Collaboration and Co-teaching

Today, teacher leaders must adopt a new frame of mind and
a collaborative way of working to lead from within the classroom-
the heart of change in education. (Erkens, 2008, p.11)
As more demands are being placed on the educational system, administrators of schools are constantly re-evaluating the current framework of their school structure to maximize the learning environment for all its students. Administrators have to look to see how they can better utilize their staff, facilities and classroom resources to provide a higher quality of education for their students. In today’s academic context, co-teaching is seen as one of the most innovative practices in the classroom. Any educator who has had the good fortune of working in schools where the norm of isolation has been replaced with a new norm- one of co-teaching, would concur that the co-teaching culture afford. . Friend and Cook states that “teachers involved in collaborative partnerships often report increased feelings of worth, renewal, partnership and creativity” (as cited from Gately, 2001, p.41). Such feelings of worth and renewal sustain teachers within the teaching profession. Feelings of creativity can lead to viewing perceived challenges within their teaching as an opportunity for professional development and renewal, while providing a deeper conceptual understanding of a particular subject area or style of teaching.
. Murawski (2009) defines co-teaching as “when two or more educators co-plan, co-instruct, and co-assess a group of students with diverse needs in the same general education classroom” (p.8). It is this co-planning, co-instruction and co-assessing that fosters a powerful sense of professional efficacy among teachers and makes the teaching experience particularly more rewarding and fulfilling. Co-teaching is when two people take responsibility for teaching a group of children within the same space and do so in a collaborative manner. Co-teaching can be viewed as a creative way to enhance and support the learning of all students. It can be one way to make the delivery of school programming more effective.
As the 21st-century notion of co-teaching places it within the context of some of the most innovative practices in education; co-teaching leads to many benefits to all students through inclusionary practices, the use of differentiated instruction, lower student-teacher ratios, and higher academic outcomes just to highlight a few. When the reassignment of existing personnel into co-teaching teams results in a collaborative work place where knowledge and skill are valued, communication exchange between team members is constantly ongoing, it is hard to deny the benefits for teachers when working in a team environment as well. It takes the expertise of many teachers and specialists brought together into collaborative teams to make decisions. Teachers close to the action within the classroom are now in demand. Students’ needs and interests are too diverse to be educated in the compartmentalized manner as was once done in the past. If we are to transform this lonely teaching profession into a co-teaching learning profession, we need to work hand in hand to impact practice in the classroom. Although like any innovated practice, co-teaching is not without its flaws , however if we want to turn our schools into true learning communities where every student is known, cared about and nurtured to their full learning potential, co-teaching is to be embraced. I believe with the movement of the Instructional Resource Teachers integrated into the classrooms, co-teaching is the way to go.

As a teacher and then a principal, I learned over and over again that the relationship among adults in a schoolhouse has more impact on the quality and character of the school- and on the accomplishment of youngsters- than any other factor.(Barth, as cited in Sparks 2008)


Erkens, C., Jakicic, C., Jessie, L.G., King D., Kramer, S.V., Many, T.W, Ranells, M.A., Rose, A.B., Sparkes, S.K, Twadell, E. (2008) The Collaborative Teacher: Working together as a professional learning community. Indiana, U.S.A: Solution Tree

Friend, Marilyn (2007) Co-teaching Approaches retrieved from http://www.marilynfriend.com/approaches.htm on July 8th, 2010

Murawski, W.W. (2009) Collaborative teaching in secondary schools: Making the co-teaching marriage work. California, U.S.A: Corwin A SAGE Company

Grouping?

In chapter 10 Boaler goes into more details about ability grouping and how the different sets of students feel about it. I can't help but shake my head and wonder what these teachers were thinking by only ability grouping. I use flexible grouping in all my subject areas especially in Language Arts and Math. I do teach a lot of lessons as a whole group, then break down into different partner work and usually use ability grouping for when I want to challenge certain children within our class. Depending on the learning goal, I pair a more advanced learner with a child with a learning disability. I develop a set of skills groups and vary the difficulty of the task or tier down or up for those children. I group my children according to varying interests so they may learn a common topic together. I may group my children based on their learning styles. I believe there is no one set way to doing things but that change is good. We all learn from each other. By using a variety of flexible grouping methods in my classroom I am reaching and exposing children to differientated instruction and also cooperative learning.

