Ardra Balachandran It marks a big step in your growth when you realize that other people can help you do a better job than you could do alone, said Andrew Carnegie, founder of Carnegie Mellon University and a renowned philanthropist. There is no dearth of quotes on the effectiveness of team work, and yet, one of the noblest jobs in the world is largely an “independent” and “isolated” pursuit. The main chunk of what we do as teachers – go to classrooms and guide students through knowledge – we do it alone. When the job in question is that of moulding future generations, isn’t “all hands on deck” the way to be? How well are we teaming up for the sake of our students? Teaming up for the core job When it comes to academic matters, teachers in Kerala still function like islands, and this is particularly the case in government and aided schools. Apart from a broad annual plan discussed at the beginning of every year, lesson plans and modes of delivery are left to individual teacher discretion in most schools. Betsy Jacob, a chemistry teacher at St. Augustine’s Girls Higher Secondary School, Kothamangalam, says that there is an online platform provided by the Kerala government called Samagra, where teachers are expected to upload their lesson plans regularly. But even this exercise, to be done at an individual level, does not happen properly. The fact of the matter is, very few people update their own lesson plans, let alone collaborate with others to rework their approaches. Dr. Lakshmi Anandavally, Assistant Professor at NSS Training College, Pandalam, has been teaching B.Ed. students for 19 years now. She says that there is a lot of emphasis on team work during teacher training. The idea is that different subject teachers come together to deliver one concept; the eye, for example. Biology and physics teachers can deliver this concept together; language teachers can add something on visual aesthetics. To equip teachers with the skill to do this, developing lesson plans is a two-step process during the B.Ed. programme. First, they are made to conduct group discussions on various topics. Based on the inputs they receive from these sessions, they proceed to make individual lesson plans. But Lakshmi believes that there is a disconnect between what teachers are trained for and what they get to do when they reach their schools. “Once on the ground, the thrust is always on finishing portions and it is a race that hardly