Twenty years ago, Colleen Sittig joined the faculty at Farnsworth Middle School. For all twenty years, she has passionately taught 7th grade social studies. Today, she is one of our veteran teachers in the building. Colleen is a leader in her department, who works each year to improve her craft and create lessons that respond to the changing demands of NYS as well as to respond to the needs of her students.
As a colleague, Colleen has always been the quintessential teammate. She is a good listener, able to compromise, and always has the kids’ best interests at heart. We refer to her as our team manager because she is the key to our being a high-functioning team. She takes notes every day at our team meeting to keep running records of what or who we talked about. She reminds us of the work we need to do as a team, whether it be planning lessons, events, or paperwork we need to complete. She takes on the role of recorder for all of our parent conferences. Colleen is our task master, who we all truly appreciate. These strengths are also appreciated by colleagues who serve with Colleen on various committees, such as scheduling, inclusion, technology, and the selection for National Junior Honor Society. In addition, she was elected and serves as the secretary for our FMS Building Association, for which she attends and takes minutes for TALC and our Building Association meetings.
In the fall of 2010, I returned to Farnsworth after a two-year maternity leave. My former teammates had all either moved on, retired, or were assigned to different teams. When I received my teaming assignment though, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I learned who I would be working with: Patricia Bonaquist, Alan Fiero, and Colleen Sittig. Each one a veteran member of the faculty who I knew would be supportive as I transitioned back into the classroom. Colleen was not only my teammate, but also my next door neighbor. As we got closer as colleagues and friends, it didn’t take long before we were opening the wall between our classrooms and teaching collaboratively.
In March of last year, we opened the wall between our classrooms to teach a unit on the U.S. Government collaboratively. Students would be creating a digital picture book on the topic, which would be read by various 4th and 5th grade classes across the district. It was a fantastic unit and by the end, we enjoyed it so much, we decided to keep the wall open for the rest of the year. We structured it so that one day would be language arts and the next would be social studies. We found that together our students benefitted from having both of us teaching a lesson, not to mention having our special education teacher and teaching assistant in the room as well. At the end of the year, we gave our students a survey to fill out about each of our classes and asked how they felt about keeping the wall open for the last few months of school. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, which made us think about what this could mean for next year. We met over the summer and planned how we could keep the wall open but take a more collaborative approach with our subjects. We found new resources that would help invigorate the literacy skills in social studies and realized that we were, in essence, creating a new class, which we christened: Social Arts.
We also have found ways to share what we have created this year by presenting our work to colleagues. Colleen asked me to present with her last spring at the 2017 New York State Council for Social Studies on the ways we collaborate and incorporate technology, Chromebooks, and the Google platform. We also ran an hour-long workshop at FMS during our superintendent’s conference day, where we were able to present curriculum, lessons, and student-created projects to fellow staff who were interested in what we had started in our classroom. This past fall, Colleen and I presented at the New York State English Council, specifically, on our Social Arts class. We received great feedback from those in attendance. And just last week, I heard from a friend who teaches in another district who told me that our NYSEC presentation was shared at her department meeting. Lastly, Colleen and I are in the process of submitting a proposal for next fall’s New York State Middle School Association’s annual conference to present again on our Social Arts class.
Through our collaboration, we feel we have enriched both of our curriculums and that our students have a more dynamic 7th grade experience. This left us wondering what else could we do? How could we reach even more students? In order to cultivate a love of history in more than just our own students, we have begun the process of reinstituting the Washington Studies Club here at FMS. This club has been dormant since 2009. We plan to bring it back in the fall for 8th grade students, who would like to learn even more about American history. As in the past, the club will culminate in a trip to Washington D.C. in the spring of 2019. Colleen has taken the lead in screening various travel companies as we make initial steps to making this club a reality for next year. I know that I could never have done this work on my own.
If you know anything about teachers, most can be a bit obsessive when it comes to control over their lessons, and collaboration is not so easily achieved. Thankfully, Colleen has been a colleague who is not only flexible but excited when it comes to changing things up. We have been teaching together with our wall open for a year now. And I can’t imagine doing it any other way. In collaborating on our Social Arts class, I have learned so much from Colleen. It is the opportunity to observe a truly talented teacher every day. With all that has changed over my 18-year career, teaching has become a very isolating and lonely profession. In teaching with Colleen, that has not been the case. I get to share each day, each lesson, each student with her. I am never alone. And while there are many great social studies teachers in this building, I don’t think this collaboration would be possible with anyone else. And that is a credit to Colleen.
I hope that you will take this opportunity to recognize one of Guilderland’s very best. She is a teacher who is beloved by her students and colleagues. I am blessed to call her my teammate and my friend.
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