Co-teaching. Strategies For Success.
I once did a lot of work in the area of co-teaching, delivering a program that I believed set teachers up for success (foreign with local teacher). Here are some resources.
I once ran a teacher training program country-wide, training local teachers and teachers from abroad, to co-habit and co-teach together. I published a number of articles and survey results along the way.
You can find them all in my Co-Teaching Manual. There is a nice folder of a plethora of resources for teachers and teacher trainers, adminstrators. I also think this resource, full of my past presentations that I’m allowed to share, has some on co-teaching also.
[Remember - ALL our Professional Development materials are free for all registered members]
I won’t dive into the deep detail of this broad topic, if interested review the manual. But I will say a share a few things about this very important teaching dynamic.
One of the most important aspects to be knowledgeable of regarding co-teaching is that there are different kinds of co-teaching. It just depends on your own situation - the strengths and weakness of you and your teaching partner.
Crucial to successful co-teaching is allowing teachers choice and flexibility in who they partner with as a co-teacher. There should be a proper match in terms of beliefs and philosophies of teaching.
Further, there are 3 key ingredients to successful co-teaching.
The 3 Keys to Successful Co-teaching.
1. Planning. Co-teachers need to plan regularly together. Planning is crucial to any successful co-teaching. You should set up a weekly planning session or if that isn’t possible, plan and communicate through email or messenger.
2. Character. A teacher’s “personality” should be one that is flexible and good social skills are a primary feature of successful co-teaching. Be prepared to “wear several hats” and to adapt your personality for each co-teacher.
3. Beliefs. Teachers with similar teaching philosophies and beliefs are most often highly successful. This also goes for beliefs regarding evaluation (how, how often, type).
What’s crucial to co-teaching is there is in all instances and types - equality. Both teachers value each other and their strengths, what they bring to the classroom situation. Too often, I’ve seen situations where one teacher is the “expert” and the other teacher is just there as a referee or in some other narrow role (like the foreign teacher being a language model and tape recorder, only involved with providing oral input and pronunciation examples). This power imblance in all instances leads to disaster.
I hope some teachers find the manual helpful to their own professional development as co-teachers. Let me know in the comments, if you have any questions. Happy co-teaching!
