Co-Teaching

Day 30 (of 187) – October 16, 2018

You don’t get to do that everyday… co-teach. I had the great fortune of teaching with my colleague today. We spent a day on the weekend to plan this day. We went our separate ways to plan our lessons and co-lesson and we were ready to go. We had the first year cohorts for the day. It was an excellent time to discuss what was to come for practicum… triads, e-portfolios, and the Practicum Team. Honesty, I never co-taught before. I quite enjoyed it but I also feel that my colleague have developed a relationship where we can teach and learn together, make adaptations on the fly, and give each other space to say what we need to say. It’s a strange compliment though. I truly believe that our teaching philosophies are very similar but our pedagogies are completely different. She’s an elementary teacher and I’m secondary. It’s kinda funny because our approach to the same concept or content looks different, but we’re saying the exact same thing.

There is a level of trust and respect that is required to co-teach. I feel very fortunate that we have this relationship. I am learning a lot too. As far as our presentation went, the Practicum Team is basically university instructors, practicum mentors (aka. faculty associates or supervisors), and coaching teachers (aka. school associates or teacher supervisor) are working together to support the learning of teacher candidates (aka. student teachers) during practicum. We were co-teaching in the morning then split up the group in half. My colleague talked about triads, observations, and collective efficacy… and I got students to open up their e-portfolio and discussed the single point rubric as an ongoing self-assessment tool during practicum as it relates to the BC Teacher Standards as competencies. Students reflected on their learning experience so far, provided us feedback, and formed triads. I’m satisfied with what we accomplished, but I’m pooped.