Beyond Co-Teaching Basics

Wendy W. Murawski and Wendy W. Lochner's book, Beyond Co-Teaching Basics, presents a method for evaluating and improving co-teaching skills. Their extensive compilations of rubrics reminds me of Danielson's teacher evaluation- too extensive to use in its entirety, but presented in such a way so as to make people think they must try. They do suggest focusing on key areas in need of improvement. Their list of skills is extensive. 

They open the book up with a review of co-teaching formats. These were identified by Marilyn Friend. What they add are teacher actions of co-teaching. This chart presents 17 suggestions for parallel work by teachers including lecturing- modeling note taking and facilitation a silent activity- circulation and checking for understanding (p 17). Perhaps this is the page the individual starting out as a co-teacher would find most useful.

I find challenge in the idea that in a level 3 program (top level of their rating system), you cannot differentiate between the general and special education teacher or students. If you cannot differentiate between the two, you are probably not leveraging individuals skills to the maximum. I want to know the difference between the subject matter expert (general education teacher) and the learning style and strategy expert (special education). Yes, they will teacher each other things, but assuming both teachers take responsibility for the learning of all the students, there is not a problem with the divide. Assuming there is no identifiable difference between the students, means someone is blind. ADHD students will be identifiable by their character traits (ex. extra movement, distractibility, and impulsiveness)  and perhaps the management strategies used to help them (ex. fidgets, different chairs, extra proximity). Students with sensory impairments may need extra large print, speech to text and FM systems that are not available to all students. Identifying differences is not, in and of itself, a problem. Holding different standards for the same results, treating students substandardly because of a disability is a problem.

They passionately argue for co-planning as a prerequisite of co-teaching. While they suggest that ideally a teacher only co-teaches with one person or at max two, they acknowledge that in many programs a single co-teacher works with a whole group of  general ed teachers. They do not suggest anything to help teachers in these programs other than to advocate for smaller ratios of special ed: general ed teachers. Since this is not fiscally possible in many places, there is a limited amount that a team can do. It means the general education teacher plans and the special education teacher modifies, often on the spot. Increased time working together may help ameliorate this problem, but time cannot be the only solution.

The book offers some great suggestions on how to improve skills, but since the focus is at the system level, the individual teacher may be left trying to do it alone with little support. The authors suggest starting small and demonstrating improvements in order to obtain buy in from others.