Co-Teaching from the Special Education Persepctive Part 4: Professionalism (& back to school!)

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       Captain Obvious called, he says, "It's August." Some teachers have already begun their year, others are counting down the days. I'm reflecting on a season where I should be busy with classroom plans and panicking impending paperwork for my caseload, but instead I'm casually sipping coffee and watching the Olympics. My husband and I are moving abroad in 3 weeks, and I'm enjoying a low-stress morning after a stressful previous week of selling, packing, and coordinating our things in preparation for the move. It is REALLY WEIRD that I'm not relating to back to school memes, especially the ones about dreading wearing real pants. I'm still stressing and trying to plan out an upcoming year where I couldn't even begin to predict the outcomes, but my year won't involve a classroom. I won't get to see my little babies that I taught the last 2 years become 8th graders. I won't be working with my wonderful coworkers. I'll repeat, it's really weird. Big sigh.

      Back to school reflections have brought about some inspiration for this last post in my Co-Teaching series. As much as the magnitude of the impending school year can overwhelm teachers, remember one thing: You got this! Pre-year jitters are normal, just like the Olympic athletes I'm watching have pre-race jitters. I mean really, the only difference between the two is that the Olympic athletes have more sculpted abs. Getting nervous for something upcoming just means you care about it, and you care about doing a good job. Give yourself a pat on the back and reassure yourself that no matter what curriculum changes, classroom changes, grade level changes, and staff changes arise, you will have a successful year no matter what.

       As the finale in my Co-Teaching series, here are some encouraging tidbits to remind you and your co-teacher about working together professionally. I hope you've enjoyed the series! (Shameless self-plug: opening week PD is a great time to share these blog posts with your coworkers!)


DIVIDE & CONQUER
There are twice as many teachers in your classroom! This is a GOOD thing! How to best use that to your advantage: Work with ALL students! Pull EC groups sometimes, and then let your co-teacher do the same. Working with the same group of students will wear both of you out, while trading off can give each of you fresh perspective when it’s needed. Likewise, split your grading, assessing, lesson prep, everything! Make co-teaching work for you so that you both feel like you're contributing and taking some of the load off the other teacher.

BE VISIBLE
Meetings come up, things happen, but make sure the students know you are invested in their success. Students should learn from your relationship about how to work together. The more the whole class sees BOTH teachers interacting positively, the more positive your class will be. Let your students see you both take the lead, and let them see you compromise as well. Let them know when you've disagreed (professionally) and how you've gotten through it. Let them know when you've celebrated something together (especially if you celebrated your students!). Mostly, let them see you both actively participating in their education.

BE ON TIME

This is just good professionalism anywhere. If you're the one running from room to room and anticipate being late, tell them. Treat every day like it's the first day and you want to make a good impression. Your students pick up when you get in the habit of being late, running behind, or being absent. They WILL call you out on it!

BE INTENTIONAL

You're developing a personal and professional relationship, in front of a most influential audience! So, remember to keep professional disagreements professional by not including them in conversations with students or peers. Don’t share your arguments with others and be respectful with your co-teacher when you disagree. As a teacher, be intentional about your practice. If you don’t know, ask! Always seek to grow in your skillset and seek advice professionally when needed

BE FLEXIBLE
With time, with planning, with your co-teacher, and with yourself. Compromise is healthy and can help keep the pressure off of one teammate feeling like they have to carry "more" of the load. Always seek to problems solve and come up with creative solutions. Be sure you are working together to resolve or mediate differences, not waiting for the other to fix it! 

BE REFLECTIVE
Just as in any relationship, take time to figure out what’s working and what’s not. If it’s not working, try something new! Be responsive to your co-teacher’s needs. Be sure to make time to talk about student strengths and struggles during your PLC. However, make sure you also celebrate the good and approach student needs with a growth mindset.

...And, most importantly, have a great school year! 

Co-Teaching From the Special Education Perspective

     I was recently given the opportunity to present to some of my teacher peers at the first ever Orange County Schools summer conference. The county Board of Directors and School Board have determined that one of their main objectives in the county strategic plan is to do a better job of appreciating teachers in hopes to retain more teachers. In the Triangle area of North Carolina, teachers often move between counties- for a better school, better supplement pay, or even just a change of pace. On top of that, North Carolina is continually ranked low on the list of states where you'd want to teach, for a variety of reasons I can get into later. The point being, the first annual summer teacher conference, where the presenters were all teachers in the district and the organizers made the teachers feel like royalty for 2 days, was a big hit! I had a great time learning from my peers, CHOOSING my professional development sessions, and getting some free swag (and ridiculously delicious mac and cheese) along the way.

