30 Days to the Co-Taught Classroom by

Day 1 – Meet and Greet

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:44:27 UTC

Teachers can be placed into co-teaching roles, knowing little about their teaching partner. You should meet with your co-teaching partner and get to know each other before jumping into planning. Teambuilding activities are a great way to get to know each other personally. Also, having a short question-and-answer activity will help shed some light on each other's strengths, areas for improvement, reasons for being a teacher, favorite tech tools, etc.

Day 2 – Have a Vision

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:46:54 UTC

“What do we want to do?” Creating a shared vision is a collaborative process at the core of co-teaching. The vision should be of a shared ideal classroom, inspiring and elevating for all. A shared vision is the inspiration for defining clear goals that guide and shape many classroom decisions. Keep the vision someplace where it is seen often, and share it with others.

Day 3 – Set Goals

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:49:43 UTC

Clearly defined goals should be written for teaching and co-teaching. Goals are aligned with the vision and are specific, observable, and measurable. Prioritizing and assessing progress toward the goals is critical to success. Much like the vision, keep the goals where they are seen often and share them with others.

Day 4 - Share the News

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:50:12 UTC

Sharing the news with colleagues is an important step in ensuring a consistent understanding of what co-teaching is and how it works. This is critical to avoiding co-teaching and ensures both teachers are included in conversations, messaging, and decision-making processes. Engage parents and students in understanding what co-teaching is and how it affects them.

Day 5 – Take Time to Make Time

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:50:37 UTC

Making time to meet, even if it’s broken up into sections or a Zoom or Meet, is imperative to the success of the co-taught classroom. There are many creative solutions to carving out meeting time, including having a lunch meeting, using self-guided student projects with para help, having support staff assist with hallway, recess, or lunch duty, swapping time with art, music, or PE teachers, and writing a proposal to administrators for paid meeting time after regular school hours. Shared documents or shared physical notebooks accessible to both teachers are alternatives to face-to-face meetings.

Day 6 – Plan to Plan

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:51:01 UTC

Finding an environment that is most conducive to a focused meeting is essential. Also, you have to maximize your limited time with guidelines and expectations. Taking turns leading the meeting, having strict start and end times, taking notes on a shared large post it or whiteboard, using phones used for finding information about the topic at hand only, being good listeners, being honest and remaining positive, and ending with actionable items or tasks are few guidelines suggested by the authors. Timers and do-not-disturb signs stood out to me as interesting ideas.

Day 7 – Make Meetings Matter

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:51:47 UTC

The authors highly suggest using the specific steps to run highly efficient meetings. They also indicate that the steps are used every time for every meeting. The seven steps include write it down, check in, celebrate, get down to business, keep it moving, wrap it up, and end with energy. Lastly, evaluate after your meeting and discuss ways to improve.

Day 8 – Take Note

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:52:07 UTC

The authors suggest using their form or creating one for yourself that includes addenda items, types of agenda items, time required, action required, person responsible, and a timeline. Interesting suggested items include movie quotes and songs that match the content or timing of the meeting.

Day 9 – Name Your Norms

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:52:33 UTC

The seven norms are suggested as a good starting point. Norms are best practices for meetings that are understood and adhered to by all involved. Norms focus on pausing to allow others time to pull their thoughts together, paraphrasing to show that you are actively listening and trying to understand their thoughts, probing to drill down further into a thought or thought process, allowing flexibility when putting ideas on the table, considering how your actions and words impact the group, and presuming that all have positive intentions. The last norm is paramount to facilitating engaging and thoughtful dialog and a climate of respect.

Day 10 – Operate as Equals

anthonywsmith1 — 2024-02-19 05:52:59 UTC

Teachers in co-taught classrooms must present themselves as equals to stakeholders. Failure to do so can lead to animosity amongst the teachers and confusion about who is teaching and leading the classroom. Communicating a united front is essential, and one way the authors suggest is to use parity signals like having both names on the board, door, and digital classroom.