Gone are the days when teachers spent the majority of their time alone in classrooms with students. Collaboration has become an essential part of the teaching profession. More and more we are required to work with other teachers and administrators to share ideas, make decisions, solve problems, and organize reforms. The chance to include a variety of perspectives in a decision making process is exactly why collaboration is so awesome, but it can also create challenges when people with different perspectives disagree.
(Images found here and here)
I encourage teachers struggling with collaboration to read
Addressing Bumps in the Collaboration Road found on the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) website. There you will learn how to watch for bumps and find useful tips for constructively traversing the occasionally rocky road of collaboration.
Co-teaching is another increasingly common way in which teachers collaborate. What follows is a list of the six most common methods of co-teaching:
One Teach, One Observe: In
this method of co-teaching, one teacher leads instruction while the other
observes and collects data on how certain students respond and behave. It is important that both teachers take turns
observing and leading instruction. This
way, both benefit from seeing the class in action. Also, both teachers have the opportunity to
earn credibility with students.
Station Teaching:
In this method of co-teaching,
the class is divided into three groups.
Two “stations” will have teachers helping students. In the third station, students are working
alone or with partners. Students will
move between stations throughout the class and benefit from instruction and independent work.
Parallel Teaching:
In this method of co-teaching,
the class is divided into two. Teachers
will present the lesson to their half of the class. This is advantageous for a few reasons. First, students in these classes will have
double the opportunity to comment and ask questions. Second, teachers can focus on different
learning styles and place students into groups that are most appropriate for
their particular ways of learning.
Alternative Teaching:
In this method of co-teaching,
one teacher leads most of the class, while the second teacher instructs a
smaller group. Traditionally, the
smaller group has focused on remediation.
However, other possibilities include focusing on pre-teaching with shy
students, students learning to speak English, or students who just struggle—not only students with IEPs.
Teaming: In this method of co-teaching, teachers have an equal
share of the leadership in the classroom.
The take turns teaching different concepts and cooperate through
modeling, role-plays, dialogues, etc.
This method can be difficult if the two teachers have very different
teaching styles.
One Teach, One Assist:
In this method of co-teaching,
one teacher leads the class while the other assists. This method should only be used occasionally
or the ‘assisting’ teacher ends up feeling like an ‘assistant’ teacher. This probably isn’t the best use of two
professionals in a classroom. Also,
students may become over reliant on help when completing tasks.
Personally,
I have found
Teaming with
occasional
One Teach, One Assist to be most effective methods. My work with a co-teacher in a Korean public
school involved Teaming about 70% of the time.
My co-teacher and I were fortunate enough to have very compatible
teaching styles. This was especially
effective with EFL because we were able to incorporate lots of role-plays into
our instruction. Also, my Korean
speaking co-teacher could use the students’ native language to explain English
language learning activities. This
allowed for far more productive English language activity time. The only draw back to Teaming was that it
required a lot of planning in order to determine who would lead which parts of
the lesson. I don’t think one method is
better than the other. I think effective
co-teaching would involve all of these methods at different times depending on
the needs of the students, the curriculum, and the teachers involved.
* For interesting data on how students react to co-teaching, read Patricia Dozier's article
How Do Secondary Students Feel About Co-teaching? also found on the CEC website.
* Interested in reading personal accounts and advice from other teachers about their co-teaching experiences? Check out
Co-teaching 101: Lessons From the Trenches by Marie Huggins, Jennifer Huyghe, and Elizabeth Iljkoski. As they mention in their article, "Teachers are the best resource for other teachers."
