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 

Self-Paced Lesson follow up: Lessons learned!

Back in January, I blogged about how we were planning a Self-Paced Lesson for our 8th graders, specifically for our unit on Volume. In that post, I talked about how excited we were to implement this unit as a self-paced one, and to see how our students responded. We planned the unit quickly, and anticipated the students would complete it quickly too (ha!). Today's post is a follow up,  which I'll try to keep short and sweet, to reflect and share feedback about using Self-Paced learning an inclusion classroom.

Quick overview of our process: 
~ The unit was schedule to be 6 "days" of lessons, and we planned 8 school days for the students to complete it. On the first day, we gave a detailed overview and took up a significant portion of class explaining what our expectations were, as well as the process from the student's side of things. We showed them where their paper copies were, we explained how we were grading it- basically we laid everything out up front. We did this on purpose because we a) wanted to be clear and b) wanted to ensure that students didn't finish "Day 1" on the first day- so that they would understand that the term "day" was fluid (thus, being self-paced instead of daily requirements).

~ We printed a blank attendance roster and labeled columns as the different assignments students were completing and turning in, so that we could easily keep track of who was where. When we required IXL practice, we could quickly lookup who had completed practice and who hadn't, and check it off. That way, when they did terribly on an exit slip, we knew if lack of practice was a factor (surprise, it typically was!). We also put in the grades of each assessment they turned in, so that we could see in one easy glance which students were improving, which were declining, and which were staying steady in terms of their proficiency (Only the post-test went in the gradebook).

 Most of our students looked
like this during our Self Paced unit!
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~ We turned them loose! They were excited to get started.

Positive Observations:  
~ So many students were PRODUCTIVE! They enjoyed the FREEDOM; some worked at home, even when they struggled, while others asked for help through the difficult spots while in class.
~ Our process was very EFFICIENT- students knew where to get materials, when/where to turn them in, and for the most part did a great job of keeping track of their progress.
~ For students who struggled, we were able to PARTNER them with a peer who was ahead of schedule, in order to foster some interaction, although to be honest it wasn't planned. For example, their TenMarks lesson on the subject was rather difficult, and several students worked together to problem solve or explain what they'd done (and how it was wrong) to try and persevere to get right answers.


Lessons Learned: 

This happened for a few students!
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~ In our inclusion classrooms, and I'm sure in yours as well, ATTENTION is a huge issue. The streamlined process helped several students stay on track- they knew where to get information (their Google Doc), where to get copies (the bin), and that they could easily ask their neighbor quietly if they got stuck. However, some of our students really had difficulty staying on task due to the lack of structured expectations.
~ TIME became a concern. We'd had a couple of snow days in the middle of the unit- no problem, we thought! They could work on it at home. But they didn't, really. A few did, but the concept of the self paced unit was pretty new and I think it didn't even cross their minds that they could work on it and get ahead. They're also very used to the idea that snow days = pushing back lessons to the next day, so they assumed we'd move our deadline for the unit test (we did, but not much).

A teacher's greatest foe.
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~ After a few days, and coming back from snow days, students struggled with MOTIVATION. They monotony of coming in and working off of directions from the same document daily was not motivating for some of our lower attention students. For example, some of our students with Autism (and some without!) realized they could give the appearance of working while they were actually off in their own world!

Going Forward: 

As my other co-teacher and I planned a self-paced unit for our 7th graders, we took away a few lessons from my experience with 8th graders in order to plan for our 7th graders more appropriately. Specifically, we wanted to address TIME, ATTENTION, and MOTIVATION. 

Strategies we used to adjust for time: 

• Having students stop practice short (i.e. if they'd been told to get a smart score of 80 on IXL, we had them move on after 60 if they were behind)
• Picking/choosing what was MOST important (Obviously anything you include in a unit is important, but one example of this was having students test without completing the unit review before the test, just because we'd run out of time and they didn't complete it at home)
• Modifying assignments for length
• Assigning parts as homework (with an email home to parents!)
• Requiring students to come work on the unit during their lunch intervention time
• Communication with parents regarding progress 

Strategies we used to adjust for attention: 
(in addition to the above)

• Preparing groups for various lessons in the unit (We knew some students would get behind or need re-teaching, so we prepared groups ahead of time and started a new class period off with having the students in that group complete a lesson with me or with my co-teacher. This added in a little structure to keep attention going.) 
• Greater variety of activities (We threw in some hands on activities with manipulatives, and Quizlet practice where we encouraged the students to try and get below a certain time- competition always helps with motivation!)
• Anticipating more individual instruction (We listed students ahead of time that we thought would need individual prompting, support, and explanation of new material and made sure to give them that support, either in class or during lunch intervention time.)
• Change seating! Or sit next to them while they worked. 

