Collaboration is a word quite often loosely used in the education sector. As teachers, we are expected to collaborate often but what does professional collaboration look like in practice.

I have been in my role as Across School Leader for the past 4 months and it has been an incredible learning journey already. This role requires professional collaboration at many levels. Gina Benade (Principal at Sancta Maria Primary  School) describes this concisely in her sabbatical report.

Collaboration is dependent on relational trust. To know that you are within a professionally safe space can be empowering for professionals to engage with the learning and inquiry process. It is further dependent on collective responsibility, clear purpose, time, communication and collective inquiry.

To be an educator in NZ often means that time is not your best friend. Rather than erring on the deficit Sharrat and Planche, 2016 suggest the reconstruction of the time on hand. This would lead to inquiring into school systems and best practice.

Collaboration has become even more important now to ensure that professionals work collectively to raise student achievement which leads to the formulation of a collective goal. The end results would be envisioned as having a bigger impact than what could have been achieved individually (Brown & Stoll, 2014).

An exciting learning journey lies ahead as I work with my team of within-school leaders to impact student holistic achievement within our Kahui Ako.