What can we gain through collaboration?

Collaboration in education is essential to having a productive, healthy learning environment. A teacher cannot work alone in a classroom. Of course, teachers may only interact with students in a school day, not their peers due to the fact that the day is filled with teaching students. However, teachers need to work in partnership with other teachers. There are many tools to use for collaboration. The obvious choice is the internet. There is an endless amount of information on the web that allows teachers to work with other teachers in other parts of the country or world for that matter. For example, the amount of information on the Department of Education's web site is endless. There are blogs for lesson planning, blogs for healthy habits in the school to links for grant funding. A teacher can see what is going on in other classrooms and integrate those ideas into their own lessons. Teachers not only gain knowledge from collaboration, but support and interaction from other peers enhances classroom learning for students.