Team Building :
Integrating New Teachers

Catherine MacDonald, Cycle 3

In 2001, Catherine arrived in Ste-Foy elementary school after having taught one year in high school. In her words, she moved from a high school teaching environment to a school very involved in the reform, from an extremely structured environment, "where you worked in 75 minute periods and you knew exactly where you were supposed to be in the book on day 25 of the semester, to a place where it's really up to you how you're going to do everything. It's scary!"

Switching her mentality from high school to elementary, working with the freedom of the elementary schedule and learning to keep oneself structured was one of the biggest challenges she faced. She had to learn to be autonomous and organised "enough without ruining all the fun!" While working within the paradigm of the QEP and its constructivist approach was not difficult for her, dealing with class management and evaluation were definitely challenges.

Coming into her cycle team helped Catherine in many ways.
"It helped in terms of every day, run of the mill, how do things work in this school. It's really important to be able to go ask somebody [...] about all those little routines that are so important in elementary school. [...] And it definitely helped in terms of planning. Here, it's not like there's a text book or workbook for everything. Without having somebody to plan with, you're on your own. You need that support to help you plan and get you started."

Catherine found that working in a team can be difficult at times.

"It's hard to always work with somebody. You're not always going in the same direction. You're not always wanting to go in the same direction and that's tough."

When there are divergent opinions, her team discusses them, but in the end each one is free to go about things in their own way. But this certainly doesn't mean that Catherine would rather do without the cycle team working together. When asked what she would miss if she were to transfer to another school, her response clearly indicates that she values the support she received from the team while working in a school that supports this culture:

"We have a lot of support for these meetings, having time, having afternoons where we can meet with our cycle team to plan. I'm not sure that this would be present in whatever school I would go to. So I would probably miss that level of support. And also the fact that the administration really knows, [...] has studied the reform. I think that probably wouldn't be present either."