     I had signed up to present a short session on co-teaching from the Special Education perspective, in hopes of demonstrating some co-teaching techniques and strategies. Unfortunately, I was told last minute that instead of a room for presenting, I had to follow a round table presentation format, which didn't quite fit the type of presentation I was planning. I made do, but the situation birthed the idea of a blog series about co-teaching. So many of the teachers I have worked with or talked to about co-teaching, from student teaching until now, have struggled with co-teaching in some fashion. I had planned to start off the session with a poll to gather audience perceptions of their co-teaching experiences. Because the format was a round table in a room full of 7 other round table sessions, we didn't quite have the space/volume to really get into everyone's concerns. I thought that of the few respondents I had, the results were quite telling:

Responses (7) to the question "How would you best describe your experience(s) co teaching in Orange County Schools?"

     Most people, especially when talking to them about their co-teaching experiences, feel they don't have enough time to co-plan, and that they do not have enough resources to know HOW to co-plan. Based on these discussions and my previous experiences co-teaching, I am hoping to address a few of you who actually read this post with some resources and strategies I've found to work well (and some that don't).

     I'll have a short series of posts in the next few weeks to give some background information on the types of co-teaching, strategies for the special education teacher in a co-teaching relationship, and general advice I've followed throughout my 3 years of co-teaching (with a total of 5 different co-teachers across 3 grade levels and 2 content areas!). Stay tuned, and if you like the advice, share it! You can never be armed with enough information about co-teaching, in my opinion.

     I'll link to the posts here as I complete them, for easy reference: 

Part 1: Get organized! 
Part 2: Relationship and Communication
Part 3: Types of Co-Teaching
Part 4: Be a Professional Collaborator 

Debunking Common Core Math

     On Friday, after a long day of school where I had lost my voice, the internet had been out all day, it poured and the kids were stir crazy, I decided to "zone out" for a minute and check Facebook, to clear my brain and take a time out before getting some other work done. This was both a positive and negative choice. Positive because it inspired this post, which I believe is truly important and probably the only thing I have to say worth sharing at the moment. Negative because it did not give me a "time out," and instead put me in a foul mood. Why? Because people post things like this on Facebook, and it drives me crazy:

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Don't even get me started on the grammatical error in the
first image, which has gone viral and been on news
 shows. It should say "old fashioned" because
it is past tense. Ugh. 

     It drives me crazy to read so many people bashing Common Core, telling their kids it's not important, spreading viral posts with incorrect information, and worst of all, giving the public another reason to trash the teaching profession. It's exhausting to be a teacher, and it's even more exhausting to come home and see my social media overrun with comments about the "Satanic" Common Core. I fully believe that if you take away one thing from reading/glancing at/or "National Geographic"-style picture stalking my blog, it is the following:

Our society should not have a single problem with Common Core math. 

("problem" pun intended)

     There, I've said it. And in this post I'm going to tell you why it's true. I've learned that in order to change someone's opinion, you need to have authority. You'll read this with your own perspective, and maybe you'll think that I am full of it, so let me try and set the mood by telling you 3 reasons why I'm qualified to tell you what you should think about Common Core:

1. I am a teacher; I teach math to 7th and 8th graders. Specially, I am one of 4 Special Ed teachers at my school, and I  work exclusively in inclusive math classrooms. I work with THE best team of Math teachers who are true experts in their field, who teach responsively to their students' performance (using myriad data), who care about the education of ALL of their students, and who do all of those things while being ethical, responsible, team players, and most of all, fun to work with. Therefore, we all enjoy our job, we take it seriously, and we perform our job requirements to the best of our abilities. Can you say that about you and your coworkers? Honestly? I can.

2. I have a Master's degree in Special Education (from a top 50 School of Education). "Special Education" is the art of educating those whom society labels "different," and who have qualified to meet the Federal guidelines for having a disability which affects their ability to access "typical" education. Part of my master's program was spent learning about all of these federal guidelines, regulations, and the legal paperwork that takes up a large part of my time at work. I take my job seriously because if I do not, I can cost my school district hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, not to mention losing my job and teaching license. The other part of my master's program was learning how to teach the core content areas (Math, Reading, Writing) as well as adapt grade level work to meet the needs of students with varying disabilities. I took an entire class dedicated to learning to teach math using the Common Core.

3. I have read the Common Core. I've used it daily. I've used the extended standards as well, which are the Core standards broken down into their most basic pieces (for students with severe disabilities). I have taught Common Core Math Standards from Kindergarten to Grade 8 in my 4 years of teaching (including teaching summer math at a private school). I'm very familiar with it.

Hopefully by now you understand that I know what I'm talking about. No, I'm not saying you should take my word as Gospel, but I am suggesting that you should refrain from slamming anything I say until you've done your homework.

So, with my preface given, let's get into the reasons why no one should be complaining about Common Core Math. 

