So many people we have run across have asked about our teaming….Why did we decide to team? Why in the world would we want so many students in one classroom? What are the advantages of teaming? Here’s our teaming story and the answers to all those questions you’ve been wondering about since you found out your child was going to be in a classroom with 2 or more teachers.
We decided to team 5 years ago when the opportunity arose and Mrs. Allen was moved into the classroom next to Mrs. Kiernan and assigned a 3rd grade position. Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Kiernan are philosophically very much alike and had already traveled in the same teaching circle, so we were both familiar with each others teaching style and backgrounds. Both of us had previous experience with teaming in other schools and really liked it. So, we decided to give it a try. Research had shown that teaming classrooms could be powerful learning environments in which a lot of differentiation happened.
Both of us were excited about teaming because we saw it as a way to be able to finally meet all of the diverse needs that students brought with them. We hoped it would be a way to create more focused learning groups and allow more easily for acceleration and remediation. Our hopes and extreme desires to see all students succeed, led us to want to take a risk and give teaming a try.
The result of our risk taking was much better than we ever dreamed it would be. For the first time in both of our teaching careers, we felt like we were finally able to succeed at meeting the needs of ALL OF LEARNERS on a daily basis. In the past years when we were teaching alone, we had rarely ever felt like this because there was never enough of a single teacher to go around. We remember the first week we did lessons plans after we started teaming and the excitement on both of our faces when after 1 ½ hours we not only had our lessons plans done, but had grouped kids so that they were learning what they needed, completed and organized all that we would need to go along with our lessons, and solved 2-3 unknowns dealing with classroom issues.
What we realized was that the old saying of, “2 heads are better than one” really rang true for us. The two of us were very efficient and always seemed to be able to figure out a solution to almost any problem. All of these things were a refreshing change from when we had both taught by ourselves. In the past, when we had taught by ourselves, all we remember feeling most of the time was overwhelmed at the sheer number of ability levels in our classroom, the feeling of never being caught up on any given day, and the feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day because you had planned, prepped for, and taught 6-7 subjects in one day.
Currently, on any given day, we feel energized and excited about teaching and feel organized and successful at being able to reach all kids. This leads to a exciting learning environment where students learn what they need when they need it and all learners can feel successful!
