Throughout history, we have seen many types of relationships between different groups and persons. Some groups got along, they were allied together, fighting a common enemy or achieving a common goal. These types of relationships also involved helping each other in times of need. There were also relationships full of conflict and rage, enemies to one another, one side giving the other no respect or care. There were other relationships that were simply ignorant or scornful to one another, they refused to help each other and didn’t make any efforts to get the other group to a better place or make contributions to their goals. Some groups were forced together and had to work together for the good of something they both wanted, which does not mean they had to get along or wanted to be working with together by any means. These are some examples of collaboration which is a very tricky skill to master. Collaboration is one of the STEM school’s 5 qualities which means we use and value it a lot. It also means we strive to use it in all of our classes and our own personal lives. I think this year—in my history class—I have become better at it.

In History class this year, I have grown a lot in my ability to collaborate in order to do better work on a project. At the beginning of some of the projects we did in 8th grade history, I wasn’t very good at collaboration and working with people I didn’t like or feel happy working with. Most things we’ve worked on this year included collaboration with one or more people. Some of it was very easy because I got along great with everyone in my group and we had no problems. Sometimes however, I was on edge, mouthy and was distracting towards many others in the group because I didn’t think I could get along with them. For one of the projects, that was the mindset I had in the beginning, so I kept it, but as I started working, I found that it was easier to collaborate than I thought. I began to push myself to be more collaborative toward my whole group and got good work done through team work.

One project we did that demonstrated my growth in collaboration was the infographic project. This project was integrated with Language Arts, we read a historical fiction novel called Fever 1793 and we found a lot of connections between the fiction from our book and real historical events. We created an infographic to show the information we found in a visually pleasing way while incorporating an image for each topic that was discussed. When we learned all the content for the class like what diseases were going on during the times in history and in the novel, how different types people were treated, and looked at different types of building structures in both times. As we learned new concepts we wrote them all down in our connections log, a place where we recorded connections between the book and real history. After we finished that is when I started really collaborating with my group in completing our Colonial Infographic Writing Planning Sheet, which was basically a plan for the main topics in all of our blocks. A “block” in our case is basically a small paragraph of information that compares and contrasts the novel and colonial history. We had to work together to decide the topics and essential information by debating with each other the pros and cons of each topic and how they all related to each other and each source (history and the book). With the final, you can see our infographic has a logical and visually pleasing layout and displays accurate information with few typos. This is because it was created using lots of collaboration even when we never wanted to work together.

During the project, we had a collaboration log where we record how well our group worked together that day and what we did or didn’t get done. In my section of the log, you can see that during the beginning of the project I kept getting distracted. This kept happening because we weren’t being clear in our instructions to each other. Each person needed to have an assigned role so everyone could stay on task, one person would write information blocks while another would find images, and the third one would edit the infographic. I would get mad if someone wasn’t doing their job so I would get points off of my collaboration log. At some point during the project I just started focusing more and talking to my group only about the project and not getting off topic because I knew I was getting points off on my collaboration log. You see after the first three entries where I was distracted and only scored eight or nine points out of ten for the day, I start to get things done and stay collaborating with the right people and then I always scored a ten.

My growth in collaboration is a great benefit to me and my learning. At STEM, as stated above, collaboration is one of the five greatly valued qualities, so as students at STEM, we are generally good at using the skill, and still some may be better than others. I have never been great at collaborating with others, but this year, in U.S. History, I have used it so many times that I have just gotten used to it. Getting used to working with people you might not want to work with is one way of getting better at it. I now know how to handle situations that may have been a struggle before doing this project. Like if someone constantly annoys me or never contributes, I can just ignore them rather than yelling at them, and I could politely ask them to do something instead of being rude and bossing them around. I know that group work is the nature and culture of STEM and I know for a fact that there will be future situations where I will be forced to work in groups that I don’t want to be a part of, learning to work with people I don’t get along with will be extremely helpful in my future. Not only my future at STEM, also in the working force. In modern jobs there is a lot more collaboration than there used to be, so mastering this skill while I’m still in school will give me a major asset that could be very important in my future.