I recently was invited to a High School Integrated Algebra lesson in our school.  The co-teachers wanted me to see how they were implementing their co-teaching strategies. In one statement, “I wish I had filmed them.” 

It was level 2 co-teaching at its finest.  Both teachers instructing! 

One group of students worked independently on laptops.  They were assigned different tasks on Castle Learning. Tasks were assigned to ability level, but the students did not seem to know the difference.  Also, the students were assigned with MORE than enough problems, so if they got stuck, they could skip it and try another.  I am sure this took a lot of effort to create, and I appreciate the teachers’ thoughtfulness in differentiating this activity.

In a second group, one of the two co-teachers, was teaching reflections.  Students had white boards and worked along with the teacher as she directly instructed them on this new topic. 

In a third group, the other co-teacher was working with students on problems from “yesterday’s” lesson.  It was not a review of homework, but rather extensions on what they already learned with a review of the skills embedded into the lesson.

I saw variety.  The time flew. 

I saw a timer that was on the wall, so teachers easily kept on pace. 

I saw differentiation in all 3 groups. 

I saw teachers touch base between group transition.

I saw teachers touch base within the lesson and even had built in opportunities to check on the independent group that was working on the laptops. 

Tomorrow I debrief.  I left them notes in the co-teaching model that we use for our walkthroughs. It will be great to talk about how much time it took, what they are doing that is similar or different on a daily basis and if others can come when they have planned a lesson such as this to observe them at work.

Okay, so I am having a blast today.  The administrative team is in the midst of our first round of focused classroom walk-throughs.  We have created a structure and format that I find so easy, but I am quite afraid to say it too quickly as we still have to debrief next week about the process, gather the data and get feedback from teachers.

If I could thank of all of our teachers for engaging so willingly in this process, I would.  In fact, I will!  It is not easy having administrators come into the classroom, document some work, analyze a snapshot and not feel a bit worried that judgements about snapshots in time will be made arbitrarily. 

So, here is the story.  We are a small school – 4 buildings, 4 principals.  Each month, until May, we are going to be conducting walk throughs of co-teaching classrooms.  Our districts has made a heavy investment in staff and training for co-teaching.  The data collected will help us analyze the effectiveness of our staff development as well as give us means to great conversations about our work and what other support do co-teachers need to support students of all levels.  (Teachers will have the data too.  This will be a transparent process.) Walk throughs occur with the 4 building principals, the Director of Student and Staff Learning, the Director of Special Education and Student Support Services as well as the Superintendent.  Please note that we are never together.  We split the work and visit classrooms individually.  It is just more realistic for us time-wise.

The schedule has been created. The building principal is always in his or her building, but next month, we add a twist. Building principals will have their own building plus one other buliding.  By the time we are finished, they will have visited all of the other buildings in our district which certainly can’t hurt for us to see K-12 co-teaching!  The superintendent, director of special ed and director of student and staff learning visit all buildings as well.  Because the bulk of our leadership team is involved, this allows time for the building principal to continue to do his or her daily work (since the workload is distributed). 

I know that Carolyn Downey woud tell us not to leave notes, but we do because I think she would agree that this isn’t all about praise, but rather a targeted technique we can all live with as we collect data. We all use the same format. 

1. We determine if it is Level 1 or Level 2 co-teaching.
2. We write a lesson description.  (We are only there 5-10 minutes, so we write what we see in a nutshell.)
3. We list T-A-P or S.  (Will explain more below)
4. We write positive feedback.  Who doesn’t need kudos?
5. AND we write a reflective question…just something for them to think about in co-teaching.

I struggle to write a reflective question at times, but I am getting better at it, and I can already see an unintended outcome for me will be that I will be better in coaching and questioning.

This walk-through format was ‘borrowed’ with permission from Sonya Kunkel who did the bulk of our co-teaching training.  TAPS is a term that she made up, I believe, to assess the level of student engagement. 

T = Total Class Response.  We are looking for total student engagement.  Example – they are all writing, using white boards or working on the computer.  Each student is perceived to be engaged in the learning.

A = Alone or Individual Responses.  This is usually perceived as the most traditional.  Teacher is directing the lesson and one student is responding at a time.

P- Pairs.  Students are working in pairs and engaged in classroom work.

S – Small Groups. Students are working in small groups.

We ultimately hope for T, P or S in any classroom because those formats typically increase the likelihood that students are engaged in the work.  We all write up this information while in the classroom (for about 5-10 minutes) and then leave a copy for the co-teachers. 

Our first round of data collection will be the number of Level 1 and Level 2 sessions district-wide and by building.  We will also collect information about TAPS by district and by building.

I will keep you posted on our results.  A high school student is coming Monday to help me prepare my Excel sheet to collect the information so we can create a graph.   Stay tuned.

We had Shared Decision Making training for teachers, parents, support staff and students who are new to their respective shared decision making teams.  It was a very good afternoon.

One of the things that I always do with groups that I work with is ask them at the conclusion of the session, “How did this process work for you?”  I seem to focus a lot lately on the format, structure and process of trainings, committee meetings, and other work that I do with groups.  The feedback that I received was great because it matched the intention of how I structured the training.

Feedback #1 – They liked talking with people from other buildings.   I am glad that the training was structured so that they worked in teams with other buildings vs sitting in their comfort zone.  Not only did they enjoy that part of the day, but I think they realized how much they have in common and really never get to talk much with others who are located in different buildings.  I keep forgetting that I am not the only one that feels isolated at times in our district.

Feedback #2 – They liked hearing what others are doing and the perspective of all stakeholders.  How cool is it that the students led much of the discussion in the small groups, that they felt like equal participants?  They even seemed to be the task masters of each group.  How awesome is it that teachers, parents and teacher aides worked side-by-side to complete the work?

Feedback #3 – They realized that even though building goals were different, there are essentially the same themes.  We are always striving towards student achievement.  We want our schools to be welcoming for students and community members both in visual and personal aspects.  We want our students at all levels to have good sound character and treat others respectfully.

I am really glad that the session ran so successfully.  We reached our goals and had a lot of fun doing it!