Collaboration Projects - DONE!

I just completed a last collaborative project on Thursday (5/7). Collaborative Projects are the most realistic challenge for graduate students, or for any students for that matter, since they require additional time, team effort and creativity. They are the most umpredictable part of learning, because they aren't always successful depending on the group dynamic and project outcome. I've done a total of THREE collaborative projects this first semester:

March - A 40-minute collaborative project to answer the question: Does schools promote democracy? This group was the most unsuccessful collaborative project that I've been involved with in my entire schooling since high school. People in the group were hoarding skills and knowledge and were not generous enough with their time and energy. Communication was off, and people were focused more on the end-product and not enough on the process. When we presented our project, it was a mess. Our classmates didn't understood our answer. I also heard awful stories from other groups about people being irresponsible and 'lazy.' I always avoid having that kind of attitude. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Finally, I asked the professor during class what kind of answer was he looking for? Somehow, the professor realized he had given us a flawed question. He said it was not worded very well. So, he hinted to us that he would never include a wrongly worded question in an exam. I really appreciated his decision. Of the 6 questions, our group question was thrown out of the exam. It was by far the worst collaborative project one could endure because everyone was not on the same page. Everyone was just after the "A" and didn't care much on how to earn it.

April - A 50-minute facilitation on National Ideologies and the Puerto Rican
Community in Chicago. The Pedro Albizu Campos Alternative High School and their success based on community affiliation with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center of Chicago, their use of oppositional education with national identity grounded on the opposition of the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico. Since none of our group members - me, Kristin & Joshua were Puerto Rican, we wanted to give justice to this community. We created an activity for our classmates to explore how they've been taught of their cultural heritage and background? They could use a writing journal or art work to give their answers. They were encouraged to share their answers. Then, we had our classmates analyzed the California School Standards. The goal was to determine if we could find any curriculum based on topics that were non-Anglo Protestant European. It was quite clear what could be found but we wanted our classmates to work together as a group to discuss and find the answers. We then facilitated a class discussion on the findings. Then, we included a 4 minute video of Pedro Albizu Campos, a revolutionary hero in Puerto Rico history, consider a terrorist by U.S. After that piece, I presented a powerpoint on oppositional education by defining what it is, how it works, and why it hasn't been tapped into enough? Finally, we closed with a UNITY circle used by the school in Chicago for the meta-cognitive part which means REFLECTION. It was one of the best collaborative project I've ever done. All three of us were experienced teachers - Joshua is high school History, Kristin is elementary and I'm high school English. Joshua introduced the google sharing document network to me and Kristin. We could all share a document on google, and make changes to it. So, we didn't have to meet in person instead we communicated a lot on-line. And, we understood what communication truly means. It was very innovative and unique in that way. Our classmates gave us very warm and positive feedback including our professor. A few classmates requested for my powerpoint slides. And, my professor advised me on copyright laws before I share it with others. Though this project took up the most time and energy, I felt it was one of the BEST I've ever done because of our team and our materials.

May - A 65-minute facilitation on the current conditions affecting African American students. This was the largest group I had ever worked with: 8 members. All of us have different experiences and backgrounds. 4 were undergraduates and 4 were graduates. We had 3 Asians, 1 African American, 1 Latino, 2 Latinas, and 1 white. I felt that we have to give justice to this topic as well since there was only 1 African American in our group. Me and Warren who is of African American descent discussed the paradox which is that it is important to include the voices of our subject which is the African American community, but at the same time, it is presumptuous to believe that one or two African Americans could serve as the 'token' or 'spokesperson" for the collective community. After all, within any collective group of people, we will always find differences within the group. Warren was very set on doing this project well. I appreciated his work ethic. We all worked well together, and met 3 times outside of the classroom. Our agenda went through 2 drafts. It is required that we communicate with the professor about our agenda. Our professor didn't like our first draft. He 'slaughter' it to pieces. His critique devastated a few members in our group. I felt bad too because I liked our original ideas. If we incorporated what the professor wants, we thought we would be changing and losing our voice and we didn't want that to happen. But, somehow we got over our 'bad feelings' and went with the professor's feedback and came up with a 2nd agenda. I told my group members that we're not really selling our souls. Since we are students, we must continue to learn. The key idea that i learned from our professor is to present a premise and have all the elements in the facilitation connect to the premise, even the activities and videos must be coherent to the premise. Nothing should be gratuitous or disjointed. That sounds easy but is hard to do. It takes practice and feedback from an honest and competent critic. We finally finished our project and gave our presentation on THUR. I thought it was pretty good. Our professor went to Harvard to deliver a lecture so was not in class to see our presentation. I know Warren was very disappointed with that. I was too, but I also know we already did well with or without an "A." This was a truly collaborative project since we met in person 3x and really discussed back and forth our creative ideas. And, we were a good team and became very respectful and fond of each other in the process. Our class gave us positive feedback as well!

So, that wraps up my collaborative projects for my 1st semester of grad school. I have a 5-minute presentation of my CBO (Community Based Organization) next week, and will finish 3 research papers, each totaling more than 10+ pages!! Very very excited that everything is coming to a close soon.....I wouldn't change one thing about this journey! Extremely satisfied and happy! ;-) Cheers to teamwork when they do really work! Thanks for reading!