Co-Teaching in Action & Building Relationships with Co-Teachers

Co-Teaching in Action 

Building Relationships with Co-Teachers

by Ashley Ewert

Co-Teachers: Mrs, Curry & Mrs. Ewert

 I want to reflect on my co-teaching journey and offer some insight on what has been successful and the challenges we have come across. If you had read my previous blogs on co teaching you will have remembered that my co-teacher and I were approached with the idea of increasing our collaboration and mainstreaming with our students. Here is a link to my previous blogs about co-teaching ( Co-Teaching Part 1, Co-Teaching Part 2). In starting this adventure, my co-teacher and I dedicated ourselves to reading a book, Teaching in Tandem by: Gloria Wilson and Joan Blendnic, before dedicating to the idea of building a co-teaching classroom. From the book, we read over summer, we learned and became fired up about the idea that co-teaching is not only a benefit for adults working together but for all students involved. I'm not going to lie... I was a little ... ok a lot ..nervous about the idea of sharing a classroom with another teacher. 

  

Finding the right match

How co-teachers are paired is very important to the success of the school year. Teachers who volunteer to co-teach with each other often have far better success than those that are assigned by administration or for convenience. Effective co-teachers communicate honestly with each other. My co-teacher and I volunteered to pair together this school year. We seem to make a great team and compliment each other in so many ways. We have open discussions daily about activities and lessons that we have planned, prepared and delivered. We have trust in each other and we are able to model great friendship skills to our students. Effective co-teaching is about professionalism of the co-teaching pair and a commitment to understand how students learn and succeed.  Finding a right match for a co-teacher is important to the success of the co-teaching classroom. 

"Teaching together is much more powerful than teaching alone." - Gloria Wilson &Joan Blendnic

Making it work to overcome the challenges

Among the many successful outcomes of co-teaching there is their fair share of challenges that we have had to overcome. As a special education teacher, I found that the large class size was a challenge at the beginning of the school year. In previous years I have had up to 13 students. With a combination of the students we have on the general education caseload and the special education caseload we total more students than I have ever possibly imagined in one classroom! How do we do it you ask? Well ... It all starts and ends with a great team of staff in the classroom all supporting each and every student. Another challenge that came up during the school year was the task of collaborating with the service providers to take the students to their services. Service providers are very flexible with their times and really try to take students at a time that would least impact their academic education. The challenge is to remember who, where, and when all the students are while managing a classroom full of general education and special education students.  How do we manage this you ask??? Well... we have made a schedule for each student with services and have that readily available for staff in the classroom. I will attach a sample on my Spotlight page as a resource for those that this may help with! 

"When everyone is  included, everyone wins." - Jesse Jackson

"To teach is to touch a life forever." - Anonymous 

Ashley Ewert