All partnerships require effort to be successful. Your new co-teaching partnership is no exception! After all, many co-teachers spend more time with each other than they do with their own partner at home. So it’s no wonder that in order for that partnership to go well, there needs to be some work put in up front. While your partnership will always be a work in progress over your first school year together (and hopefully the school years that follow!), the summer is the perfect time to jump start the work.
If summer planning time is something your school or district offers, take advantage of it! While it may be tempting to dig right into curriculum and lesson planning in those initial meetings, the most successful co-teachers lay some groundwork first. By putting in the time and attention to getting to know each other as humans and as educators, you are setting yourselves up for the most successful year in the classroom together.
Make the very first chunk(s) of time together all about learning each other’s likes, dislikes, pet peeves, teaching philosophies, preferences, strengths, and growing pains. Here are some of the most important categories to address in your first official meeting:
- Identify where you align and where you don’t. Discuss your overall teaching philosophy and why you got into teaching in the first place. What is your approach to behavior? What do you view as the function of grades? What are your values around things like social-emotional learning and building community? Who do you think belongs in your classroom and why?
- Look for the differences in your practice and celebrate them. Remember, differences are often a good thing! If you’re too similar, that might lead to harmony in the partnership, but it may also make your students’ learning experience more two-dimensional. Differences translate to an overall balance in your collective teaching practice.
- Identify where you’ll need to compromise. Planning proactively and concretely around your differences will minimize misunderstandings, tension, and conflicts that can arise when working so closely with another person. Identify the areas in which you have flexibility and those you don’t. Then figure out where you’ll need to compromise.
- Compare your personal style in a variety of areas. How and when do you communicate best? Over text? Email? What is your communication style? Learning style? Are you more of a morning person or a night owl?
- Share with each other your pet peeves in and out of the classroom. Do you cringe when people show up late to events? Does it drive you up the wall when students call out during class a discussion? Make a list of all your pet peeves and share them with each other.
- Begin laying out your classroom. We know that many of you might not even know what your classroom looks like yet. Still, it is valuable to talk about the areas in your classroom you want to make sure you set up. You may want to discuss the following questions:
- One teaching area, or two?
- Do you want to make sure you designate a space for Alternative Teaching, or is it more important that you have an area with flexible seating for students to use during independent work? Could there be room for both?
- How do you want desks/tables arranged?
- Where will you create spaces in the room for each of you to feel ownership, especially if the classroom belonged to just one of you and you have a co-teacher “moving in” with you?
- Discuss which co-teaching models you’re most comfortable with and which ones will present a bit of a learning curve. There is no “right” answer here; if you are most comfortable with One Teach, One Assist because that’s what you’re used to doing, that’s okay! Be honest about it and what you will need in order to step out of your comfort zone.
Whether you’re brand new to each other or have been colleagues for years but have never co-taught together, spending time laying this important foundation will pay dividends from day one. Happy co-teaching!