|
|
|
Team
teaching is a strategy that has been around for years, but creating
teams, whether in response to district expectations or as a way of
dealing with changes in teaching practice, needs careful thought in
order to succeed. While teaming means the partners must reconfigure
much of their teaching lives, it can be done successfully.
Alan Engle, ITC Executive
Director, has many years of successful team
teaching experience. Through this experience he has compiled a checklist to review when considering
establishing teaching teams or looking for a teaching partner.
|
|
|
|
Team Teacher Checklist:
Discussing and then making
decisions about the following issues before beginning to teach
together help to prevent conflict later and make the team more
efficient right from the start.
- Classroom Space, Materials, and
Time
-
Work spaces?
-
Storage?
-
Furniture?
-
Desks/tables?
-
Teacher desks?
-
Materials, books,
supplies?
-
Which materials are
mine, which are yours, which are ours?
-
Partitions/room
dividers?
-
Centers?
-
If school doesn’t
provide what we need/want, how will we get it?
-
How can we set aside
several hours of joint planning per week?
-
Which content should
each of us teach?
-
What content should
be divided?
-
What content should
be taught jointly?
-
How will we keep
records? One or two grade books?
-
Who grades which
papers?
-
What grading system?
-
Lesson plan book?
-
Personal neatness
preference?
-
Work outside of
school hours?
-
System/organization?
- Needs/Values/Philosophy
-
Tolerance of noise
level?
-
Personality
strengths/weaknesses?
-
What I know about my
own learning style?
-
How I feel about my
teaching?
-
Phonics? Whole
language?
-
Teacher training or
staff development I’ve had?
-
Schedule as related
to my out-of-school life? (i.e., have to pick
up own kids, taking classes, etc.)
-
Parent conferences?
(Yours? Mine? Ours?)
-
Things about my
teaching I’d like to be better at?
-
Social interaction
between us?
-
Things we have in
common?
-
Things that make us
different?
-
Affection?
-
Humor/Drama?
-
Cooperative learning?
-
Grouping?
-
Level of expertise?
(Subject matter? Teaching strategies?)
-
Who teaches what?
-
Interactions with
children?
-
Spontaneity/asking
for help?
- Classroom Management
-
Disciplining?
-
Rules/Expectations?
-
Consequences?
-
Classroom routines?
(i.e., lining up for recess etc.)
-
Movement within
classroom?
-
Constructive
criticism?
-
Communication with
parents?
|
|
Recommended Reading
|
|
An instructive description of multiple models of successful teams. The
inclusion of data from surveys and interviews with teachers, students,
parents, and principals also provides multiple perspectives of the
downsides and upsides of team teaching.
What is best about this practical and honest
book, however, are the excerpts from the journals of classroom
teachers who worked hard and wrote eloquently about the difficulties
and rewards to successful teaming. Reform minded teachers committed to
interdisciplinary study will find inspiration in their accounts.
We recommend you invest in a copy of Team
Teaching (Stenhouse
Publishing, 1996, pp 120/paper, ISBN: 1571100407.) Available at amazon.com.
This book is chock-full of ideas and
insights, in addition to discussing the social and personal
implications of teaming. Based on their own stories and those of their
colleagues the authors discuss:
-
how and why team teaching
succeeds and how elementary school teams differ from teams in
middle and secondary schools;
-
how to get started - defining
partners’ roles, achieving consistency, sharing space and
materials, adjusting schedules, and adapting curriculum;
-
the upside - what team teaching
can do for you, your colleagues, your students, your school;
-
and the downside - what to do
when a team doesn’t succeed;
-
the bigger picture - how
principals see team teaching and how students and parents respond
to it.
Appendixes include:
-
a checklist of team teacher
issues;
-
a parent survey on teaming;
-
materials for questions and
discussion groups about team teaching.
Whether
you have been part of a team for years, are just starting, or are an
administrator who wants to know more about teaming from the inside you
will learn a great deal from the insights of this group of Nevada
teacher-researchers.
|
|