Collaborating Productively means to be able to work well with others, and before that to be willing to do so. It means distributing different tasks based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses​. It also means being able to communicate with a group and be open to listening to others' ideas. To communicate, you must know when and how to take leadership, as well as listen to teachers' instructions. You know when and how to take leadership by using your communication skills to determine if your team would benefit from it. In a non-school setting, this would look like carefully considering the goals of the project, because Collaborating Productively can be applied to many different settings and situations. When you successfully Collaborate Productively, everyone should get along and have a good time, are able to talk to each other, and work together, as well as successfully complete the goal that they were aiming for.

My Understanding

If done correctly, Collaborating Productively can be very beneficial to the end product of a project. When you Collaborate Productively, you are able to use everyone's strengths to your advantage and listen to everyone’s opinions and ideas. During my time at SEEQS, I have definitely seen examples of Collaborating Productively not being used. I’ve done group projects where no one got along, everyone talked over each other, and no one knew what to do or say. This impacted our final product because not being able to successfully communicate led us to having a weaker end result.

I think that Collaborating Productively is not always easy, but part of the skill is knowing how to overcome difficulties and get back to a productive place. For example, when group members are not willing to participate or contribute to a group’s ideas, you can step up as the leader of the group and not let anyone else talk over one another or have each group member share their ideas. It’s important for you to contribute to the group by sharing your own ideas. As a leader, it’s important not to put down everyone’s ideas. When you don’t successfully Collaborate Productively, you don’t get along, you don’t have fun, and you don’t have an end product to be proud of.

I use Collaborating Productively a lot in my own life, with friends, family, and schoolwork. At home, one way I use Collaborating Productively is with my brother. When we have to do clean-up after dinner, we find ways to work together so that we can get it done faster. He usually clears the table and I wash the dishes. If we have time, we sometimes listen to music during clean-up because that makes it more fun and helps us finish quicker. This proves that sharing roles in a group project is an effective way to be productive.
At school, one way I use Collaborating Productively is by seeking help from others to find ways to simplify tasks. If I’m working on something I don’t understand, instead of asking the teacher I can ask for help from the people sitting around me. Together, we can talk things out and use each other's strengths and weaknesses to answer questions and finish assignments.
I can also work with friends to get homework done while having valuable conversations and getting to know eachother better. Especially the year, because of COVID-19, I have had to use this skill a lot. When talking with my friends over Zoom, we often run into challenges such as people being laggy and hard to hear, or getting into disagreements about things. Not being able to see or talk to each other in person made everything a lot harder. We had to find ways to overcome these challenges virtually, which can be hard, but we always made sure to hear each other out and be patient. We also have found ways to use this to our advantage, though, like working on homework together after school or during independent work time.

​I think that a big part of what SEEQS values is Collaborating Productively. At the old campus, we sat at tables instead of desks, and so almost everything was a collaborative project. In years past, our school has been so small that you knew everyone and everyone knew you. It was pretty much guaranteed that you had at least one class with everyone, been in a group with them, or watched them do a presentation at some point. I think SEEQS values this because as middle schoolers, it can be very beneficial to have a community aspect when we go to school, because that can be very comforting and familiar. I also think that SEEQS is trying to implant skills that will be very helpful for us to understand in the future.
Due to COVID-19, I now only know a handful of sixth grader’s names, and they are definitely having a very different experience than I did in sixth grade. I feel very grateful that I was able to experience SEEQS as a tight-knit community, and that I now feel equipped with the knowledge to Collaborate Productively in many different settings because I can learn to adapt to any group and take on any role when doing projects. I know what members a group needs to be successful, and can put myself in any of those situations based on my group’s needs.

My Growth

In sixth grade, I didn’t like Collaborating Productively at all. I wanted to do everything independently, and whenever we had to do group projects I often wouldn’t contribute as much as I could have. I thought Collaborating Productively meant to work with others, but now I think I have a much deeper understanding of this Sustainability Skill. Now, I understand that it means to utilize others’ strengths and weaknesses to the advantage of the group and your project, as well as be able to lead and follow within a group.

