Team Teaching

It is eye dissection time again. This year I suggested to VWJ that we combine classes as we were both going to do the dissection at the same time. This meant we had two teachers circulating the room. Even with the double the number of students, and hence the same ratio, it made for better supervision of what the students were doing. LEM joined us as well as for both of them it was the first time doing eye dissections with a class.

The class format was to watch a video of a dissection, then to do the dissection themselves and complete a worksheet about what they were observing, as a means of making sure they did take the time to observe and not just squee about the dissection.

As I was the more experienced teacher I took the lead in running the class, and setting out the expectations. Eye dissections are a busy activity with a lot of tooing and froing to get started. Having two teachers meant that one maintained order, and gave the students tasks, while the other set up the equipment, or chased down missing items. During the clean up it allowed one teacher to direct the clean up of the room, and the other to supervise the reloading of the trolley and the disposal of the eye remains.

I haven't taught with another teacher in the room as an equal before. Although I was taking the lead, as I was the only teacher with experience of this activity before, we had equal stakes in the class. I have always had another teacher as an observer whether on practicum or for appraisal purposes.
My son has a team teaching class at his school and it works very well for Primary, now I can see how it could work for us in the senior sciences.