Oregon Teachers Seek to Collaborate In and Outside of School to Best Serve Students

There is no doubt that collaboration is important to teachers, yet 58% of Oregon teachers report not having enough time to collaborate with colleagues. Teachers in Oregon say time collaborating with colleagues is most often spent doing the following:

• Exchanging or sharing resources and lesson plans (77%)
• Discussing how to best meet the needs of individual students (77%)
• Learning from each other's successes and challenges (70%)
• Reviewing student data (68%)
• Sharing challenges to receive colleagues' input and advice (67%)

Teachers say technology can create opportunities for collaboration and open doors to resources and information to help them grow their practice. 91% of Oregon teachers use mainstream social networking sites for professional purposes and 79% use educational websites for professional purposes. Teachers’ online professional activities often mirror the activities they engage in when collaborating with colleagues:

• 91% of Oregon teachers use websites to find or share lesson plans or other classroom content.
• 58% of Oregon teachers use websites for professional advice and support.
• 54% of Oregon teachers use websites to collaborate with teachers with whom they wouldn’t otherwise have had the opportunity.

Teachers in Oregon reach out to students’ parents and families to build a strong network of support and help every child succeed. To do so, Oregon teachers say they:

• Encourage parents of their students to reach out with questions and concerns (93%)
• Initiate contact with parents outside of progress reports and report cards (81%)
• Talk to parents about the results of their children’s standardized tests (47%)
• Are willing to have parent-teacher conferences at students' homes (34%)

Oregon teachers offer myriad ways for parents to help children achieve success in school, with the most helpful being:

• Making sure their child misses as little school possible (80% of Oregon teachers say this is extremely helpful, and 99% say it is very or extremely helpful)
• Setting high expectations for their child (72%, 96%)
• Working collaboratively with teachers when their child has academic and/or behavioral challenges (69%, 97%)
• Encouraging and ensuring that their child completes school assignments (68%, 93%)
• Talking to their child about how he/she is doing in school (66%, 98%)

Notably, Oregon teachers make a distinction between encouraging and ensuring that children complete school assignments versus helping children complete homework (68% and 34%, respectively, identify these as extremely helpful).