Co-Teaching, Do's, Don'ts and Do Betters

Toby J. Karten and Wendy W. Murawski's book, Co-Teaching, Do's, Don'ts and Do Betters, offers many suggestions for improving co-teaching. This book with it's large font, and low density is an easy read. They suggest looking at co-teaching as an activity with many components or spokes that need to be addressed to optimize effectiveness.  Understanding by Design, differentiated instruction, positive behavior interventions and supports, universal design for learning, multitiered systems of support, co-teaching models, social emotional learning, and  specially designed instruction are, however, more than the spokes of co-teaching, they are the spokes to good teaching and schooling. Placing this at the feet of of co-teachers simplifies the roles of other teachers and magnifies the role of co-teachers.

From a co-teaching model standpoint, they highlight the traditional models: one-teach, one support; team teaching, station teaching, alternative teaching, and parallel teaching. They strongly encourage the use of all these approaches over time. Sticking to one approach is not as effective. They discuss the prominence of one-teach, one support because of it's reliance on traditional roles, but note how it emphasizes only one adult is the teacher here. It is the method that requires the least co-planning, a commodity that is often in short supply in schools. Even when co-planning time is available, it is often used as "let me tell you what is going on" time.

A key component of co-teaching is co-planning. They offer suggestions for in person and virtual approaches. Ultimately, it may require more of the partners than a traditional teacher needs to put in. 

Of great interest to me was their comment, "Don't minimize the impact of class size and the degree of heterogeneity" (p 161). They cite meta-research by Mathis (2016) that proposes small class size is an important indicator of improved results. Upon deeper review, the research is heavily focused on early grades (K-3) and demonstrates positive impact through graduation. The last grade where reduced class sizes were examined was 8th. They defined small class sizes as less than 15 and large ones as 22-28. Interestingly, many places today have class sizes well over 30.  While small class sizes have real economic impact to children well beyond their grade, because the the impact is well beyond their grade it is an upward battle to require them even in the early grades.

Similarly they suggest keeping percentages of identified students to under 30% (p. 161). When I first started teaching, I worked with a high school business teacher who commented that she had a class that was 90% students with disabilities and she had no consultant teacher support. This phenomenon has changed somewhat in some places, but certainly not all. In New York we try to keep the balance at 50%. What that means is classes become large to accommodate the students with disabilities. Further they load these classes with struggling students who have 504 plans or just are struggling. By having such a high percentage of high needs students, you detract from the ability of the teachers to meet the needs of all. Of additional note, mixing 50% students with labels with 30% high ability students, you create a class that is highly difficult to teach. UFT (teacher's union) suggests the percentage be capped at 40% with a class size cap of 25 but no more that 10 students with disabilities in the space. NYS posits a limit of 12 students with disabilities in an integrated co-taught class with a recommendation that there be more than or an equal number of students without disabilities in the class. Gifted advocates would argue for clusters to be formed and groupings of high and middle or middle and low students to increase teachability of classes.

The text is full of charts and sample forms that could be used or modified for use. They include many vignettes, mostly from K-8 experiences. I think things get trickier at the secondary level with many special ed teachers co-teaching with many teachers. The dance gets more complicated as you have to learn the styles and approaches of multiple general ed teachers. I know that Murawski would suggest working with a maximum of two teachers, but that is simply not in the cards in many places.