This entry is cross-posted at the Canadian Education Association website.
Teaching can be a very isolated and isolating enterprise. Many of the teaching frames, images and design principles on which our modern-day schools are based are, themselves, rooted in the early one- and two-room schoolhouses that dotted the rural landscape of 19th and early 20th century Canada. The teacher-learner ratio has almost always been one-to-many and this organizational principle, coupled with the closely monitored grade level expectations that have become part of the way that curriculum is developed and implemented has, until now, remained unchallenged in any notable way.
Lately, there has been a great deal of energy in Ontario around an approach to professional learning that seeks to extend images of teacher collaboration beyond gathering together to plan lessons and assess student work with a grade level partner to an understanding of the classroom as a type of public space where teacher learning, collaborative inquiry and professional conversations can take place.
While currently, the co-planning/co-teaching model is being used to build more powerful practice in the area of mathematics instruction, it is a model that shows a great deal of potential for transforming school cultures, open some doors, and energize conversations between teachers across many domains and curriculum areas.
In the co-planning/co-teaching approach educators from across the same school, across the street, or across the district gather together to plan a particular lesson. In the planning process, learning expectations are selected and clustered around the big ideas that teachers wish to explore. Teachers discuss the subtleties and nuances of how the lesson might best be taught, select a problem on which students will work and actually do the task themselves in order to better appreciate what they are asking students to do. This allows teachers to anticipate and discuss the types of difficulties, misunderstandings and misconceptions that might arise during the lesson.
If the collaborative process were to end there, and individual teachers were sent back to their classrooms to implement the lesson, one might well marvel at the power of the experience.
But that’s not what happens. Instead of the planning team disbanding and going their separate ways until their next meeting, they proceed immediately to one of the team’s classrooms and teach the lesson with a group of students. Actually, two of the team members are responsible for “teaching the lesson” while the remaining participants attach themselves to a group of two or three students and act as unobtrusive observes watching, but not intervening, while the assigned tasks is completed.
The conversation that takes place among the team after the co-teaching session allows them to reflect on how the students reacted to the experience and the specific work in which they learners were engaged. They are able to use the student work collected from the lesson as a type of assessment for learning, make decisions on how to proceed with specific groups of students and plan for the next stages of the lesson.
It’s interesting to note that the co-plannng/co-teaching approach is not about visiting someone else’s class to watch them teach. Instead, its a commitment to gather around a particular curriculum idea, an understanding that the shared expertise in the group will help to create a powerful learning experience and the confidence to engage in shared, embedded, professional practice.
Teachers don’t enter the profession to be isolated and shut off from their colleagues. Yet, many of the visible and invisible structures define schools–even in this 21st century–do just that. Co-planning/co-teaching seeks to alter this relationship by deepening what we mean by collaborative inquiry and student-focused teaching. It’s a model that is just starting to seep into the cracks that separate teachers in our own district, but it is showing a great deal of promise and meeting with tremendous support from teachers, administrators and the support staff that are working in consultative roles throughout the province.
A fairly extensive set of videos explaining the approach can be found at http://resources.curriculum.org/secretariat/coplanning/ and, although the main focus for the strategy in Ontario is mathematics, readers may be able to imagine how the co-planning/co-teaching dynamic might find a home in other curriculum areas.
I would love to hear about your experience with this particular approach, or with another model for collaboration that has been powerful for you and your colleagues.
Stephen in responding to your invitation to share similar co-planning/co-teaching experiences I will take you back to the 60’s and early 70’s. I refer to your comment that “Co-planning/co-teaching seeks to alter this relationship by deepening what we mean by collaborative inquiry and student-focused teaching. It’s a model that is just starting to seep into the cracks…..” This is what we were attempting to do in response to Living and Learning. Its formal title was “Team Teaching”. Team planning was implied. There was no manual nor was there a template to follow. It simply had, at its heart, the desire of like-minded teachers to work together to design, plan, teach, assess, and reassess what we were teaching and how we were doing it. Rather than repeat what I have written in several previous pieces I have selected a few excerpts from those posts to share with you on my experiences with “co-planning/co-teaching. The construct you describe looks and sounds quite different from ours, but I believe our vision was similar. We were structured on a “one to many” ratio but our dream was to lead our students to challenge themselves and to be challenged by us, and each other. We opened doors. We provided resources. We encouraged them to decide, for themselves, what they believe needed to be learned and how. Here then are a few of the comments from previous posts.
