Navigating the Co-Teaching Relationship: from Rough Seas to Smooth Sailing, Part 2 of 3

In the previous post, we discussed what teachers can do to take control of the co-teaching partnership by adopting an open-minded stance, communicating openly and often with their co-teacher, and seeking direction over destination as they aspire to a more ideal partnership.  The following best practices are for administrators to consider in supporting their staff on the co-teaching journey:  

1. Keep co-teachers together to set them up for success.  Nothing is more frustrating than being moved to a new partnership after finally getting to a good place with a co-teaching partnership. If at all possible, try not to split up the partnerships that have finally gotten going after several years of blood, sweat, and tears. 


2. Mandate and facilitate ongoing common planning time.  Co-teaching cannot truly work unless the cooperating teachers intentionally sit down together before a lesson or unit starts. Teachers already feel inundated with tasks and deadlines, and, at least initially, it is often more time-consuming to plan together than for one teacher to plan individually.  Therefore, administrators cannot simply trust that co-teachers will take the initiative to schedule and attend common planning time. Administrators need to get creative to carve out pockets of time.  Faculty meetings, professional development days, Edcamps, and PLC time are all opportunities to make co-planning a focus.  Perhaps co-teachers can be scheduled for the same supervisory duty that would allow them to chat while also keeping an eye on the playground. Tan Huynh offers a variety of suggestions for getting creative with finding common planning time.  And once time is given, expect a product!  If real co-planning occurred, teachers should be able to produce a lesson plan, set of slides, or activity.

3. Celebrate and highlight co-teaching partnerships that are already successful. Praise them in front of other colleagues, ask them to present at a faculty meeting, and/or have other co-teachers observe one of their lessons. When co-teachers are commended, they are more likely to want to continue the good work.  Wendy W. Murawski writes, “Videotape them and share their lessons with other teachers. There is almost nothing more inspiring than watching excellent teaching in action. Watching excellent co-teaching, however? Twice as inspiring!”

4. Incentivize co-teaching excellence by allowing teachers to make it one of their mandated professional development plan (PDP) goals.  If teachers are non-tenured, they can even share a Student Growth Objective (SGO), thereby dividing up the responsibility of collecting and analyzing data. 

5. Encourage collaboration between special education teachers and multilingual learner teachers who co-teach the same content.  Although special education students and multilingual learners have unique needs that require different strategies and accommodations, many of the accommodations, supplemental materials, and even modifications can be helpful to both sets of students.  If special education and multilingual learner staff members work on the same teams or with the same content areas, perhaps they can make a list of the materials they need to create and then divide up the work. 

6. Look for direction, not destination.  And celebrate the baby steps of new co-teaching partnerships.  Administrative support and encouragement can go a long way toward motivating teachers throughout the highs and lows of the co-teaching journey.