Co-teaching is an instructional delivery where the mainstream teacher and specialist share teaching responsibilities within a single classroom to benefit all students' needs (Cook & Friend, 1995; Friend, Reising & Cook, 1993). When specialists and teachers collaborate through co-teaching practices, teachers often report positive experiences and believe that students show academic progress (Austin, 2001). Teachers report greater satisfaction when partner personalities align and relationships are positive (Friend & Cook, 2003; Gately & Gately, 2001). Positive relationships occur when teachers share similar outcome and co-teaching expectations.
Various co-teaching models define and describe roles and responsibilities of collaborative teacher teams. Vaugh, Schumm, and Aguelles (1997) discuss five models of co-teaching practices for the classroom. In summary, co-teachers shift from being two separate teachers into acting as a flexible team where one or both may lead, one may evaluate, one may reteach or extend learning, or both may teach or evaluate simultaneously.
Our Experience
In our co-teaching experience, we decided to combine the intermediate English language learners (ELL) class with the mainstream 6th grade English class in December, which allowed the ELL teacher time to teach necessary language skills to her students. Meanwhile, the two teachers met to discuss collaborative approaches. We identified students' needs, the curriculum, and our instructional approaches. We also connected with each other and strengthened our relationship. We quickly learned that we shared similar views on student-centered learning and forming communities. This realization helped strengthen our partnership, allowing us to attend to our students' emotional needs first and ensure they always felt validated and respected.
Gately and Gately (2001) discuss how effective collaboration occurs as teacher-partners move through three stages: beginning, compromising, and collaborative.
- Beginning Stage: Teachers present separate lessons. One teacher may act as the "boss" and the other as the "helper."
- Compromising Stage: Both teachers direct some activities. The specialist offers scaffolded minilessons.
- Collaborative Stage: Teachers comfortably present lessons together, providing instruction and scaffolds. Students view both as equals.
Our Recommendations
As we moved through the three stages, we learned to work together as a collaborative team. We have reflected on our experiences and offer these suggestions to make your co-teaching experience truly collaborative.
- Spend time crafting a community. The heart of each classroom is the community. Co-teachers should build the community together by collaborating in advisory activities so that students connect with both. If the specialist can't be with the class throughout the day, embed community activities into the content class time, allowing students to see teachers as equals.<STYLE TYPE="br" /><STYLE TYPE="br" />Example: During small breakout groups, students actively asked independent questions to both teachers. Because both teachers spent the beginning of class chatting with the group, laughing, and sharing stories, students stopped viewing one as the specialized ELL teacher and saw both as the teachers of the class.
- Mutual coaching. Both teachers have expertise that they can share to strengthen the others' teaching practices.<STYLE TYPE="br" /><STYLE TYPE="br" />Example: The ELL teacher helped the mainstream teacher embed effective vocabulary practices into units by sharing methods to pre-teach vocabulary and modify readings to support all students. The mainstream teacher shared ideas on evidence-based writing practices that allowed students to formatively assess their skills regularly.
- Plan time. For true collaboration to take place, teachers must regularly coplan. If time is tight, find creative ways to share ideas. We tried to meet once a week and followed up with regular e-mails. Additional meetings occurred during lunch, coffee breaks, or any other free pockets of time—or even briefly during class when students were working independently.<STYLE TYPE="br" /><STYLE TYPE="br" />Example: One time, we realized that our students needed more help in learning the parts of speech than we had anticipated. While they were reading, we got together, reworked our plans for subsequent lessons, and created an interactive speech lesson on the parts of speech that we could lead and teach together.
- Create common language and processes. When both teachers use the same teaching methodology, their collaboration is stronger because both are diving into the same resources and framework to craft lessons. The commonality allows for equality.<STYLE TYPE="br" /><STYLE TYPE="br" />Example: We used the Self-Regulated Strategy Development approach for writing and active reading strategies. We were familiar with the framework, the approach, and the language—allowing us to plan, coteach, evaluate students, and scaffold or extend instruction easily.
- Honesty. Be honest with your coteacher and share your thoughts, feelings, and hesitations about the collaborative process.<STYLE TYPE="br" /><STYLE TYPE="br" />Example: Once we had planned a lesson where one teacher would lead part of a learning strategy during the first part of class; however, that teacher felt better prepared to lead the second part of the class, after the students were comfortable with the strategy. She openly discussed the issue with her colleague, and we made a switch.
As we embarked on our co-teaching effort, we were unsure of the outcomes. We aspired to give our students a successful experience. Because research has found that co-teaching realizes the strongest positive impact in English classes (Murawski & Swanson, 2001), we knew it was worth our effort. One day, we were teaching a lesson on the parts of speech and sentence structure. We found ourselves shifting the lead role back and forth seamlessly, literally sharing the dry-erase marker. The students' focus did not waver as they asked questions and learned from both teachers. At that point, we knew we were at the collaborative stage where the students had two teachers working with them. Could it get any better?