Adventures in Team Teaching | Connected Principals

Adventures in Team Teaching | Connected Principals:

Adventures in Team Teaching

by Derek Hatch • February 26, 2014 • 0 Comments

This is a cross post from my personal blog. Recently, at a PD session, I ran into a former colleague with whom I used to team teach. Since we have not worked together in a decade or more, it was fun to reminisce and remember some of the memorable (not to mention funny) times that we had. We both taught Applied Mathematics (gr. 12) and our teaching styles were pretty similar. One year, we asked the AP that created the school schedule if our two sections of the math course could be scheduled at the same time, in the same room. The schedule worked out and, between the two of us, we had 70 students in one room. We team taught the course for the next few years after that. We have since left that school and now we both work as AP’s at different sites. As we were chatting, another AP overheard what we were talking about and came over to take part in our discussion. He said that he has two teachers working at his school who are planning to team teach and he was wondering if we could share any words of wisdom. We thought about it…we had to think hard because our team teaching was never forced or awkward. It evolved from having a great relationship with each other, and a similar view of teaching and the teacher’s role in the learning process. We were a really good team because we each brought different skill sets to the classroom. Al was the tech guru and I was more of an X’s and Y’s guy. He could show a solution on a graphing calculator or other technology while I showed the same solution algebraically. Students were able to connect with this approach. We got so good at working together that we were actually able to finish each other’s sentences.
As I think more about my experience with team teaching, there are a few more things that made us a successful team