Teacher World

This is a shout out to all of you who are involved in a co-teaching classroom. This is my second year working in a co-teaching classroom, and I must confess that we were virtually untrained when we entered into this partnership, and remain pretty much untrained today. We have gleaned some information on our own and are working through this experience using a combination of trial and error and best practices. But we could really use the expertise of other teachers who have had experience in co-teaching. If you could answer any of the following questions, it would be very helpful for us as we try to fine-tune our strategies:

* Is your classroom heterogeneous in nature? Do you have a good balance of gifted, regular education, and SPED students?
* How do you avoid having your classroom misused for the placement of countless at-risk students who might do better in a classroom with two teachers?
* Who does the planning? Is it a team effort, is it done by the regular education teacher with input from the SPED teacher, or is it a combination of several approaches that change periodically?
* How is instruction shared between the two teachers? Are there any techniques you have found particularly successful?
* How is intervention done? Does grouping change regularly with both the SPED and regular education teacher taking equal responsibility of all children?
* Who does the grading? Is your regular education teacher in charge of their students and the SPED teacher in charge of theirs? Or is this a shared responsibility with no real delineation between the two groups of students?
* Since the regular education teacher has not been trained in special education, how does your SPED teacher help the regular education teacher to adequately meet the needs of IEP students?
* How much pull-out do you do? How does the SPED teacher find time to meet the IEP goals as well as the regular classroom goals?
* In what areas have you been successful, and in which areas do you feel you need to make improvements?
* What overall advice would you give that would encourage us to continue in a co-teaching classroom?

When I need help with teaching issues, I am going to go to the experts. And that’s you. So thank you in advance for your expert advice. I suspect that I am not the only one who has questions about this approach to working with the SPED population, so I am sure you will be helping others out here, too.

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Since Thanksgiving is that time of year when we reflect upon those things that we are grateful for, I thought it would be fun to make a list of things I am grateful for as an elementary school teacher. Hold onto your hats because here goes!

I am grateful for:
* Students who come in happy and excited and ready to learn because it almost makes me forget little Jimmy who tells me on a regular basis that he doesn’t like school
* Parents who write me notes to thank me for what I am doing for their children because they help heal the wounds of those other parents who have called or written because they think they know better than I do how to teach their children
* My fellow teachers who I can complain to, laugh with, and talk incessantly about school things that would drive anyone else crazy, especially my husband
* The beginning of each school year which is so ripe with promise and expectation
* The end of each school year because by then its more overripe than ripe, and the expectation has lost its expectancy
* Having survived my first trimester full of exciting challenges including standard-based report cards, administering three formative assessments for each standard on the report card each trimester, and moving from traditional grades to numerical grades, which parents just love (note the sarcasm)
* Students whose hands are up all through class and are so anxious to contribute to classroom discussions because it makes it a little easier to forgive little Matt who has been known to actually snore upon occasion during classroom discussions. (Could that be because his parents let him stay up all weekend?)
* Students who have perfect attendance and those who are unhappy about missing a day of school since I know that there will always be someone whose parents will take them on vacation a week or two after Christmas or Easter vacation
* Vacations like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter when I can do normal activities in the evening instead of the endless task of grading papers
* And summer, when I can spend the first few weeks reflecting on all I have accomplished in the last school year, and the rest of the time deciding what I will do differently to prepare for the next group of students who I will have the pleasure of teaching

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! And find the time to celebrate all that you have accomplished in this school year so far.

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For the second year in a row, I have been working in a co-teaching classroom, and, while I love the premise behind this innovative approach to teaching SPED children, I contest that something may be getting lost in translation. Is the purpose to improve the motivation and job performance of the SPED student, or is it to overload these classrooms to such an extent that success is difficult, if not downright unattainable?

I team teach with another colleague, and both of our classes have a 25% SPED population. Now, that alone is a significant challenge, but there seems to be a misconception that our classrooms should be used for those other at-risk students who might benefit from small group and one-on-one instruction, too. Unfortunately, as a result, our classrooms are so overloaded with students who did not pass last year’s OAT tests for math and reading that we feel that we have been set up for failure. How do we provide services to our IEP students, even with an intervention specialist or paraprofessional in our room, when so many of our regular education students require the same degree of intervention and additional instruction as our SPED students? Making matters even worse is the fact that between the two of us, we do not have even one gifted child. Zero, zip, nadda! Does this sound like a formula for success?

I think the premise behind co-teaching is awesome. I saw its benefits last year when we had a more heterogeneous grouping of children, and we were very successful. And that is the key: there needs to be a range of students from gifted to SPED students to make this teaching strategy work. That means that teachers need to alter their view of the co-teaching classroom. They cannot make promises to parents of every struggling regular education student that they will place them in the co-teaching classroom where their needs will more adequately be met. Because, frankly, when the number of students who require extra services far exceeds those who do not, everyone in that classroom suffers, including the teachers who can never do enough to keep up with the wide variety of demands in their classroom.

If co-teaching is worth doing, and I believe it is, it’s worth doing right!

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