One time I remember trying to use this Sustainability Skill early on in my time at SEEQS was for advisory. In sixth grade, I was in Ms. Lisa’s advisory, and we often did different team-building activities, sharings, and played sports together. Because I was so shy, I often found it hard to contribute and have a voice during these activities. One example that I remember specifically was for the SEEQS Olympics. Every advisory would work as a team to do a bunch of fun exercises all over campus, and we had to work together. One of them was partnering up, and having one person guide you around obstacles in a field while blindfolded by just telling you what direction to walk, how far, and when to stop.

I knew we were Collaborating Productively well because we had to trust that the person telling you what to do wasn’t going to make you trip and fall. You really had to work together in order to be successful. I think that after this day and this activity, we were a lot closer as a group. After this, I think I had a deeper understanding of what Collaborating Productively meant and why it was important, because I now understood that trust was a contributor to the skill.

I struggled with this skill a lot in the beginning. I think that in sixth grade, because I was both shy and yet wanted my voice to be heard, I had a lot of experience being told what to do and not getting to contribute at all in the end, which was definitely part of the reason why I didn’t like the skill.

Now I know that Collaborating Productively means to use the members of your group’s strengths and weaknesses to have the best end product possible. It also means to both listen to teacher instructions and know how and when to lead a group as well as listen to every group member’s options to ensure that every voice is being heard. It also implies that you understand the importance and benefits of group work, and that you can take your knowledge of how to work in groups into high school and beyond.

Now, when I use this skill, I can take my knowledge from three years at SEEQS and apply it to any project. I know how to deal with groups that don’t get along, are talking over each other, don’t know what to do, or pretty much any situation. I can handle these problems by being a leader when no one is talking, and being a listener when many people want to share their ideas. I am able to step into any role when needed. I have also shown growth in the fact that I now enjoy group projects and look forward to them. From not liking this skill, not using it well, and not understanding it in sixth grade, I think I have shown that I can grow immensely in all three of these aspects.

I think one big tool I use (or try to use) in Collaborating Productively is communication. In order to figure out who wants to do what or what ideas people have, you need to be able to communicate. This can be hard for me because I'm a little shy, but overall it's such a big part of successfully working with a group. Especially now with online school and breakout rooms, it can be especially hard, but it's super important in the long run.

Another tool I use to Collaborate Productively is listening. I would say this one kind of goes hand-in-hand with communication, because in order to be able to communicate you need to be able to listen. If one person is being bossy and directing the whole group around, that won't really work, because you are only going to be listening to one person's ideas. On the other hand, you don't want everyone just sitting there silently and no one wants to talk. So listening is a key part of Collaborating Productively in order to be able to work well together and get things done. I think that I didn’t understand this concept of Collaborating Productively in sixth grade.

The parts of this skill I need to get better at are learning to speak up for myself, knowing that a little mayhem is okay, listening to everyone is important, and that not one person should be bossing everyone around. I think that even though I have grown in this skill, I also have so much to improve on. The main thing I think I need to get better at is confidence. I know now that it’s okay to mess up sometimes (as a leader or non-leader) but learning to speak up in a crowd is definitely something everyone needs to work on, myself especially.

The parts of the skills I think I do well are making sure everyone gets along, and making sure we turn discussions into actual activities. The most important of Collaborating Productively I think I’ve grown in, though, is simply understanding it and recognizing its significance. Because I think that is the first step to improving and hopefully eventually mastering this Sustainability Skill.

My Project

In sixth grade, my Storytelling B Day class spent months preparing to put on a production of The Jungle Book. Our teacher was Ms. Lisa, and our essential questions were: “How can art enable me to express ideas and respond to my community?” and, “How do we use performance arts to bring a story to life?” I think that the purpose of this assignment was to learn about singing, acting, and dancing as well as becoming closer as a class and being able to put on a show for our friends and families at the end of the year.

This project helped me grow in Collaborating Productively because it was the first time I was working in a large group, and our end product was actually going to be performed to the public on the Kaimuki High School stage.

In order to put on this production, we had to go through many different steps to be successful. In the beginning of the year, we started by playing lots of improv games and presenting monologues to work on our memorization skills and overcome stage fright. I think that Ms. Lisa had us work on this first because it helped to strengthen the general skills that we eventually needed to be proficient in to produce a successful performance.

When we were near the day of our performance, we practiced after school in the theatre. I remember this was so fun and exciting, because we got to talk in the dressing rooms and play on the stage, as well as eat snacks and run around where all the seats were. At our final performance, I don’t think we would have been able to have as fun a time and as good of an end-product as we did if we had not been Collaborating Productively.

