TL;DR:
- Regular weekly planning meetings and reflections enhance co-teaching effectiveness.
- Leveraging each teacher’s strengths creates a dynamic and supportive classroom environment.
- Standalone support classes complement co-taught sessions, providing tailored assistance to students.
For the past twelve years that I have been teaching middle school English, I have worked with seven different co-teachers. Each is amazing and unique in their own way. Developing a relationship with my co-teachers fosters a positive community in our classroom with a shared goal to help all our learners reach excellence. Relationships are cultivated and sometimes need attention, support, and effective communication to be successful. As one of my colleagues said, “Co-teaching is a working marriage.”
Co-teaching is like a working marriage – it thrives on communication, mutual respect, and shared goals. - Michele H. Click To TweetNurture Co-Teaching Relationships: Set Up Weekly Planning Time
My co-teachers and I meet regularly to reflect and discuss upcoming assignments, create modifications, and look at long-term unit goals. This weekly meeting is nonnegotiable and key quality time. We are partners in the co-educational model. My former principal used to tell us that the disciplinary area teacher was the content specialist, while the special education co-teacher was the pedagogy guru, specializing in differentiation and vision. I do not think that is always the case; both teachers can be content and pedagogy specialists. We meet each week to look over lesson plans, activities, and discuss ways to support students as knowledge constructors.
This planning time is invaluable. I am not just providing the lesson plans while my co-teacher creates scaffolds. Instead, we discuss how to make assignments accessible for students and share various active learner-centered experiences to help them access the content material. We are equals in the classroom. He is not my superhero sidekick. Although, I do think of my co-teachers as superheroes!
Nurture Co-Teaching Relationships: Play Up Each Other’s Strengths
Co-teaching is like tag team wrestling. We know, understand, and complement each other, seeking to level up classroom learning. In addition to having a co-teacher for special education in our co-taught classroom, I have an ELL co-teacher for a class that includes our English Language Learners. Her expertise and knowledge are invaluable when planning assignments and classroom activities.
She will look over an assignment and provide modifications and support to best help her students. She is able to look across the classroom and see who looks like they might need some additional guidance and pulls them in to work in small groups. I am learning from her as much as our students are. She reminds me to keep things simple and to make learning accessible in different modalities for all students.
Nurture Co-Teaching Relationships: Take Time to Reflect
As much as meeting weekly for planning is essential, also taking time to reflect on how things are going and whether students are meeting learning goals. After an assignment and even during the learning activities, my co-teachers and I will discuss what is working and what tweaks we might need to make to support student learning. If a student did not meet the requirements of an assignment, we might create some scaffolds or modify the assignment for that student.
After a lesson, if it seems that a handful of students did not get the gist of the teaching points, we decide that tomorrow we will split the class up into small groups and reteach material for those students. The students who are ready to move forward can use that small group time for application or an extension of the information learned. The short-term and long-term reflections among co-teachers help to bring best practices to the forefront.
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Stand Alone Classes Complements Co-Taught
Each of us has a stand-alone class to support the work that students are doing in our co-taught classroom. ELL students have an ELL classroom and students with IEPs (individual Educational Plans) are assigned an educational support class.
Even I teach a stand-alone literacy support classroom for struggling students who are not classified. In each of these classes, we complement the work we present in our co-taught classrooms. We might pre-teach and reteach content material. Students might be provided with more practice to understand a concept or we might work on a multistep assignment by breaking it down into smaller pieces. Our work in these stand-alone classes provides students with additional support and access to materials and helps meet the learning targets.
Building a strong, collaborative relationship with a co-teacher is not just a professional obligation, but a critical component of fostering an enriching learning environment. Embracing open communication, mutual respect, and shared responsibilities, co-teachers can create a cohesive and supportive atmosphere that significantly enhances student engagement and achievement. Investing in this partnership is a powerful step toward ensuring every learner’s success and building a dynamic, inclusive classroom community.
About Michele Haiken
Michele Haiken, Ed.D is an educator, author, and blogger. She has been teaching for more than twenty four years as a middle school English teacher and an adjunct professor in New York. Michele is the co-author of the forthcoming book Creative SEL: Using Hands-on Projects to Boost Social Emotional Learning (ISTE, 2023) and author of New Realms for Writing (ISTE, 2019), Personalized Reading (ISTE, 2018), and editor of Gamify Literacy (ISTE, 2017). Michele is passionate about empowering 21st Century learners, educational technology and literacy so everyone can reach excellence. Read more on her blog theteachingfactor.com and connect with Michele on Instagram @teaching_factor and Twitter @teachingfactor.
