Connecting Elementary & Secondary Teachers

CC licensed photo shared by hanspoldoja

A few weeks ago I had a chance to meet with some grade nine math teachers from my school, grade eight teachers from our feeder schools, a guidance counsellor and a vice-principal. As I sat in the meeting I realized the in my 11 years of teaching at the same school, I had never actually met with elementary teachers. This struck me as being quite odd.

The meeting was coordinated by one of our guidance counsellors in an effort to improve our students' transitions from grade eight to grade nine in the area of math. As secondary teachers we shared some information about the content of the courses, but really focused on highlighting the differences in the streams (locally developed, applied and academic) and the pathways students could take based on their choices in grade nine.  We talked about alternate pathways and how there were a number of ways a student could move from one stream to another. The elementary teachers seemed very receptive and asked a lot of great questions. By the end of the meeting I had the sense that many of the teachers felt more comfortable and had more information to present to their students about recommendations for high school. I can't believe that we hadn't done this before.

For me the best part of the meeting happened once the official meeting was over. After the meeting there were lots of informal conversations about "What's the best way to teach X?" or "How do you teach Y?" and the like. It was great to see teachers connecting and discussing math. I think conversations like these give us a window into other teachers' classrooms. They allow us to share best practices, bounce ideas off one another and hopefully improve the way we do business. I think somehow we need to find more time to informally discuss how we teach math.

What does your school or district do to promote discussion between subject area teacher or to promote discussion between elementary and secondary teachers? What more can we do more to ease the transition from elementary school to secondary school?