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Co-Teaching, Communication, and Collaboration
Speaking about the approaches that can be used while teaching children, it is necessary to pay attention to such practice as co-teaching that is believed to be very useful both for educators and students. Such strategies unite teachers of different generations and encourage them to exchange experiences (Lindeman & Magiera, 2014). To continue, co-teaching strategies allow older educators to teach younger ones and provide them with support when they face difficult situations related to children’s behavior and other problems (Forte & Flores, 2014). What is more, they are beneficial because they encourage educators to work as a team and it may be regarded as a positive example for children who also learn to collaborate and to achieve goals together. All the discussed benefits are important because the effective partnership between co-teachers and classmates is also a significant result of the educational process.
As for co-teaching strategies that can be regarded as effective for two teachers whose work is described in the report, I suppose that it would be important to use three of them. First, I believe that it would be helpful for them to use a team teaching strategy where two teachers have to prepare instructional materials and conduct lessons together. It is known that collaboration allows professionals to unite theory and practice (Bevins & Price, 2014). As for me, it would help them to overcome problems related to their unequal contribution to the lesson. Also, I suppose that it would be good if they used the same strategy (one teach, one assist) but reversed their roles in order to let each other work on a variety of skills (Simpson, Thurston, & James, 2014). In the end, I am deeply convinced that it would be important for the teachers to use parallel teaching strategy when two professionals are working with different parts of the class; I suppose that the use of this approach could help the teachers to work independently from time to time and practice their own skills. In general, I suppose that the combination of these approaches used during the class would be beneficial for both teachers and their students.
As for the feedback that I can leave to the mentioned teachers based on the report, I suppose that my recommendations to them will be quite different. As for Ms. Hester, I would recommend her to be more active when it comes to planning lessons. As for Mr. Harden, I think that he should pay more attention to his colleague’s needs and try to find out why she has no desire to implement some practices requiring her to work with the entire audience. Therefore, I am quite sure that these recommendations could help to attract the teachers’ attention to certain aspects of their collaborative work that prevent them from communicating in a more effective manner.
The strategy that I would recommend to use involves regular meetings of co-teachers and discussions where the educators are required to notice strong points related to this collaboration, to express their concerns, and to exchange opinions on possible ways to overcome the problem. Also, the teachers may need the help of the third professional who will act as an independent expert, provide them with honest feedback, and help them to resolve conflicts. I suppose that the following strategy will be useful as the teachers will be able to consider independent opinions while learning to collaborate.
The PLC Plan
The PLC plan is a model according to which the group of educators should hold meetings on a regular basis and discuss the most important topics related to students’ performance and organizational issues. This plan has been developed in order to encourage teachers to work as a team and to express opinions allowing them to make decisions making the educational process more effective both for students and teachers. As for the goals of the PLC plan, it is possible to single out more than three of them that are closely interconnected with each other. To begin with, the plan is supposed to increase staff morale. Besides, it is expected that regular meetings held according to the plan will have a positive influence on students’ performance. What is more, the discussed plan involves meetings and it means that the teachers are supposed to improve their collaboration skills and become a more effective team. In the end, the PLC model is expected to help the teachers to develop interesting and engaging lesson plans. Therefore, it can be stated that there is a variety of measurable goals of the discussed plan.
Among other things, the discussed plan involves additional roles and responsibilities of teachers and administrators who act as a part of the PLC. Teachers and administrators are supposed to follow the PLC concepts strictly and encourage their colleagues to pay attention to the practices prescribed by the plan; thus, a school may be called a professional learning community if employees work with regard to these concepts (DuFour, 2004, p. 159). To begin with, teachers and administrators are supposed to pay increased attention to personal responsibility because it is obvious that successful teamwork involves the collaboration of professionals who make no attempts to avoid fulfilling their primary functions. What is more, teachers should take the initiative when it comes to holding the meetings once a week. Visiting these meetings also belongs to the number of their professional duties. What is more, teachers should understand that it is possible to improve the educational process and increase its effectiveness for children only when all the professionals try to follow the rules. Therefore, the failure of one teacher to turn up on time, visit all the meetings, and take an active part in discussions may sometimes pose a threat to the success of the entire team and encourage other specialists to take the meetings less seriously.
According to the plan, the PLC teams will be structured in accordance with specific rules. Thus, it is known that the discussed method has a lot of goals and one of them is to help the teachers to improve their skills and knowledge in certain areas. Therefore, I suppose that it will be important to divide employees into teams in order to unite teachers possessing totally different characteristics. Thus, I believe that it will be important to include both experienced and young teachers in each team; furthermore, sometimes the exchange of best practices seems to be more successful when there is a kind of dialogue between cultures. In order to respect diversity, it will be important to unite teachers of different nationalities as it will also help them to accept the assumptions of foreign students (Barrera & Kramer, 2009, p.1). As for protocol for meetings, it may be necessary to choose one person who will enforce other members of the PLC to follow the rules. The chosen person will have to keep the minutes of every meeting. The latter will contain the data on attendance, the list of topics for discussion, and the main points related to these topics. As for the process of evidence-based decision making that will help to guide the PLC, it is possible to say that the decisions related to specific educational practices and changes in lesson plans will be made if teachers state the problem and there is evidence that the proposed method can be helpful.
I suppose that the implementation of the PLC plan can have a lot of benefits for students and employees. Thus, the discussed plan will allow the teachers to improve their skills and learn how to accept each other and collaborate with people living in accordance with other assumptions. What is more, the meetings will help the members of the teams to share their experiences and implement newer approaches to teaching children proposed by their colleagues. What is more, as it is stated in the Document #3, there is a problem related to the fact that teachers often have to spend time trying to find a free classroom to hold a meeting. I believe that is will also be necessary to create a schedule and ensure that chosen classrooms are always free before the meetings. To continue, it is important to make sure that the meetings held are regarded as effective and the teachers manage to learn something new every week. This thought is also supported by DuFour (2004) who believes that it is necessary to focus more on ideas and experiences than on structural changes in order to implement the PLC approach successfully (p. 160).
References
Barrera, I., & Kramer, L. (2009). Using skilled dialogue to transform challenging interactions. Baltimore, MD: NAEYS.
Bevins, S., & Price, G. (2014). Collaboration between academics and teachers: A complex relationship. Educational Action Research, 22(2), 270-284.
DuFour, R. (2004). What is a “professional learning community”? Educational leadership, 61(8), 6-11.
Forte, A. M., & Flores, M. A. (2014). Teacher collaboration and professional development in the workplace: A study of Portuguese teachers. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 91-105.
Lindeman, K. W., & Magiera, K. (2014). A co-teaching model: Committed professionals, high expectations, and the inclusive classroom. Odyssey: New Directions in Deaf Education, 15(1), 40-45.
Simpson, J. F., Thurston, R. J., & James, L. E. (2014). Exploring personality differences of teachers for co-teaching. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 41(1), 100-105.
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