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Syreeta, I would love to pick your brain about your experiences with and hopes for collaboration and conflict in the school community. At a Quaker school we use a lot of collaboration between students--and I've always embraced that model. Recently, I've been thinking about how difficult collaboration is among staff. I agree with you in thinking that teachers want to avoid conflict---we negotiate conflict with our students, we stave off conflict with parents, we manage conflict with administration-----so when we come together we seem to expect/ask for a "wall of chalk" ---a code that says, we are "comrades in arms" so no conflict here!

I came to classroom teaching after other kinds of work---so I was unused to the classroom isolation. I keep trying to find a way to create for myself a little of what I've read happens in Japan----teachers there will write lessons and meet with colleagues to comb through their lessons--getting feedback and fine tuning the lesson many times before it is ever delivered in the classroom. None of our schools, big/little, public/private/charter seem to make ready space for this kind of practice. Gee--I'd just like the time to go watch someone else teach once in a while.