Co-Teaching From Home: Your Partnership Part 1

I don’t need to tell you we are in a unique and unprecedented time.  Teachers are faced with challenges no one could have envisioned.  Yet, here we are.  Teaching from home.  Learning how to deliver on- line instruction.  How do we co-teach during this time?

My perspective is this - let’s take the practices we already know to be helpful, useful and successful, and get creative about how to apply them now. 

Let’s start with your partnership.  Maintaining a positive professional partnership is going to be necessary right now.  When school is in session, we teach 5 key elements to making your partnership work.  The same 5 apply, just in a different way.  Today let’s talk about the 1st.

Face to face interaction – all teams need both informal and informal times to communicate.  I know, you are communicating constantly, with kids, parents, each other.  When I’ve talked with teachers about this so far, I’ve heard things like… “we text all day long”, “we talk whenever my baby is napping,” “we’re back and forth throughout the day”.  YIKES!  And I understand.  But it’s not sustainable. You’re going to burn out fast.  It is VITAL that we all take care of ourselves at this time and put boundaries around what we’re doing.  

When you’re at school, my coaches and I suggest sacred planning times.  Pick one or two a week that you’ll ask for no interruptions, no other meetings, no conversations with colleagues.  This sacred time is dedicated to planning and planning only.  You don’t answer emails, or call parents, or host extra help.  

I suggest you do the same now.  Come up with one or two common times that you can talk each week to plan your content, process and product. Take this time to discuss materials, groupings, how you are going to deliver to you class and how you will divide up the parent and student communication. 

This dedicated time will make the rest of your week go more smoothly and more easily. You’ll have a clear sense of where you are and where you’re going.  Use a google doc or some other format to record your planning decisions… we’ll talk about that another day.  

Your first step…. Pick a co-planning time.

Then go outside for 5 minutes, take a breath, stretch and pat yourself on the back for all you are pulling off every day.