Two Activities to Strengthen Team Teaching Partnerships

When you recruit new teachers and form new dual language teams, you sometimes wonder if these new partnerships will turn out alright. How about intentionally setting them up for success?  

I was one half of a team teaching model (or two-teacher model), and I can assure you that it’s never easy - even with the best partner. As a coach, I’ve seen strong partnerships and weaker ones. When I took a closer look, I realized that it wasn’t “conflicting personalities” or “different teaching styles” that caused disagreements. It all boils down to the basic need to align behavior management techniques and build common routines and procedures.  

How would you handle this scenario? and Tell me about your worst pet peeves are two activities that you can lead to strengthen dual language partnerships, integrated co-teaching partnerships and departmentalized grade levels. Some schools that I work with also use these activities for teacher and paraprofessionals or teacher and assistant teacher partnerships. 

How Would You Handle This Scenario?

As I observed more partnerships, I came to understand that teachers must talk through their respective approaches to behavior management. Listening to your partner is an important way to learn about how they would address behavior. It builds trust and helps both colleagues learn a trick or two from their partner. 

How would you handle this scenario? is a professional learning activity designed to help teachers talk through real-life situations. Many team teaching partnerships do not have the benefit of being in the same room, watching and listening to how their partner handles everyday interactions and interruptions. How would you handle this scenario? sheds some light on your colleague’s preferred redirection techniques.  

Preparation:

• Print one copy of the Redirection Techniques handout for every educator.

• Print and cut up one set of Behavior Management Scenario cards for every table.

Activity Flow: 

1. Review the eight Redirection Techniques.
2. Choose one Behavior Management Scenario, and read it out loud to your partner.  
3. Describe to your partner which redirection technique or techniques (plural) you would use.  Be specific: Why would you choose those techniques? How would you implement them? Do you use other redirection techniques in your teacher toolkit?
4. Let your partner talk about how they would handle this same situation.
5. Your partner can choose a different Behavior Management Scenario, and repeat steps 2 through 4.  
6. When you’ve discussed at least four scenarios together, talk about common elements and how you could align your behavior management systems.

Tell Me About Your Worst Pet Peeves

Every highly effective teacher has taught their students a number of routines and procedures. In fact, year after year, teachers add on new behaviors that they teach their students. Educators do this to maximize instructional time, and to remove kinks in the flow of the day. They do this because they want their classroom and school environment to be a safe space for students to learn. They also do this because they want to come back every day to a tidy learning environment.

Every time a teacher teaches a new routine or procedure to students, they are actually anticipating the possibility of negative outcomes. Because these outcomes have a tendency to push teachers’ buttons, I call them professional pet peeves. My biggest pet peeve is when kids get up during direct instruction to go sharpen a pencil. Watching the child and hearing the shaving of pencils drives me bonkers. Over the years, I’ve set quite a few expectations to avoid being triggered by this innocent (and intolerable!) act.  

Tell Me About Your Worst Pet Peeves opens up the forum for teachers to talk candidly about actions that set them off, whether they’re from students, parents or colleagues. 

Activity Flow:

1. Talk about your worst pet peeves.
2. How do you manage your classroom to avoid having your worst pet peeves triggered? 
   
3. What are your coping mechanisms? What would be evidence that your partner is not supporting you in applying coping mechanisms?
4. Together, what are some routines or procedures that you can put in place? 

After you have felt you have talked over your pet peeves and many classroom procedures, you may find it helpful to write up an agreement.  

Dual language team teaching is based on trust and collaboration. For more tips, check out Team Teaching in Dual Language Immersion, a practical guide for teachers and leaders.  

I wish you and your teams a great start of the school year!  

Yours in all things dual language,
marie