1. Common Core Math is a SET OF STANDARDS. Here's an example of a first grade math standard in Common Core: "Standard 1.NBT.2.A (NBT = Numbers in Base Ten) Students can understand that the two digits of a two digit number represent amounts of tens and ones." And that's what the whole of Common Core Math looks like! It is a list of COMMON standards, organized by the 5 principles of mathematics, which outline the skills students should have in order to have what is globally considered to be "an understanding of mathematical principles and processes." That's it! We use it in the US in order to make sure that students in the same grade levels in different states are learning the same material in their math classes. This also makes our federally mandated assessments more representative of how each state is performing, but that's an aside.

2. Common Core standards are NOT NEW. The standards were essentially developed in response to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) surveys done in the 1990s. The TIMSS done in the 1970's (which showed the US was performing VERY poorly in mathematics instruction) sparked a movement into researching and developing new methods of teaching in order to develop this mathematical understanding our country was lacking. By 1996, when the 1995 TIMSS results came out, the USA was STILL lacking. There were many countries outperforming us. We scored 13 points below the international average in math performance, and we trailed the leading countries by more than 100 points. We were the country pioneering computers, laptops, and the internet, and our math scores were completely non-competitive internationally. Our government and math education researchers got to work trying to find a way to shift mathematics education across the country. The Common Core standards were developed and educators continued the research to make sure the standards were relevant and appropriate. In the early 2000's, the standards were presented to the states as a way to improve their mathematics performance. The subliminal tagline included was that if states compelled teachers to teach to the standards, they would improve not only test scores, but individual student mathematical reasoning skills. This was over 10 years ago! The wave of parent outrage over not being able to help their students with homework, which has become commonplace in the media in the last 2 years, is NOT due to Common Core! Which brings me to my next point...

3. Nothing in Common Core says to teach using "new methods." The shift in curriculum and the reason that Common Core standards focus on concepts such as the above mentioned "numbers and operations in base ten" (which means adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing using 10 as an anchor number) is to develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts in order to more easily manipulate numbers and complete operations mentally instead of needing paper and pencil. The reason many adults can't help their children with this homework is likely because they are not competent in the understanding of the topics themselves. Yes, they learned the algorithm to add and subtract, but can you explain, using mathematical vocabulary and sound reasoning, what exactly you are doing when you "borrow" while using those algorithms? Do you know what an algorithm is? (An algorithm is simply a set of steps to follow to complete a process, by the way) The Common Core standards dictate that students should develop a deeper understanding of number sense, and yes, as education innovates and evolves in its practice, there are new methods developed for teaching these concepts. However, their sole purpose is conceptual understanding, not practical application. The Common Core does NOT dictate that students balance a checkbook using tenframes; in fact, it dictates that students learn the standard algorithms (or "old fashioned" way) of performing all operations. Instead of teaching first, and hoping conceptual understanding comes later, Common Core starts with the concepts and ends with the algorithms. Which isn't a crazy statement in the slightest! If you were a mechanic, wouldn't you start with understanding the parts of an engine before you learn the steps to repair one?

4. Lastly, I agree that some of the new methods may not be great methods for teaching these concepts. However, I'll repeat that Common Core does not mandate using any specific method to teach specific standards. New methods are typically distributed by school districts or district math coaches, who are not infallible, and who are absolutely able to fall under poor guidance. Individual teachers as well could be using bad methodology (can I call it math-odology? No?) because most districts forego training due to strict budgets. The previous school district I worked in adopted Common Core standards across all subjects (Did you know there's Common Core Language Arts too?? Surprise!) during my first year there and did zero training on Common Core standards or the vertical standards map (which is how the standards build from year to year) until the next school year! That's like me requiring a restaurant to abide by new health standards and then giving them the details of the standards a year later. That is what is ridiculous. Teachers should be able to explain Common Core to their parents, and supplement them with information that parents can use in order to be able to help their children with homework. If teachers aren't educated in the standards, though, well, no wonder parents are upset!

Blogs, like this one, exist to share opinions. Social media in general exists so that people can share their feelings, thoughts, medical concerns, and opinions.  Everyone is entitled to their opinions and I respect that, but just because teaching "seems like an easy job" and has a reputation of being the profession you choose "if you can't actually do anything" doesn't mean that people uneducated in education topics have the rights to rail so hard on a SET OF STANDARDS which guide instruction.

Get informed, people, before you rant. And PLEASE, cut your teachers some slack! They are superheros in the midst of some pretty crappy circumstances right now, and your rant about how they're failing your child, when actually they are giving your child a better understanding of concepts that you were deprived of learning, is the last thing they need to see at the end of a long day of TEACHING. Respect the teaching profession and engage in purposeful, forethought dialogue instead of hateful rants.