CoTeaching Requires Healthy Pushback
Even though we can all agree that society as a whole has become pretty divisive and oversimplified into “right and wrong” where “right” is determined by each individual, education has remained (in my eyes) a place of curiosity and always changing practices. New teachers bring new ideas to classrooms, veterans seek out new practices, and mentoring relationships thrive with these exchanges of practices.
Maybe educators stay on their toes because “No Child Left Untested,” eh, “No Child Left Behind” and the current “Every Student Succeeds Act” opened the floodgates of educational research unseen previously. We know so much more now about learners and learning. Or perhaps, the continued curiosity stems from the ever-changing landscape of classrooms that demands teachers remain fluid and flexible.
That said, teachers are humans.
Yep! I know it is hard to believe, but they are. As humans, they seek comfort in routine and, sometimes say, enough information. Enough data. Enough new ideas. Enough.
CoTeaching, because it involves two teachers, leaves little room for these kinds of absolutes or silos — there can never be an end to the expertise each teacher brings to the partnership. Coplanning-as critical, if not more than, as co-instruction must remain a place of curiosity and constant conversations striving to uncover learners’ strengths and needs.
How can coplanning be this shared space for two humans to attend to the ever-changing needs of their students?
- Co-Plan around organizing the learners for each lesson.
- Co-plan using timely information (data) about learners (and co-plan to collect more during the lesson.)
- Converse about the grade level demands, common grade level mistakes, and learner strengths in the grade level developmental aspects for this moment in time.
- Keep your “Why” in focus. Ensure your why is the basis of healthy pushback as you both strive for the best path forward to impact your learners.
I used to start co-teaching professional development sessions with the six models of co-teaching, co-planning templates, teacher roles, etc. but that meant that co-planning was about the teachers. Co-planning, co-assessment, and co-instruction are about the learners. There are logistics each team must figure out — processes that work, frames or templates we could use, etc. but those must facilitate having the “right” conversations and tending to healthy pushback.
