Teaching in a team- My thoughts on how it is going (so far).

Teaching in a team, having different students, planning together is not new to me. It is something I have done in the past. So this year trying to plan, teach, learn more like a MLE hasn’t really fazed me. What is hard is trying to do all this in a single cell classroom.

Unlike the other 3 teachers who have access through two doors to each room, my room does not do this. It is in the pipeline to take away the wall but that may not happen until term 2. This is not to say I can’t incorporate ideas of MLP into my teaching and learning but I have been doing this already.

What I would really like to experience is that ‘openness’ . Getting to grips with over 50 students in one area, more teachers, and really seeing how this works and feels. I am doing the best I can but there are roadblocks being in a single cell room.

We have tried some team teaching and having all the students in one room but to be honest space was an issue and it didn’t feel that comfortable at all. Teleport them into an actual MLE and I know for certain I wouldn’t have felt the same.

I think one of the great things about planning as a team and working more closely with others is I don’t feel alone. I’m not sure if it’s just that we have ‘chatty’ teachers in the team, others like me who like to talk, say ‘good morning’, pop into each other’s room (yes in a MLE we would all be in the same room). I have enjoyed this and something I had missed since returning to NZ as my previous school our rooms were very close to each other you always ended up chatting.

It has also raised a lot of questions, ones we are still trying to answer. Working out how to tackle reading and writing groups, what we would do for maths, how would be teach the rest of the subjects? I have thoroughly enjoyed our Thursday rotation day (here) and although I am not teaching the other subjects, I like that the students are actually getting taught them once a week. We all know how sometimes throughout the term certain subjects can get side lined or is not taught as well. So it does make sense using the talents of the team in this way.

Even though we are into week 3, it still feels like I am finding my feet. We have started moving students for reading, writing and maths. I have the same reading and writing students (mixed ability) and different maths students (streamed) which I would still love to be mixed ability (something I am used to teaching) but we also have teachers who have strengths in certain stages so doing it this way are we making better use of our talents?

For me, I think it is more the teaching of year 3/4 I am finding harder to get my head around rather than the whole MLE as I have completely forgotten how much younger these students are, how much they wriggle and move and how the smallest things really do matter to them. On the plus side, I have realised that my son actually is a typical Year 3 and they all only have one volume and they only hear the first and last word of any instructions and nothing in-between!