“I would love to take credit for what I am about to tell you it but it was, in fact, a collective of like-minded colleagues who got together regularly, often at a local “establishment”? We talked at length about how we could break down the structures of our very rigid curriculum (known as the “grey the course of studies”), and our equally rigid teaching space.
“This was not something that was mandated by politicians or administrators. It was a group of passionate teachers who made it happen. This was the kind of change that was happening to pop up all over the province”.
At Richard W. Scott School in Toronto, Year 1:
“We started slowly and carried on in fairly traditional fashion, doing the “rotary” thing. I was the science and geography guy. We had staff meetings twice weekly where each of us was given the opportunity to suggest new ways of doing old things. That’s simplifying it a bit but you get the idea.
We went away and tried all of the suggestions and came back to discuss what worked and what didn’t. We formulated and tweaked our team teaching construct. We introduced cooperative (collaborative) learning into our unit plans.
The educational philosophy was to be known as “Open Concept Education.” It was born in the U.S.A (no pun intended). It was to feature such radical concepts as “team teaching”, “student centered learning”, “collaborative learning”, and a sprinkle of “self-directed student learning”.
The Open Area School
We knew that “team teaching” was an expectation but there was no manual for that so we had to figure it out for ourselves. By working together to solve the smaller problems we found ourselves tackling the more complex pedagogical issues. We met regularly both as a staff and in our own team units. Some of the greatest fun I have ever had was in those meetings. We knew we were “pioneering” and every time we were challenged with a “how to” dilemma we were exhilarated by the process and celebrated our triumphs (sometimes a little too much if you get my drift).
“At Richard W. Scott School we began to tinker with student directed learning, one of the precepts of Living and Learning. It was an issue that was met with a diversity of opinion by staff but we agreed to take baby steps and carefully examine the consequences as we went”.
We were encouraged by our principal, John Flynn, to initiate an experiment in which a “select” group of students would be allowed to set their own learning goals in one subject area. With my group it was Science. Six students were selected and were given the opportunity to set their own course (so to speak) in science. Naturally, these were high flyers who had proven themselves to be engaged learners and who we considered to be responsible, dependable and highly motivated. They were given some parameters and some guidelines within which they could pursue their interest”.
Why Open Concept Learning Failed:
In the “suite” that was occupied by my primary division I had four high-energy teachers who thrived on late night planning sessions and lots of laughter to bring a dynamic and diverse program to Grades 1, 2 and 3. They quickly “clicked” as a team and their team dynamic became a model for other schools just embarking on their own open concept programs. Teachers visited our primary division and learned a great deal from this very successful team. Alas, three of the four were recruited, by the school board, to be open area consultants, and my primary team was pretty much decimated.
The new version of the primary team was anything but, a “team”. Three of the four reveled in the cooperative planning aspect of the program but the fourth preferred to go it alone.
The “we/they” thing was evolving. The atmosphere in the “suite” was becoming toxic. It boiled over when the team of three developed a cross-curricular unit on non-vertebrates. They did their best to convince the “rebel” to team up with them. They offered to take on some of her responsibilities so that she could immerse herself into the unit. She steadfastly held to her position that the kids could not learn effectively in such a noisy and distracting environment. When the three held their plenary introductory session with their three classes, the rebel, out of spite, chose to show an unrelated film to her own class, thus creating an unnecessarily distracting and uncomfortable atmosphere. The primary teachers were distraught and I, as principal, had to intervene. Even knowing that I was the initiator of the concepts being employed in our school and that I fully supported my team of teachers she refused to comply and stubbornly “dug in her heels”.
The Beginning of the End
The problems began with staffing policies which did not support a true team teaching philosophy. In many instances the term “open concept” was replaced by the dark and disturbing term “open conflict”. Teachers were assigned to open area schools and were told to “get along”. Many of my experiences in three open concept schools were of the hopeful and uplifting variety. For the most part there existed among staff a “chemistry” that served to bring vibrancy and joy to the learning experience for those children who were lucky enough to have four like-minded teachers.
On the other hand the efforts of three like-minded individuals could be totally sabotaged by one person who did not buy into, or support, the vision of the other three. Allow me to cite an example of “open conflict” in its most raw and distressing form.
I hate to end on a distressing note but I am heartened by the news that co-planning/teaching is an idea that is making a comeback. Sadly it was put on hold for a while but leave us not dwell on what could have been. Let’s learn from what did happen and go forward and make it better.
*Note: Elements of the principles of team teaching have continued in many schools and students who have teachers who work together on their behalf are the worthy beneficiaries of that sense of “team”.