Co-teaching is becoming one of the most popular special education teaching models. For that reason, it is important that co-teachers and other personnel who support the co-teaching model have some assistance in maximizing their contribution to the team. My first experience with co-teaching was when I was working on my master’s degree in special education. Although I had student taught secondary social studies while obtaining my bachelor’s degree, I was required to student teach both special education and elementary education as part of my master’s program. I was assigned to a half-day internship with a master elementary teacher for one semester of elementary education and one semester of special education, working in a third grade classroom.
Establish Mutual Respect and Rapport as a Team
The most important element in the co-teaching team is each teacher’s ability to establish and nurture a relationship. I am not advocating that you immediately become best friends forever, but I am advocating a strong working relationship. Research says that this is critical; however, the manner and nature of this relationship is not always the same. For example, we simply can’t say that if both teachers just assume dominating leadership, all will be perfect. More important is that the teachers have a quality relationship that is built upon mutual respect. They communicate easily and don’t demonstrate distrust or emotional behaviors. The better this working relationship is, the more likely the team will be awesome. In my case, I was the eager learner and my master teacher was truly the master. She was the leader and I followed; however, I did not keep quiet when I thought I had a good idea. She actually encouraged me to share my thoughts and we developed an extremely effective relationship.
Know Each Other’s Preferred Teaching Styles and Allow Them to Co-exist
Second is the connection between your teaching styles. Again, we can’t cite research and say that if both of you teach in a particular manner, you will be a perfect team. We can say that your styles need to complement or blend with each other. For example, a teacher who is very outspoken paired with another teacher who is quiet might make a good team; one can assume the role of the spokesperson, while the other leads by example. I’ve found that it is critical that the teaching team talk about their preferred teaching styles in some of their initial planning discussions. That way, the team has respect for what each member does best. My master teacher and I did this and discussed our philosophies of teaching. We discovered that we shared a common philosophy, but that our styles were very different. Following that discussion, we explored how our preferred teaching styles could blend. By the second week of school we were a well-oiled machine.
Know Each Other’s Strengths and Weaknesses and Use Those to Perfect Your Co-teaching
After we had taught for a few weeks, we sat down to critique each other in terms of our strengths and weaknesses. Our discussion pointed out my calm, controlled manner of dealing with problems and my ability to calm our students. It also pointed out the total classroom management skills that my master teacher possessed: she could silence a room with a look, and everybody knew it was time to listen. We also found out that I was very good at breaking down tasks (which would be called “creating back-out skills” today ), while she was very good at organizing the overall lesson planning (which might be called “mapping the curriculum” today). This aspect of our effort to become a superior co-teaching team led to even better instruction for all of our students.
Align All Classroom Expectations
Another critical aspect of becoming a good team is aligning your expectations about the classroom. By this I mean coming to an agreement regarding daily scheduling, behavior expectations, rules and classroom procedures (such as passing out papers and collecting homework). I would like to say that we resolved all of these issues before school began, but in honesty, we approached them as they became concerns. However, because we had a good working relationship, it worked for us. In my observation of co-teaching teams, I’ve found it is best if you address these expectations early in your team-building process.
Plan to Plan … a Lot!
The next critical element is mutual planning. Some of the worst co-teaching teams I have seen over the years are those whose members plan individually. Co-teaching requires a great deal of planning time and frankly, lack of mutual planning can kill the team quicker than anything other than a poor relationship between team members. You should schedule the necessary planning time long before you actually start teaching. Planning time should be consistent, but should also be flexible enough so that a problem that arises can be discussed before it grows into a crisis.
Take Risks and Grow as a Teacher
I can clearly state that most of my greatest growth as a teacher came from trying new things, coming out of my comfort zone and being willing to take a risk for the sake of greater student performance. Be open to trying some new things, stretching yourself and finding out what works for your team, not just for you.
Actively Engage All Teaching Team Members
I often hear people talking about how important the kind of co-teaching (such as one teachers/one assists, or parallel teaching in which both instructors teach in groups) is to the teaching process. At this point there isn’t enough research to clearly tell us which of the six common co-teaching methods is the most effective. Intuitively, I believe that the more engaged and involved each of the co-teaching members are, the more the students will engage. I don’t have a pile of research to tell you that I KNOW that this is true, but I don’t like methods such as one teaches and other observes, because one of the teachers is now something other than a teacher, unless that teacher is observing to improve his or her teaching techniques, as is the case in a mentoring arrangement. I believe we need more research in this area and hope to study some of this myself; but for now, I am certain we are safe to believe that the active engagement of each co-teaching member is more significant than a particular method.
The Takeaways
In summary, here are a few points I advise co-teaching teams to consider to become effective:
- Build a mutually productive working relationship.
- Address each other’s preferred teaching styles, how you work together, how you can complement one another and how you can blend.
- Align classroom expectations down to the last detail, including rules, grades, reporting to parents, etc.
- Establish regular planning times, at least twice what you think you will need; be flexible in addressing problems that could become worse if they’re tabled until the next planning meeting.
- Co-teaching teams grow when the members are willing to stretch beyond their comfort zones and take some risks.
- Be flexible in the way that you co-teach; mix up the methods, but always have each member of the teaching team actively engaged in the learning process.
Greetings. I am a special education teacher in Houston, TX. For the past three years, I have been providing my students instruction via “pull out” in the resource room. This year, we moved most students through the ARD process into an inclusion model of instruction, where I now “push in”. It has been a more difficult transition than I expected. I collaborate with reading and math teachers in four grade levels. The general idea is co-teaching, as we have a small enough special education population where I can also work with Tier II and Tier III students as well. The struggle is usually a dominant teacher who is not willing to lose control of the teaching in he/she classroom. I am generally treated like a teaching assistant, even though I am a master’s degree candidate and have a strong knowledge of the curriculum in all grades. We are missing the mutually productive relationship that you discussed in your blog. Scheduled times for students to move to independent practice are rarely practiced, and teachers spend most instructional time in whole group with THEIR lesson. I don’t want to pull my kids, as they will miss the graded lesson. I tend to end everyday frustrated and feel that my time has been wasted. Co-teaching IS truly a wonderful method, but seems easier said than done,