Team Teaching

Hello Readers:

Here is my response to Leavitt's "Team Teaching: Benefits and Challenges" and Friend and Cook's "Some Approaches to Team Teaching."

            Initially when I pictured team or co-teaching it was much like a group presentation for a class project. Similarly one of my biggest learning opportunities for teaching is moving from presenting to teaching and classroom management. However with Friend and Cook laying out several diverse examples of co-teaching all with their own advantages and disadvantages gave me a whole new idea of what this concept meant. Most seemed to be effective although as always the class must be gaged on what form would work best for them. “One teach, one support” could work but I feel like there is a definite division of authority from a student standpoint. “Parallel teaching” and “Station teaching” I don’t think would work well in a Language Arts class because it is based on separation and doesn’t allow for intercommunication between students. I cannot imagine trying to run a lecture/discussion of a book where there are divided groups both talking but not interacting. We would lose the benefit of getting everyone’s unique input.

            “Team teaching” and “Alternative teaching” seemed very appropriate for Language Arts classes because they seem to create good environments to support large and small group class discussions. Those two styles I would feel comfortable using because I feel like the responsibilities and management are equally divided. I also think these would allow the most success in executing all the ‘commandments’ in Leavitt’s article. “Thou shalt refer to thy neighbor’s ideas, Thou shalt model debate with thy neighbor, Thou shalt attend thy neighbor’s lectures.” With Team teaching it allows each teacher to be involved in the class everyday, exchanging ideas between themselves and students, exemplifying professional successful discussions and debates, and requires that all planning must be done together. While it may take more time and effort, to find the perfect balance of co-teaching I think the benefits definitely outweigh the difficulties.

           

           

I think it will be a very rare and fun opportunity to practice these methods of team teaching. Thanks for reading!

All the best,

Halee