Sometimes, it takes two -- Abri

One reason I want to be a teacher is so that I can make history, government, and other social sciences come alive for my students. Beyond just learning dates, important people, and events, I want to help students experience the past and present, and imagine the future.

I’ve been around teachers all of my life. You could say that it’s in my blood; in fact, my mom says that I used to come home from preschool, arrange my stuffed animals in neat rows, and teach them what I had learned each day. I rarely got bored in school growing up, but whenever I did, I would think about how I would have presented the material differently. Last summer I could hardly wait to apply my own life experience to classroom theory and be able to get to student teaching as soon as possible.

But if I have learned anything from life it is that things rarely turn out the way that you plan, and often that is a good thing. I realize now that my original grand plans for student teaching were missing one essential element: the influence and support of my cooperating teacher. I dreamed about all the wonderful things that I would do with my students, and of how my ideas could make the difference their lives. I knew that my cooperating teacher would be around to offer me advice and to critique my performance, but I was expecting that our roles would be kept separate. The downside to this premature vision was that I would have to navigate a great deal of my student teaching alone.

Thankfully, this is not the case. Not only have my cooperating teacher and I forged a successful working relationship, we have also been able to co-teach our classes. Co-teaching can often be a tenuous process because every teacher has a different style, yet it is becoming more popular in the era of IEPs and individualized instruction. A true co-teaching experience is a collaborative effort in which both parties fuse their skills and expertise to enhance classroom learning and make it better than it would have been if only one of them were teaching. Each teacher has a different concept of their ideal classroom and co-teaching challenges individualism for the good of students.

My cooperating teacher and I have been co-teaching for several weeks. Some days this looks like one of us leading a discussion while the other adds comments to illuminate parts of the discussion. Other days this looks like us switching back and forth with different activities throughout the class period. Most recently we have started simulations in our government classes – a Mock Election and a Model Congress. Now, co-teaching is both of us walking around our classroom or the computer lab to take note of student progress and help groups as they have need. I have even been able to lead one of the classes in the computer lab by myself!

To me, the most important benefit of co-teaching is the ability to offer individualized instruction to more students. Some of our students have had trouble with the bill writing process for Model Congress. Co-teaching has allowed me the freedom to guide one student in research about Roe v. Wade, help another improve her writing, and edit a bill on nuclear fusion written by a third, all the while knowing that my cooperating teacher is looking at the big picture. When he sits down with a student, I do the same thing.

These simulations are helping the government process come alive for my students. I do not think that co-teaching is necessary for a successful simulation, but it certainly helps. I hope that having the opportunity to work directly with my students will make them more successful when we elect a president and open the 111th Congress this week! Stay tuned!