Building trust, bridging traditions: a story of collaborative instructional planning in a high school-university partnership

Purpose This article documents the collaboration between a high school social studies teacher and a university professor – working within an existing school-university partnership – in the design and implementation of a geography-based Holocaust lesson to support authentic learning opportunities for preservice teachers. This article responds to calls for educators in school-university partnerships to tell stories of the creation, evolution, challenges and possibilities of boundary-spanning partnership work. Design/methodology/approach The article utilizes storytelling as a means of documenting the importance of relationships in partnership work. Because storytelling is not dependent on traditional methods and frameworks, the authors outline the background, challenges and successes around their planning, coordination and implementation of an original lesson plan developed to model best practices on teaching difficult histories in a safe environment. Findings As a storytelling account, this work does not present empirical or generalizable findings. The story is offered as an example to foster reflection and conversation within other school-university partnerships. Originality/value Our narrative, which captures how relationships are central to partnerships, provides an illustrative example of how partnerships can support efforts to address gaps in education research and in modeling for preservice teachers for how to teach difficult histories in high school social studies classes. The authors reflect on how trust, shared expertise, reciprocal learning and collaboration can support meaningful, relevant and boundary-spanning experiences within partnerships between high schools and universities and colleges.