Finding Your Role as a Co-Teacher - Adventures in Inclusion

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Preface: Most of this post is going to be from the perspective of the special education teacher, only because that is my personal role and what I know more about. But a lot of these tips can be great for any co-teacher to read.

Co-Teaching can be a delicate relationship. You walk into another teacher’s classroom and you’re ideally supposed to take over half of the power. It often feels like you are an intruder and you are not even sure if you’re welcome. A lot of teachers have routines and habits, they don’t want someone coming in and changing everything up.

But, your district wants to move toward an inclusion model… so here you are! What do you do?

Be Open and Honest

If possible do this before the year starts. Sit down with your co-teacher(s) and ask them what their expectations are. Ask them what they think co-teaching looks like and what they would be comfortable with.

More often than not, I have found that my co-teachers are more open to me than I thought they would be. I often decide on the worst ahead of time and convince myself that everyone hates me. This obviously leads to a lot of insecurities. Being honest with your co-teachers and discussing ahead of time what they expect of you will help you create a role for yourself from the get-go.

Ease Yourself Into It

It is easy to just sit in the back of the classroom and fall into the one teach, one support setup. I think I did this almost my entire first year teaching. Maybe this is appropriate as you get to know the content you will be teaching but once you feel comfortable, try taking something over. The first thing that I took over was the “Problem of the Day”.

This was easy for me because it was always a review problem so I knew from the previous day how to solve the problem. And every day when class started, the math teacher would start checking the homework while the kids started their Problem of the Day. When they finished the Problem of the Day she typically wasn’t finished checking homework and this would turn into unstructured chaos. But, once I took over reviewing the Problem of the Day, it helped with classroom management and it helped me start finding how I fit into the classroom.

Soon after that, we both became comfortable with each other and now we often co-teach more seamlessly, one reading the other’s cues and jumping back and forth between roles.

Make a Place For Yourself

When you co-teach, ideally you will both have an equal roll in the classroom. The students should not be able to identify who is whom. But, this doesn’t often happen in my school. The kids know who I am because I co-teach with three different teachers and am in multiple of their classes. In the way that my district co-teaches, often I am a guest in classrooms. I will most likely never have my own desk in the other teachers’ classrooms, but I try to find a place for myself. Whether it be an unused student desk where I can leave my things or their small computer table, it makes me more comfortable having a little space that is mine. Even if the space is only mine for that class period.