Making Co-Teaching Work:

Thriving or Surviving?

Patricia Hartwig, Ph.D. Model Schools Conference June 2010

So who’s here today?

• General education teachers?

• Special Education teachers?

• Elementary teachers?

• Middle School teachers? High School?

• Presently co-teaching?

• Thinking about co-teaching?

Why Co-Teach?

• It may be your district’s policy.

• It is the law to have students in the Least Restrictive Environment possible.

• It’s good for kids.

• It’s good for teachers.

What is Co-Teaching?

• Co-teaching is two or more people sharing responsibility for some or all of the students in a classroom.

• Co-teachers can be general and/or special education teachers, sometimes paraprofessionals and peers.

Looking at Co-Teaching …as a marriage?

Co-Teaching is like marriagebecause...

It can be a love match or an arranged marriage. It can be marriage of convenience. It can be a “mixed” marriage It’s not always 50:50 It takes time to develop a relationship You may need a marriage counselor from time to time

Essential Question:

• Will you and your co-teacher live happily ever after?

Choose Your Co-Teaching Career Path:

• Success?

• Failure?

How do people find

great relationships?

Some professional advice from eHarmony.com:

Stages of a Relationship:

• Work on your own strengths first• Search for candidate’s potential• Assess their strengths• Make choices; begin to “bond”• See what happens: good and bad• Find things to respect, admire• Get engaged: decide the pieces are in place• Grow old: take the buy-out and retire together!

Challenges to Co-teaching:

• Masters of Content

VS.

• Masters of Access

The Masters of Content

• Teachers who have specialized in a content area

• Who have a passion for their subject• Who have deep knowledge of their

subject• Who use vocabulary outsiders don’t

understand!

The Masters of Access:

• Special Education teachers, reading and speech/language specialists, ELL teachers

• Who know how to differentiate instruction

• Who know how to diagnose student needs and increase their participation

• Who are f-l-e-x-i-b-l-e!

The advantages of co-teaching:

Two heads are better than one.

How can we make this work for all students? Both partners bring their best to the classroom:

• Content experts clarify what absolutely must be understood.

• Access experts scaffold the students to understanding.

Let’s take a closer look at Co-Teaching

Excerpts from A Guide to Co-Teaching by

Richard Villa, Jacqueline Thousand and Ann Nevin

The Four Main Versions of Co-Teaching

• Team Teaching

• Complementary Teaching

• Parallel Teaching

• Supportive Co-teaching

Let’s visit 4 different co-taught classrooms

Watch Steven and Stephanie in all four

classroom types.

1. What do you see in each type of co-taught classroom?

2. What do you hear? 3. Which teacher does which jobs?

Other Versions of Teaching Together

Both teachers teach a whole class lesson and both monitor student work.

1. Tag-team (turn teaching)

Teachers take turn teaching so that one is on and one is off. The

off teacher monitors student work.

2. Speak and Chart

One teacher presents information while the other charts or records

key points and/or student responses to aid student learning.

3. Duet teaching

Both teachers teach the same lesson to the same group of

students simultaneously. They alternate brief ideas, give

examples, and even complete each other’s sentences.

The Key: Alternating between models

Putting co-teaching into practice:Troubleshooting

Plan! There’s no substitute for pre-planning. Work out team routines ahead of time. Decide to resolve conflicts by communicating:

privately * respectfully * immediately * directly

Regroup at the end of the day. Don’t overstep your agreed-upon boundaries.

One of the biggest obstacles:Parity

• Do students perceive that the co-teachers are truly partners?e.g. both teachers' names are on the door & report cards

both have space for personal belongings in room

both teachers work with all students

both talk approximately equally during the lesson

There is often a language barrier between co-teachers:

Differentiation vs. Standards

Accommodations vs. Content Mastery

Modifications vs. Graduation Requirements

The Tower of Babel

Differentiation: so that all students learn

• Another way of describing “good teaching”• “Differentiation is a teacher’s reacting

responsibly to a learner’s needs.” (Carol Tomlinson)

• It refers to the proactive use of a wide repertoire of curricular and instructional approaches which are consistently used with students with diverse needs, abilities, strengths, experiences, and interests in order to best support their learning. (R. Kronberg)

Most special ed students will access the general education

curriculum with accommodations

• If the academic content and learning expectations remain the same as for general ed peers, you are making accommodations.

• Accommodations are intended to lessen the impact of the student’s disability.

• Typical examples include:

changing the presentation of information to the student

changing the student’s options for responding

increasing time limits or providing more breaks

changing the setting

Some special ed students require a modified curriculum

• Did you change the student’s grade level

academic content?

• If yes, this is a modification to general education standards.

• If the content has been changed, then an alternate assessment must be used.

Identifying teacher essentials

Two teachers put their ideas together on what’s essential:

• Rules• Procedures• Positive Behavior Support• And…

Identifying Content Essentials

Identifying Grading Essentials

Worst case scenarios:

• ‘Twas the night before grades are due and… “Okay, Okay. You grade your kids; I’ll grade mine.”

• Or “I’ll grade on effort; you can grade on content.”

• Or…

The best of grading:

“Let’s have clearly established content criteria in advance; let’s have flexibility in demonstrating knowledge and proficiency.”

Examples:• Rubrics • Alternative Assessments

• Authentic Assessments

Identifying helpful scaffolds:helping students organize information

• Marzano’s nine instructional practices that improve student performance

• Use of graphic organizers to organize information

• Modeling the product for students: the graduated release of responsibility model; think alouds

How do we know if we are really co-teaching?

• We agreed as partners to achieve at least one common agreed-on goal.

• We believe that each partner has unique and needed experience.

• We alternate in the role of expert and learner.• We model and cooperate how we learn from

each other and interact with each other.

Tips for Co-Teaching:

1. Prepare kids and parents.2. Intermix special and general ed

students; everyone is “ours.”3. Create planning time: cell phones,

e-mail, lunch, anything that works.

4. Set up classroom routines and roles; have a “master binder.”

5. Keep track of IEP requirements. 6. Keep tuning up your partnership

Revisit your relationship with your co-teacher:

• Work on your own strengths first• Search for co-teacher’s strengths• Make choices; begin to “bond”• Try it out: See what happens- good and bad• Find things to respect, admire about your partner• Commit: Get engaged (decide enough pieces are in

place)• Grow old and retire together!

At the end of the day…

“(Co-teaching) is about two good teachers trying to do the best job possible that day for those students.”

Kathleen Ellis, Special Education teacher

The Power of Two:

"The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before." ~~ Elbert Hubbard

So how will you and your co-teacher live ever after?