Co-Teaching Article: Eight Tips For Making the Most of Co-Teaching

For Blog 1 Module 1: PLCs and Co-teaching, I chose an article regarding different tips for Co-teaching.

Sacks, A. (2014, October 15). Eight Tips For Making the Most of Co-Teaching. Retrieved February 8, 2017, from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/15/ctq_sacks_coteaching.html

The link below will take you directly to the article:
 http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/15/ctq_sacks_coteaching.html

After reading the article I was able to gather more information and useful tips for co-teaching that I can use in my future classroom. The article is beneficial to teachers and parents who are not comfortable with the term co-teaching and what it really means. The article states that co-teaching is becoming more common with the inclusion of special education students into the general education classroom. After getting the general idea of co-teaching, the article breaks down eight ways that teachers can make the best of co-teaching:
The first tip is "Make time for co--planning", co-planning is a very important aspect of co-teaching so that the teachers are on the same page in order to benefit all students in the classroom. The article also explains that without the use of co-planning, one teacher is likely to fall into the assistant range in the classroom so it is important to collaborate and communicate with the co-teacher. The second tip is "Be on the same page!", this is important in order to stay on the same page. The author recommends something similar to google docs so that both teachers can edit the lessons. The third tip is "Develop a productive co-planning flow", which means that there should be a meeting before a big unit and about twice a week. These meetings allow co-teachers to communicate what they have seen in the classroom and what they could change. The fourth tip is "Divide up to-do's", meaning that the co-teacher's can split up what needs to be done outside of the classroom such as lesson plans or activities. The fifth tip is "It's "we", not "I"", this is important so that both teachers feel equal to each other and the students give both teachers the same amount of respect. The sixth tip is "Vary the way you group students". The article states, "though the special education teacher may take on a more active role in supporting the learning needs of our students with special needs, it’s important in an inclusion class that all students feel like both teachers are their teacher." In a co-teaching environment, the students should benefit and feel comfortable with both teachers. The seventh tip is "Dialogue in front of students", which means that sometimes it's okay to talk about the lesson in front of the students and speak up when you think that doing something differently will benefit the students. The final tip is to "Check in and have that conversation", meaning that it might not be easy but co-teaching requires both teachers to be compromise times of management, sharing, grading and dividing in the classroom. Overall, the most important thing that I got out of the article is that co-teaching requires a lot of planning and communication among the teachers but is extremely beneficial to both the general education and special education students.