The Teacher and the Poet

8. Using Teamwork as a Tool

The future of education is going to be more and more about teamwork. Whenever people come together to collaborate, there is a very real sense in which they have a group or organizational intelligence, the sum total of the talents and skills of all those involved. The single most important element in group intelligence is emotional intelligence.

The key to successful group intelligence is social harmony. It is this ability to harmonize that will make one group - talents being equal - do well while another group does poorly.

Informal networks are especially critical for handling unanticipated problems. The "formal organization" handles anticipated problems, but when an unanticipated problem crops up, it is the "informal organization" which comes to life. This informal organization is a complex web of social ties that form every time people communicate. They solidify over time into stable networks, which are highly adaptable.

An analysis of informal networks shows that they work when there is a feeling of trust among "members" of the network.

For all these reasons it is important that teachers of languages model this kind of environment in their classrooms. To help people get to know one another better, teachers can do something we call the affinity process.