Do you know how you fit into your teaching team? And how do we build an effective teaching team? On any given day you could find Cornelius talking about members of the Justice League or The Avengers. And in a sense he still is on today’s podcast. Cornelius is helping us think through how we assemble our teacher teams by looking to superhero teams. Much like members of The Avengers, our teaching teams all have different strengths, and how we apply those strengths matters to helping build a successful team.

Today we’re talking about the importance of working together as educators. While that might seem obvious, there are a lot of layers to getting it right. Cornelius thinks about this a lot in his PD work, but it wasn't until a student asked him if all of his co-teachers lived together that it got him thinking more deeply:



Cornelius:  It was kind of a weird situation. You know that myth where all the kids think that the teachers live in the school? Well, we were walking home one day, like clearly demonstrating that we don't all live in the school, and it was me and three of my co-teachers were walking home one day, and we all live in the same apartment building. And so this kid, Izzy, ran into us, and Izzy was like, "Wait. Do you all live in the same place?" And we're like, "No, Izzy, teachers don't all live in the same … but we kinda do." And so it was this weird situation where were totally supporting the stereotype that all your teachers live together. But you know, it's a funny thing that as a young teacher, I just had so many problems. Like gosh, as a decently seasoned teacher, I still got a lot of problems. But one of the things that helped me through the first six years was really being in close proximity to my friends. I remember I came out of school with my friend Steve, and we were kind of looking for places to live, and we're like, "Man, it'd make a lot more sense if we were just close by." Because then you can go over there and cry when you've had a bad day. You can steal lunch meat for your sandwich. 

And as I think about the work that I do with teachers now, and I'm not advocating that you move in with all of your colleagues, but I think that it is important that as teachers we have close-knit communities, and that we invest time in actually building those close-knit communities; that this is work that can't happen without a team. We say that all the time, and there are so many cliches that we use to personify team, but then I think what becomes hard is the active labor of building a team.

 And so when I think about part of what makes a good teacher, you know there's the lesson design, and there's the having the great rapport with kids, but I think one attribute that makes a great teacher is the ability to constitute a team. And so I've tried to kind of think about, like when I go to talk to other teachers, how am I teaching them, yes about curriculum, how am I teaching them about reading and writing? But also, how am I leaving a little bit with them for how to build an effective team? And all of this for me is just stuff that's fallen together when I look at my own team, actually. It's now, gosh, more than 10 years later, and I still live next door to two of my co-teachers. And now we're raising children together. Like I've got my kids and they go next door and they play with her kids. 

    And that's an exciting thing to me, and so I think one of the first things that we have to do when we think about building team, identifying the things that we're really good at. So to kind of extend that Avengers metaphor, everybody knows their role, man. Like you need the smart guy that's gonna stay at...