A Co-Teaching Playbook

As February approaches, numerous football teams are striving to obtain their goal pushing for a spot in the upcoming Super Bowl. Co-teaching teams are similarly striving to obtain their goal pushing for a successful second half of the school year. Like football teams, co-teaching teams require playbook resources, franchise leadership, and a huddle with ongoing support.

Football teams utilize playbooks to drive their decisions on the field. Educators utilize research-based literature to drive their decisions inside the classroom. Current leaders within both co-teaching and instructional coaching literature have noted that teachers require job-embedded professional development.

Feedback and collegial support are the most effective components within staff training. Further, the art of effective co-teaching can be broken down into core competencies: building a foundational relationship, sharing expectations, co-planning, co-teaching, and co-assessing. Through coaching and ongoing support, co-teachers can increase their co-teaching competencies.

NFL coaches like Andy Reid and Sean McVay are huddling with their teams to provide practice, reflection, and feedback to support their team’s goals. Educational leaders and instructional coaches can huddle with their co-teaching teams in a similar process called micro-teaching to support a co-teaching team’s goals. Within this process, co-teachers set a shared goal, co-plan to implement their goal, co-teach to practice, and co-reflect. The co-teaching team’s designated coach provides resources, reflective questioning, and feedback.

Educational leaders and coaches – are you looking to develop your co-teaching playbook even more? Within the presentation, “The Co-teaching Huddle: Ongoing Support” you can learn practical tips and resources to coach co-teaching teams to build their co-teaching competencies. Email AIMS Presentator Meghan Pahlke to access presentation resources and/or for further consulting: mpahlke@plano88.org.