating assessments. I also want to collaborate with teachers outside of my own discipline and plan to do so when I research and present a session on ‘Race & Health’ at our whole school seminar day in February. I can definitely benefit from brainstorming with teachers from the English and Social Studies department. It has also been my aim to provide opportunities for my students to create with their peers in other health classes. I think with some good planning, some shared Google documents and creative use of technology I should be able to get my period 4 students collaborating with my period 5 and period 7 students.

Collaborate with people you can learn from – Pharrell Williams

Across the USA: My PLN is widespread and contains outstanding educators, many of whom I haven’t met. Collaborating with these teachers will allow me to grow as a professional. Already I’ve identified writing projects with Justin Bell and Tammy Wynard, and plan to collaborate with the other TOY’s that I meet at #SHAPEBoston in March. Also at the National convention I will get to meet Justin Schleider with whom I will be presenting a session on social justice. I recently signed up for Shape America’s Mentor Match and the next obvious progression in my relationship with my mentee is to work together on a health related project – we’ve had a few initial discussions already and I am excited for this. This project looks like it will allow my students to collaborate with other students on the East Coast, and so does another project that I’m lining up with Charlie Rizzuto.

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success – Henry Ford

Across the globe: I enjoy hearing from educators teaching in other countries as it gives me a better appreciation of the similarities and differences that we face. Plus I get to hear how PE and Health are valued (or not) in different countries. For that reason I enjoy listening to this podcast from Carl Condliffe. I have been discussing a collaboration with Tasmania based teacher Pat Coleman which will allow our students to work together on a decision making lesson and I will repeat my successful International Podcast Day project again, recording the voices of teens across the world discussing health.

Many educators have shared their #oneword with me over the past week or so and I’ve heard from teachers focusing on pivot, balance, growth, heal, reach, connect, reflection, advocate, invigorate, consistency, no and disallow.

Here are a few questions for you to consider this week:

Q1: What steps have you already taken towards embracing your #oneword? #slowchathealth

Q2: Which areas of your life will be effected by your #oneword? #slowchathealth

Q3: With whom will you share your #oneword? #slowchathealth

Q4: How will you know if your #oneword was a success? #slowchathealth