I'm probably going to ramble, and this is going to be long, but I'm having troubles with a co-teacher or co-teaching. I have my own classroom where I teach smaller groups five periods a day, but for two periods a day, I go to two other teacher's language arts classrooms to do lessons on reading strategies and teach the reading portion. In one classroom, the teacher is new to the school this year, just like I am. This is his second year as a teacher. We decided in the beginning of the year that he is in charge of planning the beginning activity, like the warm up, and I'm in charge of planning the next 30 minutes I'm in there, which is the reading mini-lesson and activities (his kids have a block schedule, so he has them longer than I'm in there). I thought though we would still be co-teaching, like we'd teach together, have dialogue going together while doing a lesson, and share responsibilities. During "his" beginning fifteen minutes when I'm in there he doesn't do anything or get the class started. He hands the kids a slip of paper with a journal prompt on it, and sits back at his desk. I'm walking around helping kids with it and getting them to work on something that he won't even explain to them. I end up having to read it to the class and explain it because he doesn't take any initiative. I don't know what to say/do to help him. We're equals, so I'm having a hard time communicating with him on suggestions to improve his teaching without coming off as offensive and a know-it-all because I definitely don't know it all, but I CAN tell it's affecting the students' learning. I feel like it isn't my job to help him with some of the things he struggles with that he should know (like you don't sit at your desk!), but at the same time, I don't want the principal to come in and see some things going on that aren't good, and I'm in there, a part of it. So I've started taking control of the class. He isn't planning his share of the lessons--I've tried to give him things to get planned (like find and copy some articles) and it's not done when I get to the class, he isn't teaching with me when I'm in there (like I said--he's sitting at his desk....we're supposed to be co-teaching), he doesn't care if students aren't working, he doesn't care if behavior issues are happening, he doesn't do anything if a student has a phone out, music, or hoods on, his room is a mess, and he doesn't do his share of the grading. He doesn't do anything. I am doing everything in there, not because I like to take over, but because he's not doing anything. I backed off a lot to give him most of the control to see if he just needed a chance, but he wasn't taking any lead or initiative AT ALL. Behavior is fine when I'm teaching my lesson, but he still just sits at his desk. He doesn't involve himself in activities that we're doing in the class. I am trying to tell him things the best I can, but he's not taking any suggestions. I am going to have my mentor (a retired teacher) come to watch "me" and "my teaching" on Monday in that class, so maybe that will help. I don't want to talk to anyone behind his back, like a principal or co-worker. He is my teaching friend. I just want him to WAKE UP and do something. Can I say something to him like, "sorry it's my fault that I'm doing everything and you can have a chance too"? Even when I leave when my times up, I literally have to say "okay, I'm leaving" and he doesn't even try to transition the kids into whatever he has planned for him next. It's like I have to tell him to start teaching. Maybe I need to have someone in the district who knows about "co-teaching" to do a workshop for us or something? Teach us what it means to co-teach? What would you do?
I co-teach (officially in my math class, but the learning support teacher is there for most of the rest of the day as well) and it has it's share of challenges - I love it though and really get along with my co-teacher. I think that this is something that needs to be explicitly taught to teachers...so that both teachers involved know what the real expectations are. We had a few workshops, and are given a day each marking period for planning. At our workshop (it was a few years ago) they talked about all the different ways to co-teach -- and the strengths of each kind. This link has a little information about the different models... http://www.slideshare.net/eshepherd/coteaching-six-models-for-teacher-success If you can get someone to give a workshop, or an instructional coach to help by having a study group or something, I think that would be great. Otherwise - maybe you can see if he wants to try another model -- like doing stations or parallel teaching.... those would get him off his chair.... hopefully! Good luck!
I would first have an open dialogue with him. Talk to him about how he perceives this relationship working out (he might view it as his planning period). Then discuss how you perceive this relationship working out. See if there is any common ground to start from.
I am student teaching right now, and can understand your co-teacher's point of view. We have an enrichment/intervention period at our middle school, and I have an enrichment section. During this time, the social worker comes in twice a week for the first quarter to talk about bullying, behavior, etc. This is supposed to be co-teaching. When she came in, I would just sit at the desk. I didn't know what she was teaching. I didn't know how to co-teach with her. I didn't even realize we were supposed to be co-teaching. So I just sat there because I knew she had it under control and didn't know I should be doing otherwise. I happened to see the social worker with a different teacher during their enrichment period, and they were teaching at the same time. So I approached the social worker and asked if I should be doing more, like what I saw the other teacher doing. She said that yes, we should be teaching together. So I asked for her lesson plan at least a day ahead of time, and if she could give me specific suggestions on where I could come in coteaching. Maybe this teacher just doesn't get it. Maybe he thinks you just want him to get the students started on something until you get there. And as a first year teacher, he is probably taking any chance he can to catch up on planning, grading, emails, etc. If you do decide to approach him, be sure to give him the benefit of the doubt. Assume that he just doesn't realize he should be doing anything different.
One of my earliest articles was on the subject of co-teaching...specifically, the topic of co-teacher conflicts. One thing my co-teacher and I did (we had an almost complete inability to work together early on) was to try approaches that gave us very distinct roles. Rather than plan the lesson in terms of time, we planned it in terms of space. It became a sort of avenue for slowly nurturing an understanding of what "our" classroom was (as opposed to "this 15 minutes is mine, that block of time is yours,"), which made it easier to do more traditional things later on, and ultimately become capable of very complete, fluid and collaborative co-teaching. We ended up working together for years. She co-wrote that article with me. One of those strategies we used (and some of the materials that can make it possible) can be found here. The article ("Finding Opportunity in Co-Teacher Personality Conflicts") is available on this page.