We used google classroom to work together on projects, talk about our play and our opinions, and have helpful tools that were beneficial in us collaborating more productively. We also used this google drive to organize our materials, which was beneficial to our collaboration because we were able to access things more easily, and that helped us to save time and have more resources to help us out. These also act as evidence that we were Collaborating Productively, because they show resources that we used along the way to help us get to our end product.

In a play there are many parts, and without Collaborating Productively the whole thing would fall apart. If one person isn't memorizing their lines, trying their best, and playing their part, then that can ruin the final performance for everyone. Putting on a show depends so much on Collaborating Productively, because everyone is depending on everyone for the show to go well, and the audience is depending on you too. I think that trusting and knowing your group is also an important part of this skill, especially when putting on a show or presentation. It's important to remember that everything in this system is connected, and will always be affected by one another. If costume designers don't finish the clothes, the actors don't have costumes, the play can't go on, the audience needs to be refunded, etc.

An example of things we all needed to contribute to were memorizing our lines, helping to build props, and not getting frustrated at people when they messed up and we had to re-start during rehearsal. I think that during this process, my role was as more of a helper than someone who was super involved. However, since producing a play is a group project, everyone's role was important. Some of my strengths were helping people memorize lines, trying to be nice to everyone, and being a friend to whoever needed me. I was able to lead when asked, and follow everyone else most of the time.

In conclusion, this project helped me to Collaborate Productively because not only did I learn so much about how important (and beneficial) this skill can be, but I also learned how much using the skill correctly can pay off in the end.

Relation To Skill

This project is an example of Collaborating Productively because our end performance shows how much teamwork had to go into it to make the production possible. We have our end product and all the assignments and steps that went into the process along the way as evidence. In order to successfully Collaborate Productively, we had to know how to get along and not let challenges set us back too much. This would have made us overwhelmed and feeling hopeless, and so in general it was good to avoid those situations. If we didn’t Collaborate Productively, the whole show would have fallen apart. In performances, if everyone isn’t doing their part then the whole production doesn’t work out in the end.

I used my strengths to act as a helper and someone who could be friends with everyone. Others used their strengths to keep everyone’s spirits up when rehearsal wasn’t going well and making sure they did their very best and contributed their part to the production. Just like the music in the kitchen doing my chores, I wanted to be a fun and supportive helper who made the process more enjoyable.

I think that a big part of Collaborating Prodively that I didn’t really talk about at all is having a bond to develop trust. When putting on a production, one thing I learned was that you depend a lot on everyone to do what they're supposed to do. Having trust in each other makes the final performance go much more smoothly. Because our group had been working together as a class for so long, I think we did develop a connection. On the day of the actual performance I, at least, had a sense that we had really accomplished something, and that it had been a team effort. If I hadn’t had trust in my group members, I think that not everyone would be performing to their fullest, and the show wouldn’t go as smoothly because people would be feeling uncomfortable.

Even more so, it wasn’t just our class that was a contributor. Mr. Holland’s art class made our costumes, and there were many teachers and people in the Kaimuki High School Community that helped out. Specifically during rehearsals, I think I used Collaborating Productively to make sure everyone was getting along and contributing their part. Through this process, I deepened my understanding of Collaborating Productively because I realized that sometimes Collaborating Productively involves supporting each other and building each other up. Because I can’t remember very well the specifics of what went well and what didn’t I’m including a screenshot of the box on my SSR when I reflected on my use of this skill.

In the future I think I could have collaborated more productively if I had contributed a bit more. I’m not sure how I would have helped, exactly, but I think that by putting myself out there could have made the production more of a success.

This project deepened my understanding of Collaborating Productively because now I know that working in a team is not easy, but always beneficial to the end product. I felt proud of everything we’d accomplished standing on the stage and bowing at the end of the show. I hope that in the future, I can continue to grow in this skill, most of all contributing myself more to the group and putting myself out there more. Wherever I end up going to high school, I know that I will take with me the valuable lessons I’ve learned with this skill.

View Other Sustainability Skill Reflections:
Reasoning Analytically
Managing Effectively
Communicating Powerfully
Thinking Systemically