Co-Teaching
Successful
co-teaching or team teaching
is dynamic, interactive, and engaging for students and instructors. It
provides instructors with a useful way of modeling teamwork and learning
across disciplines, and it allows instructors to build and strengthen
their “solo” material and style. To experience the full benefits of
team teaching, however, instructors must adjust their course planning,
teaching style and classroom management strategies to accommodate a
collaborative approach. Flexibility, respect and communication are of
paramount importance to successful team teaching.
1. Plan
everything, before, during and after, with your co-teachers
(also see Collaboration and Course
Planning site)
The key to
an effective, team-taught classroom, is to have a successful plan in
place regarding every aspect of the class. Assignments? Will there be
joint assignments or separate assignments or both? Grading? Will you
grade together, or separately. Alternatively, a little of both? How
and when will that take place? Classroom management? What will be your
standards with regard to how questions are asked? Raising hands? Free
for all discussion? What if one instructor disagrees with something the
other instructor says or does? How, where and when will that be
addressed?
Everything
that you do to prepare for your solo classes, you now do with your
co-instructors. All of your solo issues with respect to class
management and style now become issues that you discuss and plan
together. The planning is ongoing. You cannot anticipate everything,
and what you think might happen, may not, or may happen differently. It
is crucial to have planning sessions not only before the quarter starts,
but also at least weekly throughout the quarter. Another useful
planning session is after the quarter is over while the class is still
fresh in your minds - what worked, what did not work, how you would do
things differently next time you team-teach.
2.
Be an active participant during all classes, or as many as possible,
even when you are not the primary instructor.
It is the
best practice for all instructors to be present for all of the classroom
instruction. This provides the most opportunity for the integration of
the Content and the Language and Basic Skills instruction. If this is
not possible, other options can enhance the teaming of the experience
for instructors and students. Because an I-BEST class necessarily meets
several times a day and throughout the week, there needs to be at lest
one class period a day, and ideally multiple periods, where all
instructors are present. This provides opportunities for integration
and interaction and enhances the presentation of both the content and
skills learning. Even when only one instructor is in the classroom,
reference to instruction from the other instructor, and sharing of
information or instructions from the missing instructor should be
deliberate.
Incorporating
each other’s assignments into the classroom is also an effective way to
maximize the integration and presence of both instructors in the course,
even though only one is present on a particular day. For example,
“Laura” might design a reflection assignment that requires the student
to communicate his or her understanding of key concepts after “Joy’s”
class. “Joy” discusses the reflection assignment prior to the lecture,
hands it out after her lecture and the students are to report to “Laura”
the next class day.
3. Refer to
and incorporate your co-teacher’s ideas, modeling the integration of
skills and content.
One purpose
of a team-taught course, and the I-Best model, is to push students to
achieve higher levels of synthesis and integration as they study the
content material and learn the language and basic skills. One way to
teach this synthesis and integration is to model the process by
interweaving teaching partners’ perspectives into each presentation. A
good example of this is for each instructor to acknowledge and reference
the other instructor’s knowledge and teaching. This might include
referring to something they heard or saw while the other was “on stage”
as they present their own instruction. It also is reflected when the
content instructor, for example, uses language and presentation ideas
that come about during the Basic Skills instruction.
This practice
shows respect for each other's ideas and keeps students interested and
engaged in all aspects of the course material. Giving students the
opportunity to observe integration in action helps, them better
understand instructors’ expectations, as well as improve their own
learning outcomes.
4. All
instructors need to participate in the classroom, even when they are not
in charge.
When both
instructors are in class, the ideal co-teaching model, there will be
times that require just one teacher to be speaking or otherwise engaging
the class. The instructor who is not presenting still has an
opportunity to help students better understand the material. One method
is to sit in class and offer clarification or request clarification
during the other's presentation or lecture, taking the part of a
teaching assistant or lead student. Particularly with the Basic skills
instructor, it is important to identify comprehension areas that are
confusing or need further clarification.
Other
suggestions for different roles the non-presenting teacher can play
include “modeling learning” where the instructor asks questions and
otherwise contributes to discussion; "observer," in which the instructor
takes notes and gauges student response to the presentation; "discussion
leader," in which the instructor facilitates or leads break-out groups.
Of course,
all of these participation methods should be discussed ahead of time as
part of planning. This
maximizes the effectiveness of the participation. The instruction is
both the presentation by one teacher and the participation by the other,
a model of the integration of the skills and content.
For a
demonstration of an integrated lecture, click
here.
5. Apply
common grading standards.
To the extent
possible, it is important for instructors to have mutually agreed-upon
standards with respect to grading. A shared assignment with grading
contributed by all instructors is ideal. It is best to be as explicit
as you can about how you want to grade. To ensure fairness in grading,
some instructors design a specific grading rubric, tailored to the needs
of a team-taught course.
6. Have
weekly staff meetings with all instructors.
This is
discussed under Collaboration and
Course Planning, but it deserves mentioning again. In addition to
increased preparation time, successful team teaching also requires
ongoing meetings among instructors to review and reassess the goals for
the course. For many team teachers, meetings become the testing ground
for the instruction they present in class. Meetings allow instructors
time to plan upcoming courses, but also to reflect upon their progress
thus far, and to compare their impressions regarding student response
and engagement. It is important to have regular class meetings and
review what has worked and not worked, and then to plan ahead based on
these past observations.
7. Encourage
student participation and speaking.
Team teaching
can have a highly positive impact on student learning outcomes in an
I-BEST class. This is achieved with increased opportunity for student
participation, the depth of classroom time with teachers and students
providing a cohort group of support, and the successful integration of
language and education skills with content.
Collaborative
teaching necessarily invites students to take a more active role in the
learning process. To the extent teachers can model interaction among
themselves this will encourage students to do so and to feel they can
make valuable contributions to class discussions. Teachers need to make
a conscious effort from the beginning of the quarter to create a
learning environment where students are encouraged to speak. This is
so important in a class where speaking and understanding language and
basic skills are an inherent part of the instruction.
8. Be
prepared to be surprised; flexibility is key.
Part of the
challenge of team teaching is putting yourself in a position where your
own authority and expertise on a certain topic may have to take a
backseat. Faculty must make the shift from being "experts" to being
"expert learners," for in the collaborative classroom, teachers and
students join in a shared process of intellectual discovery.
Think of this not as giving up
control, but rather re-focusing on student needs and setting your
teacher's ego aside.
9. Respect
your team, and the subjects each of you are teaching.
In an I-BEST
class, students are learning about language, basic skills, communication
and a particular content area. Each of these subjects and each of these
instructors share equal importance. Show respect to the subjects as
well as the teachers. You are a team.
Many of these
ideas and concepts are taken from an article on Team Teaching by
Melissa C. Leavitt, Ph.D., academic staff - Teaching Fellow in the
Stanford Program in Writing and Rhetoric. It first appeared in the
newsletter: Speaking of Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning,
Stanford University - Fall, 2006, Vol. 16, No.1, produced by the
Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning.
The use of
these materials for this site on team teaching are done so with
permission.
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