Notes and reflections from Part 2. Working in partnerships with others

Introducing partnerships

What does partnership mean to you? While it is easy to pay lip-service to concepts of partnership, what do you see as markers of true partnership and collaboration? How do you know that you have achieved it? What kinds of outcomes do you observe when partnerships are genuine and productive?

Consider the different levels of partnership in the table below.

Where would you place the quality of your current partnerships? What evidence do you have? Finally, what aspects of your partnership practices would you like to improve? 

Informing	Partners (students, families, support staff) are informed of challenges and what the teacher is going to do about it. This information exchange is one-way and initiated and controlled by the teacher.
Consultation	The opinions of partners (students, families, support staff) are invited but there is no assurance as to whether or not these opinions are being listened to.
Placation	Partners (students, families, support staff) are apparently listened to and begin to share some degree of influence, though tokenism may be apparent at this level.
Partnership – emerging	Partners (students, families, support staff)  are involved, consulted, and informed about classroom practices and plans to support the student’s learning. Decisions on these are negotiated as a result of discussion between all partners.
Partnership – consolidated	Negotiation leads to all partners (students, families, support staff) playing an equitable role in decision-making about the student’s learning plans and assessments .

Engaging with student voice

Notes:

In what ways are you enabling your students (including neurodivergent students) to tell you their perspectives on their learning? What insights have you gained from listening to your students? How do the opportunities you provide both enable and constrain what students are able to tell you? In other words, what are you not asking that you might need to know? 

In what ways can teachers create opportunities for students to share their preferences?

How do you develop strong relationships with your students, and particularly your neurodivergent students? How do you enable them to trust you to provide for their needs? What other approaches can you take to build relationships and get to know your students? 

Partnering with families

Reflecting on what Sally said, take notes about why it is so important to partner with families: What types of barriers do teachers need to overcome and how can this be done?

Neurodiversity and cultural responsiveness

What does this understanding about diverse cultural interpretations of and values around neurodiversity suggest for the way you might partner with culturally diverse families? How might this create additional challenges for negotiating relationships with families? Strategies for talking with families in which the neurodivergence of the student is not recognised or affirmed:

Responsiveness and flexibility

Think about a student in your classroom.

What do you know about the student’s family context? What do you not know and would like to know? What aspects of family life can you consider when you want to build relationships with the student? What are three strategies you might use to build partnership with the student’s family?

Partnering with teachers and other professionals  

Who are the other teachers and outside specialists involved in supporting the students in your classroom?

Make a list or draw a diagram and upload it here:

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Who else might you involve that you haven’t already, or who might have a different perspective that you haven’t considered? What activities or tools do you use to build relationships with the diverse range of people that may be able to support and partner with you in meeting neurodivergent students’ needs?

Strategies for building relationships with other teachers and professionals:

How effective are your relationships with other teachers, school staff, and professionals? To what extent could you describe these as partnership, and in what form (informing, consulting, placating, or partnering)? What have been some of the challenges in working together effectively? What do you think underpins these difficulties? (For example, is information flow one-way or reciprocal? Are your voice and needs taken into account so that suggested strategies support rather than overwhelm you? How are you responding to the needs of colleagues and other professionals within partnership?). What strategies have you learned from this part that you could use to strengthen your partnerships with other staff?

Working alongside teacher aides

Key themes:

In what ways do you build relationships and encourage two-way communication with teacher aides? How would you describe the level of partnership you have with each teacher aide with whom you work (informing, consulting, placating, partnering)? What might strengthen this partnership further?

As you reflect on the following questions, estimate your answers in the form of a pie chart.   

• How often are teacher aides working only with the neurodivergent student funded for teacher aide support?   

• How often are they supporting that neurodivergent student in smaller groups?   

• How often are they engaging with other students that need learning support instead of just the student funded for the teacher aide support?  

• How often are they supporting neurotypical students so that you as the teacher can work with the neurodivergent student funded for teacher aide support?  

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What do you think of the allocation of teacher aide support time? What are the reasons for this allocation? In particular, what role do your assumptions about the role of the teacher aide in a neurodivergent student’s learning play? What other barriers might be influencing this situation (for example, a lack of knowledge of the student and how they work best, a lack of relationship with the student, school policy, parental expectations, and so on)? How might you slowly shift some of the balance between different allocations of support if necessary?

Class profile activity

In the last part of the course, you began applying some of your understandings about neurodiversity to a consideration of the variation between students in your class. In this part, we want you to focus in on two or three students and create individual student profiles for them. This means looking in a bit more depth at particular learners and gives you the opportunity to gain the perspectives of students, their families, and the other professionals who work with them on their learning strengths and needs. A student profile should be holistic and extensive. While we provide a template below, feel free to add extra rows and columns so that you are able to collect the information that is important. These student profiles can include a student’s personal information, hobbies, family information, likes, dislikes, triggers, dreams, interests in and out of school, priorities, and so on.  

Start by sharing this template with the student, their whānau, and others that you think have knowledge of the student. It is possible that some people will be willing just to write on the form. For other people, you will have to think about how best to access their perspective – through a personal conversation, a student interview, emails, or phone calls. You might also have to describe the kinds of skills and difficulties you are interested in learning about – how does the student find listening to verbal instruction in the class, for example? How independent does the family feel they are at completing homework, or organising themselves for school? 

Area	Strengths	Areas needing support
Language and Literacy
Numeracy
Fine motor
Gross motor
Behaviour (attention, regulation, emotions, organisational skills etc)
Specific Interests
Dreams and priorities
Others

Area	Strengths	Areas needing support
Language and Literacy
Numeracy
Fine motor
Gross motor
Behaviour (attention, regulation, emotions, organisational skills etc)
Specific Interests
Dreams and priorities
Others

Area	Strengths	Areas needing support
Language and Literacy
Numeracy
Fine motor
Gross motor
Behaviour (attention, regulation, emotions, organisational skills etc)
Specific Interests
Dreams and priorities
Others

When you have collected the perspectives of the student and one or two other people, review what you have learned.

Is there anything that is new to you? Is there anything that surprises you? Does this information suggest that a change of approach to this student’s learning might be beneficial?

You might like to return to the Class Profile that you created in Part 1 and add in any new insights that you have now.