Creating a System for Teaching Kids to Work in Teams
Last month I wrote about how my son, when he was in sixth grade, faced challenges in team projects, because he never learned from his teachers how to work in teams. Last week, my daughter Hannah, who is in high school, reminded me that teaching kids to work in teams is not just about kids.
Last Sunday at the dinner table, Hannah was frustrated with her team project in one of her classes. Her class had been divided into teams of three students. The teams would work throughout the school year on various projects. Because the team composition would remain the same throughout the year, it was important that the team members work well together.
For this project, each team would make a presentation on a unique topic. The teams would select their topics from a list the teacher had provided. One of Hannah’s teammates – I’ll call him Kyle – asked the teacher if he could have first choice of topic. Kyle was the first to ask, and the teacher granted his request, presumably wanting to reinforce Kyle’s initiative.
Hannah thought the teacher’s response was unfair. She believed that when the teacher granted Kyle the right to select first, the teacher had also inappropriately shifted the decision from her group to Kyle. In other words, Kyle was choosing the topic for the group instead of the group choosing its topic. Unfortunately, Hannah didn’t raise this issue with the teacher. The third team member was angry that Kyle chose the topic for the group. This created team conflict that, for a while, affected their ability to work together.
As the team continued to meet, Kyle became frustrated with how the team was working together. He said that he planned to approach the teacher and ask to be switched to another group. Hannah believed that this decision was not simply the teacher’s to make alone. She thought that Kyle should talk with the team about this and that she and the other teammate should be involved in the decision because it had a direct impact on them. As it turned out, after the team worked well together on their task, Kyle announced that he did not want to switch teams, and didn’t discuss this with the teacher.
Like any other type of organization, schools are social systems.
Just as managers play a critical role in helping their teams develop, so too do teachers play a critical role in developing and nurturing student teams. Teachers are the natural choice for helping kids learn and for continuing to coach them. To play this role, teachers need to be able to model the behavior they want to see in the student teams and be able to identify how their own thinking and behavior contributes and/or hinders student team effectiveness.
Parents matter too.
How parents respond to and coach their children makes a big difference in how the children show up in class. Here’s a simple example. Several weeks ago, one of Hannah’s teachers told the students that he was going to give them a quiz. This is a standard part of her class; the teacher has told the kids that there will be regular unannounced quizzes. According to Hannah, the teacher then asked the students, “How many of you would like to take the quiz today?” Two hands went up. “How many of you would like to take the quiz tomorrow?” Sixteen hands went up. “Okay, we’ll have the quiz tomorrow,” he said. A minute later, he announced, “Clear your desks.” The students in the room looked around confused, a little fearful that their teacher had changed his mind. “We’re going to take the quiz today,” he stated, inducing groans from the students. Nevertheless, the class went on to take the quiz. But afterward, before the teacher began that day’s lecture, Hannah thought for a minute, raised her hand and when called on said, “With all due respect, what led you to change your mind from giving the quiz tomorrow to today?” The teacher responded openly, “I realized I wanted to reward the students who were prepared.”
When Hannah told me how she had asked the teacher to explain his reasoning, I was proud and supportive. By asking her question and being given a clear answer, Hannah now understood that the teacher’s decision was not arbitrary. This is the kind of behavior I want her to engage in when working with others, whether they are students, teachers, or future bosses. And at the same time, I can imagine other parents thinking that Hannah’s behavior was inappropriate or maybe even insubordinate. Parents have a significant influence not only on what their children learn in school, but how their children engage others while they are learning.
If we are going to help kids learn how to work in teams, teaching kids is necessary but not sufficient. We will need to work with the system in which kids learn. This includes teachers, administrators, and parents.
We will need to work with teachers, so that they can teach the students how to work in teams, coach the teams as they need help, and model the behaviors they want the students to learn. We will need to work with school administrators so that they can support their teachers. And it will make it easier if we help parents understand how their children may be applying at home what they’ve learned at school.
Originally published October 2008
