I am writing this to get input from other middle level educators on the issue of team teaching. A few months ago, the administrators at my school met with all 6th grade teachers to discuss keeping teams of 2 or changing to a team of 4 for next year. The 7th and 8th grade in the school both are teams of 5, each teacher teaching one subject (2 teachers for ELA). Because of the decrease in population size, classes are getting smaller and we went from 5 teachers to 4 for the 6th grade. We went back and forth on the issue, 2 of us wanting to keep 2 separate teams, 2 wanting to change to one team of 4. This means that we would become more departmentalized. I was on the side of keeping 2 separate teams. My reasoning for that was that it is better for the kids to have just 2 teachers to get used to and learn expectations from. Also there is better opportunity to integrate curriculum if one teacher is teaching 2 or 3 of the subjects. Finally, it is much easier to create deep, meaningful relationships with the students in your class when you have them for more than one subject. In the end, we decided to keep it 2 separate teams for next year and revisit the same issue a year from now.
I'd like to know what team teaching looks like in other schools...
What are your thoughts on this issue??
I have worked in both situations (teams of two and teams of four). While the teams of four were much harder to schedule, they gave you more voices to hear when you were trying to solve student or curriculum issues. On the other hand, in my two person team, when I had an issue all I had to do was bang on the wall (literally) and my team was assembled. I think a more critical component to team membership is not number, but "fit." If your team members don't gel or commit to a cause, it really doesn't matter who is in the team.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sam about the potential benefits of each type of team...but that being said...I would almost always vote for the smaller teams. Easier to work together,better cross-disciplinary possibilities because with a four-person team each teacher will have a content specialty and much too easy to fall back into that subject. Four-person teams also tend to divide up the time available into more rigid (and not changing) periods instead of using the flexibility built in to a "block of time" that two teachers have.
ReplyDeleteI think ultimately I have to agree with Ed in that smaller teams are better. Thinking back over my own school career, the fondest memories I have are from when I build strong and lasting relationships with my peers. We have been reading about where our students are developmentally and we know the importance of supporting them socially, what better way than a small team where they can really get to know and trust one another?
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