Collaboration in the Classroom
Schools today face a significant challenge. The school environment is no longer one in which a teacher can expect a relatively homogeneous population in the classroom. In addition to the challenges already posed by cultural and lingual diversity, school reform initiatives that focus on inclusive education have also resulted in intellectual diversity. This poses many challenges for the teacher of the inclusive classroom, since it is no longer acceptable to exclude children with disabilities or lack of linguistic proficiency in English from general education and assessment, teachers must find new ways to accommodate these children and help them to develop to the best of their ability (Haynes, 2006, p. 1). In order to handle this responsibility, co-teaching has been implemented in many schools, involving a partnership among teachers and special educators. Special educators would then work with the children who need specific attention, while teachers would handle general classroom responsibilities. Of course, such a collaboration is filled with many and complicated challenges. However, with sufficient focus on planning, the co-teaching process can be made very effective; in addition, collaborative efforts can and should also be made with parents, the community, and innovators to ensure that all possible efforts are made to help all students in the inclusive classroom to become as effective as they can within their communities and ultimately in the adult world.
One of the main challenges of inclusive classrooms is that students are included in a single accountability system that is applied to most general education classrooms. The challenge here is that students with intellectual challenges, particularly, cannot necessarily handle the rigors of these testing systems and invariably fail them.
Wilson and Blednick (2011, p. 84) note that, in order to ensure effective education and evaluation for all students, a thorough knowledge of the curriculum and standards is necessary. Students are then inclusively graded on product, which includes formal testing such as exams and reports, on process, which includes the effort and homework submitted...
88) to effectively judge the results of the co-teaching effort. Through this system, test items can be administered quickly and efficiently to address specific components of the learning. Examples are biweekly 1-minute reading tests and the like.
With these ideas in mind, co-teaching systems are set up in such a way to help all students with disabilities in the general education classroom to improve their abilities to learn the material and testing methods used in that particular classroom. In order to accomplish this, however, co-teaching needs to be implemented effectively. Haynes (2006, p. 2) suggests several strategies that schools can take into account when implementing a co-teaching system.
The first strategy Hayes suggests is building a strong relationship between the general and special education teacher. These two persons will share a classroom throughout the day and they need a strong basis for their collaboration. Any strain in such a relationship will be communicated through the teaching process and remove effectiveness from the classroom. If the teachers do not know each other, one possibility is to create a situation in which they can become used to each other before being expected to collaborate. They could, for example, attend each other's classrooms or even meet in less formal settings such as a restaurant for tea.
Hayes also suggests that effective planning should occur on a regular basis, both before implementing the co-teaching program and during the co-teaching process. Items such as the type of students that will be included in the classroom, materials presented, and the responsibilities of each teacher, for example, should be carefully discussed and planned before the actual implementation. During the process, the teachers should collaborate regularly to plan their lessons effectively and thoroughly to ensure that all students benefit from the teaching process. During this process, planning…
