I am quite bummed as you might have read in my other topic that I am strictly co-taught this coming year in three subjects with three teachers. Would like some advice and some do’s and don’ts about it…please help!!!!!
Re: perfect co-teaching situation (please give me advice)
I guess the biggest “don’t” would be… don’t sit back and hope your role evolves.
THe “do” would be — figure out what your strengths are and what you can bring to the classroom that the regular teacher can’t. How’s your knowledge/confidence in the subject matter? If you’re used to being a chapter ahead of the kids… you can probably *still* pull that off — pick a topic ahead of time and get to know it better. If you know you’ve got to rely on the teacher for the breadth and depth of content, then figure out what you can bring to the task — taking that content and integrating more visual and hands-on aspectis, figuring out effective modifications so it doesn’t overwhelm your students; figuring out how to differentiate teaching and create a good classroom community (where studetns are lapsing into “well, how come he doesn’t have to do that?”).
http://www.powerof2.org is really a neat place to start.
Sounds like the school is one of the many who think inclusion will happen all by itself — you may also want to really push for building time in for planning for this co-teaching thing.
Welp, to start with… talk to the teachers. Get an inclination of where they’re coming from. If you could take a particular concept and present it to the class in a way that helps ‘em all learn it because it’s a little more structured and multisensory (or whatever you’ve found that works), I think it could be gratifying to everybody.