Inclusion

Meggy,

I work in a middle school setting where I hop from class to class as well. I co-teach in four different subjects each day, with four different teachers. The best thing to making co-teaching work is being able to communicate and collaborate with your teachers. Building a strong relationship with your co-teacher is vital to making the partnership work.

I struggle with co-planning with my teachers because there are so many of them and their planning times do not match with mine. Walking into a classroom each day not knowing what is happening is definitely not an effective way to teach.

Have you, or any of your other teachers, had any formal training in co-teaching?

Meg,
I empathize with your situation. I too work with a variety of teachers throughout my day and co-teaching is a big part of what I do. From personal experience, communication is often what makes those partnerships sink or swim. Whenever possible, my co-teacher and I are having conversations about what went well or where we can improve. The hardest things for me has been knowing what role I play in each classroom and trying my hardest to be a contributor without stepping on toes. With our special needs students and particular it can be difficult because we may have different ways of meeting their needs. Recently I attended a professional development seminar with a co-teacher and that was an awesome learning opportunity to help us get on the same page a little bit more. It can be a tricky situation to be co-teaching so much, can’t it? I’m curious about the training you took. Was it helpful in your opinion?

Hi,
I also hop from class to class in an attempt to assist students who are in the inclusion setting. It is hard at times because I will be in an English class and then students will seek me out to read a test or assignment from a whole other subject area. You have to be on your toes and ready for anything when you are an inclusion teacher. You have to know what is going on in all of the classrooms of your students. Without proper staffing it is almost impossible.
Fortunately, I work with great regular education teachers who keep me informed and work with me and my students when I have to switch up schedules. I think that is the key to making inclusion work. You have to have regular ed teachers you understand the needs of LD students. You also have to keep an organized schedule, as well as, be flexible. I write down a schedule everyday, but inevitably it gets switched up. In the end everything ends up getting done.

Hello everybody,

There is a plethora of models for inclusion out there, some of which work and some of which do not work. This is the first I've heard of a co-taught classroom with a floating special education teacher. Do you follow the same students to different subjects throughout the day, or are you teaching elementary and floating between totally different classes? Have you seen your special education students benefit at all from having peer role models?
The best model that I've seen was at the Early Childhood level and involved co-taught classrooms (with the same teachers all day). One teacher focused on the general education students while the other focused on the special education students. Would your schools be willing to fund such a model and get students the level of assistance they need?