Team Teaching

Team teaching is something that, initially, came relatively easy to me. When I first arrived in Dunboyne, I was only observing, but after a week or so I began team teaching with my cooperating teacher. We sat down before the class and decided who would be doing what task and it went relatively seamlessly in the classroom then. However, I only team taught in Dunboyne for a couple of weeks before I was put teaching on my own and therefore by the time it came around to doing the team teaching recording for the course, I was out of practice. I had seen some good examples of team teaching during my placements and had also seen some disastrous attempts at it which also taught me a lot. Team Teaching became harder when it was done with a close friend. There were probably many reasons behind this. In hindsight, we should have done a lot of things differently. I started team teaching in Dunboyne about 2 weeks in. I started out with smaller tasks such as being the one to demonstrate a task for the learners or explaining one of the concepts to them. For a while, during the practical tasks, my cooperating teacher would explain the theory at the beginning of the class and then leave it to me to explain and ensure the practical elements of the class were successfully completed. We then began switching these positions so that I was delivering the content and he was overseeing the practical elements. We worked very well as a team all throughout my teaching practice. He was always willing to share resources with me and allow me teach as much or as little as I wanted. If we were both going in to teach together, we spent some amount of time before the class discussing what we were going to teach and how and who was going to do what task. I think this is probably the best way of team teaching. It requires a lot of careful planning.

I observed some good, and many bad, examples of team teaching during my teaching practice. I watched as two teachers went in to teach a class without any obvious prior preparation. I saw two teachers who disagreed over a definition in front of their learners and another where one teacher dominated and the other sat silently for the whole class. They taught me a lot about what not to do. You need to be very prepared. Covering every possible disagreement that may come up is very important to do in advance. Having a clear plan about who is doing what, also very important as well as equally dividing up the tasks. Watching others team teach has taught me a lot about it, mostly how not to do it. The best team teaching I saw on placement was in DALC. The class teacher and volunteer that were teaching the class were seamless in transitions from one to the other. It was decided the previous week how the class would be divided and who would do which task. At some point during the week they would collaborate online in a document about how they wanted to explain the new concepts being introduced to ensure that they were both on the same page. It was a fantastic example to have when myself and my partner went to plan our team teaching.

By the time we got the chance to film our team teaching video, it had been several months since I had done it. I had planned to do my team teaching with a very close friend. It all went fine in the planning stages. We went into the classroom with a very clear plan about what we were going to do and who was going to do which task. However, our teaching styles were quite different and they clashed on the day. The team teaching was done with my level 3 maths group. My cooperating teacher had asked us to complete a particular task which could then be put into their folders for QQI. This meant that I was incredibly tasked focused throughout the class. There was an expectation on me to complete this task and I didn’t want to let anyone down. This same expectation did not exist for my partner. She was happy to go off task and have conversations around it. Essentially, we were asking our learners to budget for a holiday. My partner began to ask them about things that were irrelevant to that task and it was frustrating, it also meant she was dominating the time and we were getting nothing completed. We had a conversation in the break, regrouped and came back better. We got back on task and completed what we needed to have done while maintaining the space for conversation in the classroom. I think this could have been avoided had we spent more time practicing before the class. We ended up being quite rushed due to a scheduling problem and it showed on the day. Team teaching requires compromise, planning and cooperation. Without all of these things it just won’t work. You need to give it time before the class to make sure you’re both on the same page.

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