Strategies we used to adjust for motivation: 
(in addition to the above)

• Communication with parents regarding progress 
• Communication with students individually regarding progress (We gave some students a checklist to work off of on days where they'd been less productive the previous day; others we talked with about their individual progress and our expectations)
• Making sure grades were updated daily (so students could check to see their progress)
• Starting class with a mini-lesson to recap (We did this the last 3 days of the unit, so students could see a) the main take-aways of the lesson, b) where the concepts were going, and c) what they were expected to do, mathematically, as a preview for the day)

I think that self-paced learning has a huge place in the inclusion setting, but it has to be worked the right way in order to be productive for all students. Hopefully these lessons learned will help your inclusion classroom learn productively from a self-paced unit! 

Self-Paced Unit: 8th grade Volume

I'll set the scene: it's the 9th day back at school since Christmas. Students no longer have pencils, notebooks, homework- they're done trying to make a good impression (that was last week). They've got an insatiable desire to socialize, they somewhat remember what we've been learning, so the're a little confident that they don't need to pay attention very well (or, they DO remember what we've been learning and are more than ready to move on). When the students had left for the day, the three of us that teach 8th grade math just looked at each other, exhausted, shaking our heads. My co-teacher said, "Am I crazy to want our next unit to be a self-paced one?" She had just completed a self-paced unit on Pythagorean Theorum with her 7+ class, and had gotten really good feedback. She wanted to create some of that independence in learning for our students and give them time to focus on the learning, instead of on each other. 

But our classes are inclusion. My thoughts turned to thinking about individual students on my caseload, wondering if they'd be capable of managing a self-paced lesson. Several of our peers have had success with it, so why shouldn't we give it a try? 

In many ways, self-paced units are perfect for inclusion classes. Students can move at their own pace, meaning the high-flyers are able to move on instead of putting their heads down while someone else asks a question we answer with 3rd grade math. Others who need a little more time are allowed that time, without anyone knowing they're moving at a slower pace. Those who need 1:1 or small group instruction can get that, because I'm not large group instructing, and I have time to pull students, float around and answer individual questions, and there are two of us in the room doing so! Students keep track of their own scores on the check-ins, and thus learn a way to manage their own learning. It really is the perfect idea. We all agreed that the next unit, on Volume, would be a good one to schedule as self paced for these classes- it's short, mainly involves memorizing and using formulas, and we were confident that we could make it manageable for our lowest performing students, through both monitoring and organization.

The only real problem for us was that we were starting the next unit the NEXT day. 

So, I'm blogging today to show you (mostly you fellow teachers!) that no matter how little time you have to prepare, a self-paced unit isn't an overwhelming amount of work. Part of why we had not done one in our class yet was because we thought- "WHEW that's going to take a lot of work!" It does, but it doesn't have to take more work than you have time for. Here's what we put together, in just one afternoon! I don't have feedback yet about how it went because we are only on "day 2." I'll update that when we've finished the unit and moved on. BUT, I can say, by the end of the 1st day, some of our hardest working  (and successfully so) students were students with disabilities. It was a proud teacher moment to watch them succeed on their own! 

(Sorry for the potato quality pictures. My laptop didn't want to cooperate with editing. )

 UNIT OVERVIEW

My Co-teacher used this format in her other class. It simply lists, in student friendly language, the goals of the unit, the CC Standards, and the directions for the unit. To foster independence and allow us as teachers to focus on content questions, we refer all the instructions questions back to this page.

OUTLINE

Keeping things simple, and again using my co-teacher's formatting, we list the standards for each "day" of the unit, the pages they'll use in their interactive notebook, the lesson outline (aka what the students must complete), and what the assessment will be.

Highlights denote items they'll need paper copies for; links go to the videos, Google Docs, and pdfs they'll need for notes and instruction. Not only does the outline keep the student on track, but it helps with those DuFour questions we use in PLC's.

(Unit Outline page 2, so you can see not every lesson starts with a video)

SAMPLE ASSESSMENT

Since formulas are one of those "you get it or you don't" things in Math, we've used basic exit tickets for assessment. We also use the TenMarks lessons as an assessment to mix it up. TenMarks has a free component that is great! We used it last year, then petitioned for the accounts this year- which ended up being a district wide purchase based on our experience.

 STUDENT SCORESHEET

We created this as a half-sheet for students to put in their interactive notebooks. This way, they keep track of their grades. With her 7+ students, my co-teacher simply had them make a copy of the overview document and track their scores that way. With our inclusion students, we didn't want to deal with the hassle of copy/sharing, so we just gave them this. We check if they've mastered it after grading their assessment, and then they move on! If they have to move on but haven't mastered, we note their score in the score column and leave mastery blank, so they know to go back and try again later on. 

TIPS

Prioritize! 

Collaborate! 

Modify what you already have!

Share it with parents, including answer keys as appropriate!