Coordinating 26 Young Adults

Blog Post for October 9th

SYP is off to a good start, but it certainly is a challenge to get 8 teams of teachers, totaling 26 young people, to coordinate in planning a lesson every two weeks. One of my team teaching groups consists of a 9th grade MPS student, an 11th grade Blake student, and a junior at St. Olaf college. Needless to say, holding an actual meeting in physical proximity is out of the question. Sometimes it feels like a logistical nightmare. My new solution? Using PBWiki! (learningworks.pbwiki.com)
I realize all of my student teachers are busy - school, college planning, graduation planning, etc. Given two weeks to plan one 90-minute lesson, basically formulated by myself and just needing creative input, and 24 hour access to one another, I am excited about the possibilities for collaboration amongst my teachers.
Another great use for the wiki would be to have my a separate wiki in which my teachers could create a "Best LW Teaching Practices" sort of wikibook. I really enjoyed looking at Matt Barton's wikibook he created with a ton of collaboration. Often times at LW, I feel we are telling the student's the "best ways" to teach our students, when often the best advice and recommendations would come from the previous teachers. This is definitely something I am going to look in to.