Creating a culture of collaboration on your school team (with Kurtis Hewson)

I’m a huge supporter of professionals taking ownership of their careers; regardless of the systemic issues at play.

But having said that, I ALSO like to help educators get to a place where they can work towards addressing systems issues head on.

That’s why I was so excited to talk with Kurtis Hewson about the Collaborative Response Framework in episode 174 of De Facto Leaders.

Kurtis Hewson is an award-winning former administrator and teacher, as well as teaching faculty at the post-secondary level. He is the co-founder of Jigsaw Learning, a co-author of the text, “Collaborative Response: Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Learners” (Corwin, 2022), and currently works with districts and schools nationally and internationally establishing Collaborative Response frameworks and interacting with thousands of educators annually.

Good teachers, therapists, and administrators often develop toolkits they can use to offer a continuum of support to students. But as Kurtis points out, they’re often operating in “silos of excellence”. 

What would happen if team members worked together to pool their resources? 

We discuss this topic in this episode, including:

✅People in education talk a lot about the problems with “the system”. But what is the “system” and how do we improve it?

✅Is talking about individual student needs always the best use of time at team meetings?

✅Meetings sometimes feel like an obligation or a waste of time. How do we change that?

✅What types of meetings should district level teams have and what’s the purpose of each?

✅Why school teams need 4 tiers of support rather than the traditional 3 tiers of RtI.

In this episode, I mention the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers develop a strategic plan for putting executive functioning support in place in collaboration with their school teams. 

You can learn more about that program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

You can learn more about how to connect with Kurtis and his work at: https://www.jigsawlearning.ca/

Read about the Overview of Collaborative Response here: https://bit.ly/CR-overview 

Read the Introductory Chapter of the text Collaborative Response - https://bit.ly/CR-intro

Learn about the Layers of Collaborative Teams Here: https://www.jigsawlearning.ca/publications/blog-posts/scaffolding-our-collaborative-response-purposeful-layering-t

Learn the Five Considerations to Transform Your Team Meetings here:  https://www.jigsawlearningonline.com/five-planning-considerations-to-transform-your-team-meetings

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

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