Blog Post #3:Team Teaching

In the “Team Teaching: Benefits and Challenges” article, I found some major key points that spoke to me. First off, I love the Commandment style layout that gives readers the basic run down of team teaching. I also like that it makes the gradual shift from focusing on how to work with your colleague, to incorporating your students into that work. In my classroom experience, my mentor teacher and me have vaguely modelled this method of teaching. One of us will be teaching, the other will be having one-on-one time with students who need help (which also helps us differentiate), and circling around the room. The listening teacher may also interject points, or have questions directed to them so that students have a fresh viewpoint on the subject at hand. In this article, the author explains that the stand-by teaching should be modeling an exemplary students. This means that you should be on your toes, paying attention, and ready to jump in at a second’s notice. One example of this took place last week; my mentor teacher was going over a PowerPoint presentation with the class, deciding she didn’t like it, and let me work with it. It happened in the middle of our first class, the kids were losing their attentiveness, and my mentor teach was second guessing the PowerPoint she made as she went through it. In the middle of it, she turns to me and says, “I’m honestly really not liking this PowerPoint, can you see what you can do with it?” So I then proceeded to take over instead of scrapping the original lesson. I’m not sure if this is a model example of what team teaching should look like, but I feel that it encapsulates the essence of team teaching from the article; that is, both parties are equal, and ready to help and collaborate with one anther during lessons. Of course, this example excluded the collaboration prior to teaching, but that is only because of our time constraints. One other comment I had was on the consistent grading standards. I often have a hard time grading in the same way that my mentor teacher does, and I’m always worried that I am either giving out freebie points, or being too harsh. That being said, I like the idea of looking over papers or assignments if one of the teachers think that it is not up to standards, and I would like to implement that. These articles summed up pretty nicely how team teaching should look, even though it will differ vastly class to class.