about grouping children or involving parents. Consequently, all the talk each day among teachers and parents
and administrators notwithstanding, a taboo prevails in schools against school people sharing what they know
with others. Kevin Ryan, author of Don't Smile Until Christmas, has referred to work in schools as an adult's
“second most private activily.” John I. Goodlad puts it more soberly in A Place Called School:

The classroom cells in which teachers spend much of their time appear to be symbolic and

predictive of their relative isolation from one another and from sources of ideas beyond their

uwit background of experience.

Hfow can a profession survive, let alone flourish, when its members are cut off from others and from the
rich knowledge base upon which success and excellence depend? Not very well.

A day after watching the 1983 Boston Marathon from the top of Heartbreak Hill, I had the good fortune to
sit on a plane beside one of the top finishers. I asked this young man how he did it. “How do you run and run
fast for more than two hours, up and down hills, in the face of such extraordinary difficulties?” I expected him
lo emphasize competition or the pursuit of personal glory; instead, he observed thoughtfully that “I do it
because of the crowds. The people along the sidé of the course. For 26 miles, everyone is cheering, giving me
water, support, not interfering, keeping others from interfering, so 1 can run. I do it because everyone wants
me to do it. [don’t want to let them down.“

Competition has its place, but we school people could well use some of these same supportive conditions as
we struggle up our own hills. Instead. all too often we find along our course a society that values and supports
the product of education far more than those committed to providing, it.

Collegial Relationships. The least common form of relationship among adults in schools and universities is
one that is collegial, cooperative, and interdependent. judith Warren Little, a researcher at the Far West
Regional Laboratory in San Francisco, offers a good working definition of collegiality in schools. Collegiality, she
says, is the presence of tour specific behaviors. First, adults in schools talk about the practice of teaching and learn-
iy frequently, continuously, and in concrete and precise terms. Second, they observe each other teaching and
administering. These observations become the “practice” they can reflect upon and talk about, Third, they work
on the curriculum together by planning, designing, researching, and evaluating it. Finally, they teach each other
what they know about teaching, learning, and leading.

As obvious and logical and compelling as these ideas are, they tind all too little following in schools.

We are familiar with the enormous risks and costs associated with observing, communicating, sharing
knowledge, and talking openly about the work we do. Yet somehow most good schools I've been in are ones
where parallel play and adversarial and competitive relationships among adults have been transformed into
cooperative, collegial ones. It is possible.

| am a beekeeper. | am looking out a window of a farmhouse in coastal Maine at three hives of Italian
honeybees draped with a generous cloak of snow. Last summer, | robbed over a hundred pounds of honey
lrom each of these colonies--more than enough to get family and friends (and bees) through the winter. I
remember looking through this same window in August, pondering these remarkable little creatures and their
complex social organization. In a hive of 60,000 insects, there are scouts always on the lookout in the fields for a
new source of nectar. Fanners stand on the landing board duriny a hot day for hours at a time, beating their
wings in order to circulate fresh air through the colony. Water carriers find a pond or stream and bring water
back to help cool the hive and produce the honey. Nectar carriers bring in the raw material for the honey.
Cappers seal the honeycomb in wax and others mate with the queen and sustain the hive.

Observing these astonishing levels and examples of communication, sharing, and interdependence, I can-
not help but compare the bees’ little society with schools. Perhaps it is unfair to compare “lower-order”
creatures with “higher” forms of life, but the comparison suggests just how much adversarial and competitive
behavior dominates our schools, how little collegiality we see, and how much our schools suffer because of it.

On the other hand, it is a discouraging realization. But these little honeybees also suggest something else.
They suggest just how great may be the power of cooperative behavior in the service of a common purpose.
There is much we can learn from sandboxes and honeybees. :

Roland S. Barth
Co-Director, Principals’ Center
Senior Lecturer in Education, Harvard University

 

Reprinted with permission from Education Week, Volume III, Number 33, May 9,

 

Suanne D. Roueche, Editor
September 21, 1984, VOL. VI, NO. 24

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