Do you have someone doing observations or walk-throughs? Perhaps asking that person to pay specific attention to helping the two of you interact better as a team might help. My observer actually wants us to interrupt each other and finish each others' sentences in our attempts to co-teach. Not there yet, but working on it
Just because he's a first year teacher doesn't mean that he can ignore his teaching responsibilities to catch up on "housekeeping items". I was a first year teacher last year, and I was engaging my students in learning from bell to bell. Emails, planning, grading happened before school, during planning, lunch, after school, etc. That meant that I usually stayed at school until 6:30pm, but that's the sacrifice you have to make when you're new and inefficient. You should be sacrificing YOUR time doing those things, not your students' time. To the OP, I agree that you need to approach him. I co-teach two subjects, and I am up and moving and instructing and helping all day. Maybe you can wait until your mentor comes to observe you and see if she notices his lack of effort. Being a retired teacher, she can give you some pointers on approaching him and discussing this issue without offending him or coming off as condescending.
I am in all inclusion classes this year. In the English classes, it is like catnfiddle's interaction where we finish each other's sentences and kind of tag-team between instruction. In the math classes, I just help the kids when they do independent work and make sure that everyone is working. I'm not strong in the content and could not teach it effectively.
I would just talk to him at the next lesson planning meeting and tell him: "Hey, this isn't working out. I'm running myself ragged here. We need to have a better plan for each day. Here are some ideas that I think will work..." Then tell him some ideas, like the one of having the same responsibilities and everyone teaching 100% of the time, but being in charge of different spaces of the classroom. Think up an activity and ask him to take charge of it. You sometimes need to take charge in order to get others to take charge, and I don't mean doing their jobs for them. I mean confronting and telling them matter of factly when something isn't working out. If he comes to school unprepared, tell him: "This makes me feel disappointed. I expected that you would be ready with this. Can you make sure that this doesn't happen again?" I don't know though. That's just me. I'm very direct.
Thanks for all your help. I am going to read up on co-teaching now with the links that some of you sent. I am going to have to have a conversation with him as soon as possible. It's also really hard to collaborate with him because we have meetings before school, never the same preps, and then we have different activities going on after school. It's like that with my other co-teacher too, but he has more experience, so even though I'm doing all the planning, when I teach, at least he's not at his desk and his chiming in on the conversation. (awful behavior in that class is another issue though!) I created a Googledoc with my co-teacher so that we can both be adding information to the document so we can plan together that way, but he doesn't ever write on it. His job on Friday was to plan the lesson. Well, he brought something, but it was a MOVIE! Urgh..... We were reading the novel in class because I was having the students practice the reading strategy with both fiction and nonfiction, but why would we want them to watch the whole movie when we didn't finish the book? We're only a forth of the way through. Plus, we don't have time to show movies. I thought the kids could have earned it or something at the end of the quarter though. I didn't want to show it just to show it. I don't know what he did when I left the class on Friday, so I hope he only showed the part up to where we read! Also, I wrote him an email Tuesday last week saying that he can have some say in the planning too. I said "just let me know what you want to do" (trying to get him to do more), and he never responded. He then responded Friday after school telling me what he wanted me to plan next week. I'm glad he thought of the reading skill so he took some initiative, but now I have to find all the stuff for it. It wasn't what I had planned. The reason he wants me to plan what he said is because he needs it for his other classes. He's supposed to use what I teach to his class with his other classes, so when I started a class novel (not a fan of whole class novels, but I'm using it to teach and model the reading strategies), I only used a little of the novel at a time so the students could try the reading strategy with it, but instead he had his other classes read it silently on their own because it was easier for him at the time (he did no teaching...just gave them the novel). So now his other classes finished it, but did NO strategies with it. My class I teach of his didn't finish it because we're using it differently, but he didn't do it that way for his other classes because he didn't want to teach. So now he's stuck without something for his other classes to do. SO now he needs me to plan lessons that work for him. I don't like feeling used. His background is in social studies, so he doesn't know much about reading or writing, which are his morning classes. It's just frustrating, that I'm planning that class on my Saturday when I really should be planning for my reading intervention classes because that's my main job at school. Plus I have to plan for the other co-teacher too. The reading teachers who co-teach in the other grades seem to have it going well. So I'm going to have to get this figured out. If there's something I can do differently, I'll keep trying because maybe it's me. Maybe I just don't know how to work with male teachers, lol.
You definitely need to ask for an observation of the classes. You're doing things right but are having some major issues with collaboration on your teammate's part. The person who does your observations shouldn't act as an assessor (that's more for your year-end review) but as a coach. Can your department chair intervene?
I would need to tell him that he needs to follow what I am showing him. If he doesn't and thus is has thrown the pacing off in the other classes he needs to develop his own lessons until what I am modeling for him is done. I also would be inclined to inform someone or document this because if he is observed and he blames you for his teaching you have protection. From your description of his classroom behavior it sounds like he is not doing what is expected and it has nothing to do with your co-teaching with him.
I'm so glad you are trying to make things work out between you first. Would you consider alternating your responsibilities for a day? Would you consider addressing him directly and giving him a job? (So, now all of the kids in the first row will read the first five paragraphs at Mr. Sitdown's desk. Be sure to ask him which sentence showed your reading expression best and write it down for me.) The reason I say this, is that he may be ill equipped to run it, but it doesn't mean he can't get equipped as you run it. Just a thought....
My district doesn't have any co-teaching positions, nor would I ever want to co-teach with anyone. I'm too "Type-A", so it'd never work out.
