Working with Others

We are fortunate to have partnered with the University of Brighton in the U.K. to be the only child care centre in Canada to implement this program. The Working with Others approach recognizes the importance of relationships as key to providing a safe, secure and accessible learning environment for all children. Its training and support for teachers is guided by 4 fundamental areas:

1. Trust, Communication and Problem Solving Skills

We encourage and help teachers progress through a process of building and reinforcing each of these skills so that they can develop safe and inclusive relationships among their children.

2. Pre- and De-briefing

We help teachers develop an open style of facilitative conversation with children that discusses the ways of working together as well as the content of their task. Through this children are:

1. introduced to the vocabulary of working together
2. more aware of the impact of what they do and say to others
3. encouraged to take ownership and responsibility for their learning and behaviour
4. taught to reflect and think about different strategies for interacting and working with peers - what they might do differently next time, how they might respond to specific challenges in future.

3. Planning for Collaborative and Cooperative Activities

We help teachers reconsider and extend how they organize and plan for group activities; how groups are composed, how tasks are structured to encourage to children to depend on and cooperate with each other, and how to balance the challenge of working together with the demands of the task itself.

4. Ongoing Support and Supervision

In asking teachers to reflect on and change their practice we introduce the key principles of the program and offer a step by step approach to incorporating it into an individual’s inventory in the classroom. To enable success and confidence, time has to be given to teachers to ‘give it a try’ and then through supervision and peer support be encouraged to think about what they might do differently next time. The positive response of children and a growing confidence and understanding of what they are doing is then usually a great motivator for them to become more creative and inventive in their use of the approach with their children.

For more information, please visit the Working with Others website at http://workingwithothers.org/