Last week I had a meeting with three colleagues and two deans concerning a proposal that I had drafted on co-teaching. The concept is to bring together three disciplines - English, Sociology and Psychology - in the creation of a course where students would be engaged in all three. Students would remain in one classroom for a period of three hours and each professor would switch on the hour; thus, students would experience all disciplines. From a standpoint of education, this learning community is a great idea; however, it is a logistical nightmare.
How do we test new methods when we are faced with such insurmountable odds?
Even though co-teaching is a good strategy, it is sometimes so hard to implement.
ReplyDeleteThe high school I went to offered a "Humanities" course every other year. This course was 2 hours long, and taught by an English teacher, a history teacher, and a music teacher. It was only offered if there was enough interest, though. Unfortunately for me, the interest was not there when I was hoping to take it. They made it work, though, for at least some span of time.
ReplyDeleteThe problem here is exactly what you stated: how can we try these things when, more than likely, people will want to know if it'll work or not before it's tried?
Currently we use co-teaching in both the middle school and high school settings. A proposal has been made to remove special education teachers from co-teaching experiences and replace them with highly qualified instructional aides. This thought makes me upset, because I think it is the district's way of trying to save money. What happened to doing what is best for the students?
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