Why Collaboration Fails? Then What Made Ours Work?
Teachers collaborate every day - planning units, aligning curriculum, moderating student work, and ensuring consistency across a grade level. Yet meaningful collaboration is not always easy. In this post, my co-pilot, Shruti, and I reflect on what made our collaboration successful and share the key elements that helped us build a culture of trust and collaboration.
One piece of advice from my first secondary school principal has stayed with me throughout my career.
Reflecting on his own experiences with team teaching, he acknowledged that collaboration is challenging, but he also believed that when it works, it is one of the most rewarding experiences an educator can have.
Over the years, there have been many moments when I thought collaboration was working well. What I have come to realise, however, is that meaningful collaboration cannot be judged by a meeting or a lesson. It is an enduring process whose impact is only visible over time.
When collaboration is sustained, its benefits extend far beyond sharing the workload. It de-privatises practice, encouraging teachers to openly discuss learning, exchange instructional strategies, and learn from one another. Through collaborative planning, moderation, and ongoing reflection, teams develop a shared understanding of curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy, creating greater consistency and equity for students.
Last year gave me the opportunity to truly evaluate what effective collaboration looks like. Across three MYP Year 3 rotations, we taught and refined the same 13-week unit, continuously reflecting on and improving our practice. Looking back, I realised our collaboration had genuinely worked.
Three pieces of evidence stand out:
1. Students learned more deeply
They not only developed subject knowledge and skills but were also able to articulate what they had learned and why it mattered.
2. The unit became stronger
Each rotation gave us opportunities to reflect, refine, and improve the learning experience, resulting in a far better unit than the one we started with.
3. We still enjoy working together
Perhaps the strongest evidence is not found in the unit itself but in our professional relationship. We continue to exchange ideas, support one another, and yes - we're still texting each other. For me, that's a sign that our collaboration was built on trust rather than obligation.
The reflections that follow are a collective account of what made our collaboration successful.
We each began by independently identifying three key factors before comparing, discussing, and synthesising our ideas into a shared reflection.
From this reflection, we learned that successful collaboration is not about always agreeing or working without challenges. It is about creating the trust and psychological safety to navigate those challenges together, letting go of individual ownership, and maintaining a shared commitment to student learning.