Team Teaching

I reviewed a link to a past students digital project on 'Team Teaching'. This one particular topic caught my eye as I am currently working in a team teaching environment. I found that this video could have used more audio as it was a lot of reading for the end viewer.

In the video, the presenter wrote that team teaching is similar to one mind in two bodies. I disagree with this analogy as I feel that it is two minds in two bodies, who are working together to achieve one outcome. I do agree with the second point that states "Team teaching consists of two or more teachers sharing, to some degree, responsibility for a group of students" (Wenger & Hornyak, 1999, p.314). I also agree with the third point made in the video that "Team teaching is two or more instructors collaborating over the design, implementation, and evaluation of the same course." (Hatcher et al. , 1996, p.367).

Later in the video it is explained as the most complex model and that it creates a burden on educators. I have not personally found this to be true. Communication is the key in making a team teaching environment a success. As quoted by Brookfield in the video "The variety of instructional strategies brought out through team-teaching can increase the opportunity of students' understanding of course's content" (Brookfield, 2015).

The presenter missed highlighting several key points about team teaching:

- Team teaching reaches a wider variety of learners. The experiential background of instruction broadens.

- Members of the team know their colleagues preferences, habits, and styles and they keep in mind the need to provide a breadth of instructional approaches.

- Team teaching confronts students with a broad variety of perspectives.

- It aids in providing emotional support. There have been times I have left my class at the end of the day wondering why my students were not engaged. I felt insecure as a new teacher. My colleague was able to reassure me that she was feeling the same way.

- It develops trustful relationships. As instructors, we have to be both vulnerable and confident to make it work, we need to be open to compromising, and yet strong enough to stand on my own and take critique forward in a positive manner. As Brookfield states "The more we trust our colleagues, the more we are willing to reveal our vulnerability to them." (Brookfield, 2015, p.148).

Overall I quite like the shared responsibility of the team teaching model. As they say, two heads are better than one!