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Problems and Solutions
Co-teaching is an innovative way of educating students with disabilities,
and dilemmas sometimes arise. This page is intended to highlight strategies that can help to address those challenges.
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Question: I’m a special educator. The person with whom I co-teach is competent, efficient, and assertive. Although she says she would like me to have a role in the classroom, she only asks me to do small, unimportant tasks, not partner for instruction. She also says that she likes to plan on her own, whenever she can find a few minutes, and so she isn’t open to planning together. The students in the class who have disabilities are doing well and have mild needs. What should I do?
Answer: Variations of this problem are common. In some ways, it’s helpful that the general education teaching partner is a proficient teacher and that the students with disabilities are succeeding. However, this isn’t partnership. Here are a few suggestions to address the dilemma:
1. A first strategy concerns analyzing the perspective of your administrator on co-teaching in general and this situation. Has the principal observed in the classroom? One strategy would be to invite an observation and then ask (with both of you there) what suggestions s/he has for increasing the special educator’s involvement in the classroom.
2. Depending on how IEPs are written (both generally in the district and for these particular students), the special educator might decrease the amount of time spent in this classroom. IEPs could be modified to include some indirect service (or, if permitted, that services are a combination of direct and indirect), and some of the service could be consultation as needed instead of co-teaching. There might be another place/classroom in the school where the gained time could be well spent. If nothing else, perhaps there are some students in other grade levels who would benefit from a brief period of intensive remedial reading or some other type of intervention that the special educator could provide.
3. Yet another option is for the special educator to sit down for a heart-to-heart with the co-teaching partner to explain her concerns about what is occurring because of the legal obligation to be delivering services in the classroom—which, of course, involves a direct role in planning and delivering the instruction, along with necessary accommodations, for the students.
4. If there are several co-teaching arrangements in the school, perhaps the principal would arrange for cross-classroom visits to encourage various approaches. Another option is to ask for a meeting of all co-teaching partners to trade ideas and discuss ways to enhance a 2-teacher classroom. |
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Putting the pieces together
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