To Team or Not to Team

Team teaching has been around the educational world for several decades. I began my teaching career many years ago on a seven member team of third and fourth grade teachers. I have also experienced team teaching with four other fourth grade teachers in a different school. Finally I have been part of a two member team of home school teachers with grades kindergarten through fourth. Each of these teams functioned in its own way with different purposes, illustrating the range of sophistication and structure that comprises this alternative to self-contained instruction. In deciding whether your school or part of your school wants to adopt this organization of staff, consider some of the characteristics of these models mentioned.

The first team I participated in was in a progressive school system in suburban Washington D.C. During my initial weekly team meetings, I was overwhelmed with the detailed planning and the lofty goals set by the veteran educators I found myself working with. Much of the first grading period for this team was one of thorough diagnosing of students in the language arts and math. This meant that learners would spend class time in the beginning reviewing and reinforcing skills introduced the previous year.

The team planned what skills and at what level the classes would practice during diagnosis. This was done for each of the language disciplines and math. While children did worksheets, learning centers, used math manipulatives, and teased their imaginations with creative projects, the classroom teachers pulled them for diagnostic testing. When this process was completed after several weeks, data was compiled and learners were placed in appropriate language and math groups corresponding to their level of performance on diagnostic and previous standardized tests. In a sense, a nongraded approach allowed students to be placed anywhere within the team. Each teacher then planned her own language and math units according to the class's ability levels.

Most impressive was the team's organization of units of study in science and social studies. Teachers planned the whole unit together, from goals to objectives to strategies to materials needed to extensions to assessments. Had this been during the days of alignment with state standards, that phase would have been included. Each teacher taught the units to her homeroom class with classes coming together for audio-visual and speaker presentations.

My next teaming episode involved a smaller team in an integrated arts academy. Each grade level of the school had its own team which met weekly with additional gatherings when necessary. This magnet school's focus was integrating the performing arts, visual arts, music, dance, and movement with academic subjects within the regular classroom.

In my team the academic subjects were divided among the four fourth grade teachers with one teacher planning her subject for the whole team, emphasizing learning activities incorporating the arts. There was no extensive diagnostic testing with ensuing ability groups. Each class was self-contained and each teacher taught the same students all day.

Since teachers planned independently, team meetings were used to discuss concerns relating to the implementation of plans, making sure the state standards and the arts were adequately addressed, and planning future field trips and activities involving that grade. This team equally distributed the planning workload rather than sharing it so that they could use meeting time for decision making on adherence to standards and the arts. Possibly this shift in emphasis could be explained by the present trend in education from school autonomy to school control by higher governmental authorities.

My most recent experience with team teaching was with a yet smaller team of two teachers instructing a multi-age group of home schoolers. These teachers instructed the same group of ten children ranging in age from five to ten years old. The learners were divided into two groups for math and for language arts with each teacher responsible for a group. Within each group the teacher offered differentiated instruction because of the range of abilities. The teachers discussed briefly together what skills to cover, but each took care of her details and activities.

For social studies and science both teachers instructed the whole group in the same room. There was no weekly team meeting as with my earlier experience where whole units of study were organized to the last detail. Themes to study were agreed upon, but the teacher with the more assertive personality did most of the educational decision making for the team and implemented her plans of learning. The other teacher supplemented activities occasionally with her own but mostly did not take a leadership role. Whether this was really a team teaching model is a matter of opinion, but it offered some form of collaborative education.

These three episodes of team teaching are exemplary of the many forms this instructional style may take. Teams can be structured to equalize the planning load, to ensure uniform adherence to mandated standards and criteria, to better organize large numbers of students into more homogeneous learning groups, to provide a smaller teacher to pupil ratio, or for any other goal that a school adopts. Studying examples of team implementation can reveal the pros and cons of each and guide educators into formulating their own team structure to accomplish their policies. On the other hand, this research may lead some educators to decide that giving up their autonomy and control of learning is not the option for them.

Each school or district needs to examine its goals, policies, and level of progress in meeting state and federal expectations and determine how to best enhance their accomplishment of these. Depending on each schools assets and liabilities, only they can answer the question of whether to team or not to team.