Gender Frustations

“He’s just a boy.” How many times have I heard that in the past decade? This reasoning coming from parents who are using “being a boy” as an excuse for their child’s inappropriate behaviour, lack of attention, inability to stay still, impulsiveness and the list goes on. When I ask the parent what does “he’s just a boy” mean? They usually say, “Well you know how boys are?” That’s the justification I get. Well, I do know how boys are. I teach boys and girls. So I know how they both learn and function in a classroom. What I would like to know is since when does being a certain gender justify the above mentioned all of which affect a child’s learning. How can a parent look at me and say, “Is he really impulsive or is he just being a typical boy?” The first time I heard this at a parent teacher interview I was truly shocked and left speechless. I think I might have even conceded with the parent in the end, as I was only a new teacher starting out and which I am ashamed to admit I had my “traditional views” of acceptable behaviour from boys. Since then, when I am asked the same question I have grown brave enough to say, “Well compared to the other 15 boys I teach, your son’s constant demand for attention exceeds the rest.” Harsh, I know but it frustrates me when parents cannot see past their child’s gender to realize there may truly be a learning issue especially when it is coming from the professional who knows best how a child learns and what interferes with that learning. I think about a sister and brother that I taught from the same family. The sister was older so I had taught her first. She had major attention issues. She was constantly distracted and could not focus for very long. Although she had these issues she did not have any hyperactivity or impulsiveness with it. Her parents were extremely concerned about her learning. The following year, I had her younger brother who presented with the same issues; however he was extremely active and impulsive as well. Their explanation, “Well, he’s just a boy.” How fair was that to their son? His attention was impeding his learning and it was not of a concern because he was just your “typical active boy.” That just broke my heart.
In my teaching career I have learned that although gender may play some small part in why a child is not achieving the way they should be, it is far from everything. My “traditional views” of how boys learn, have been formed from my own previous experiences as a child (where I had two brothers both whom did not succeed well in a school setting and I did) and from media which has been constantly repeating that girls are better at academics than boys. Stack (2006) views the media as “critical in the (re)production of policy as discourse, in that it becomes both the medium and the message for what policy is read to mean. It takes on particular dominant readings in specific contexts...” Since I have become a more experienced teacher, my “traditional views” have changed. I no longer adopt the media’s view that girls succeed better than boys in school as the whole and absolute truth. Since Boaler’s research shows a narrow difference of how boys were more successful in mathematics assessments than girls I was interested to go back and see the CRTs results of my class last year. When I went back to look at the results of our Grade 3 standardized testing for last year. It shows that the girls in my previous class scored just as well, if not better in some areas then the boys did. (These are children who are from the same socioeconomic background.) So I am left to wonder why it is when students get to high school there are some gender issues in mathematics. Is it the way it’s taught? Or perceived? Is it media related? I am still struggling to find answers to these questions.
It is my job to engage all my students in learning, regardless of the gender? I will continue to find ways to make this happen by developing more engaging tasks for the different learners in my classroom, not based on the different genders.

A Day in My Math Classroom

Thursday was a busy day in math. I had 3 groups working on 3 different activities in my room. One was using the SMARTboard and recording themselves representing numbers in different ways. (This I will use as an assessment when I view the recordings.) Another group was visiting the class bank to change the paychecks for getting paid for doing their jobs for the month which they were so excited about. That meant the class store was opening today and the students could get to spend their hard earned money. Finally, my last group was working on a place value foldable as another assessment piece. Talk about engaged! Although to a visitor it might have seemed quite hectic, all children in my classroom had a job to do and knew exactly what I was expecting and all worked their hardest. As I looked around my classroom I was a proud teacher today to see all my children thoroughly engaged and excited about math! But it did make me stop and wonder about what the teachers at Amber Hill would think of my teaching style or how the teachers at Phoenix Park would view my tasks and the level of engagement of all my students. Would they consider my teaching unorthodox, unprofessional or unnecessary or valuable? I would like to be able to hear their opinions for sure and of course, that of the researchers as well.

Pre-assessment

Being fortunate enough to have a SMARTboard in my classroom I am able to actively engage students in a number of interactive ways. When I begin a new topic in my class, I use small wipe off boards (which I call our mini smart boards) for students to write their answer on and hide their answers until I say reveal. Using this simple but quick technique I can ask any question and the students can show me their level of readiness with skill I am about to embark on. For example, I call out a number 309 and ask the students to write it on their smart boards in many different representations. I then look to see who has it written correctly using a place holder in the 10s spot, who wrote 390, or 39, who has used base ten blocks or money. This tells me immediately who has a good grasp of the concept and who I will have to give extra support to. I love using pre-assessment techniques because if all children have a good understanding of the topic then I can move on to better and more challenging activities. Why waste time teaching what the students already know when you can challenge them in so many different ways?

** Edited** November 3rd."Are we having Math today?"

Sorry I had to edit this version as when I reading my posting today I noticed I missed the last part of my posting when I cut and pasted :( .

That was the question I was asked even before I had my coat taken off the other day. “Miss, are we doing math today?” To which I replied, “Of course, we do math everyday!” The next response from my student was “good, I love Math!” I thought my heart was going to melt. As a teacher, I spend so much time trying to develop engaging and meaningful math activities that when you hear that a student loves math, you know your hard work is paying off. I’m sure not all of my students feel the same way but it is interesting that I teach math each day after recess and when I come back from duty or the staff room, all of my students are sitting on the floor ready to begin math. This makes me feel like the students are in a good place with their attitude towards math. When does this attitude start to change and why? That is a huge concern to me and something I wish I could change in all the grades! I teach my students that math is meant to be challenging and it is ok to be stuck. . As Mason says, “Everyone gets stuck. It cannot be avoided, and it should not be hidden. It is an honourable and positive state, from which much can be learned.” (p.49) I try to help my children to positively internalize Mason’s message and not be so hard on themselves. Like Mason, I too, strongly believe that a lot can be learned from an unsuccessful attempt than from a problem that is quickly solved.
References:
Mason, J. (1985). Thinking Mathematically England: Addison-Wesley Publishers Limited.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5
The students at Phoenix Park seemed to really enjoy taking part in activity based projects. The students had the freedom of choice to participate in the activities or to sit back and watch others do their work while some chose to do nothing. Those who chose not to do the work (mostly boys) blamed it on the teachers and said the open ended questions where too hard (meaning too open) and they needed some guidance to get through the work (which they did not get). However, the difference between Amber Hill and Phoenix Park really showed when the students talked about their view of mathematics. Those from Amber Hill viewed math just as a series of sums, however, the students from Phoenix Park seemed to be aware or the depth of the subject and the different layers they encountered which helped make meaning and connections for the students in the real world. According to Boaler, the students had a richer more balanced view of the subject.

Boaler, J. (2002). Experiencing School Mathematics. New York: Routledge.