An article in The 74 examines team teaching in three districts across the country:
- Concord Elementary, a small rural school district of 617 students in Jackson County, MI, is one of two schools in the state starting its second year of a “team teaching” pilot. The pilot moves away from a traditional “one teacher, one room” model and assigns a group of teachers, aides and other staff to an entire set of students, sometimes combining multiple grades.
With the team teaching model, students typically learn from multiple teachers a day, sometimes with multiple teachers or educators in the room at the same time.
At Concord, time is set aside for daily breakout math and reading group instruction in the lower grade levels. Younger students are blended with different grades, while older students in grades 8 to 10 participate in cross-curricular learning units teaching teams have devised. In one unit, eighth grade students combined their studies on science-based environmental policy with math to demonstrate the pros and cons of the policy.
Participating in the pilot made sense for Concord since more than half of the district’s teachers are eligible for retirement in the next few years, Superintendent Rebecca Hutchinson says.
Teachers report the pilot has helped them get to know their students on a deeper level and dive deeper into the core curriculum, Hutchinson says. It also allows teachers more planning time and collaboration with members of their teams, she says.
“It creates this distributed expertise, but also this shared responsibility,” says Hutchinson. “It’s not just about who’s in front of me and what’s in front of me right now.”
At Concord, team teaching looks different in every grade. Children in second and third grades are combined and assigned a homeroom teacher who acts in a role similar to their classroom teacher. In fourth and fifth grades, students also are combined, but there are two teachers in the room at the same time. In higher grade levels, teachers come in for 30-minute subject “rotations” for each of the four core classes.
Hutchinson says there have been early signs of success, with both eighth and ninth grades reducing the number of students failing or needing to recover credits.
The district is expanding team teaching to 10th grade this year, and Hutchinson says each grade level maps out its own plan for its newest set of students. Shared goals are set around cross-curricular collaboration, “deeper” learning and building communication and reasoning.
- Team teaching at the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences assigns each of its teachers in kindergarten and second grade to a specific group of students for their phonics work.
Data is showing improved scores in math for second graders at the K-8 charter school who were a part of the pilot this past fall, Chief Academic Officer Monica McLeod says.
McLeod cites two concurrent objectives: To attract and retain talented teachers and to make the profession more sustainable and connected by giving teachers more ownership over student learning.
“It pushed all of us to lean into our strengths and our trust and belief in each other,” McLeod says.
Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences decided to start slowly with the team model, with kindergarten and second grade teachers agreeing to participate in its first year.
Teachers helped design and tweak the model early in the year. Morning small group meetings focused on social-emotional learning were switched to daily themes like “Motivational Monday” and “Talk about it Tuesday.” Students saw each of the grade’s five teachers every day for different subjects, and they were assigned to a home room teacher and a classroom that was designated with the name of a fruit.
Second grade teachers urged administrators and third grade teachers to expand the model and the school kicked off the academic year with the pilot in third and sixth grades this fall.
“It was amazing,” second grade teacher Lindsay Solomon says. “I could stand up there and teach, and my co-teacher could go around and support scholars. Even if there was a behavior issue, she could quietly put that fire out without me ever having to stop teaching.”
The team teaching model was introduced in Michigan last fall through the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative, a nonprofit that designs, funds and supports programs to recruit, develop and retain teachers. The initiative partnered with Arizona State University’s Next Education Workforce, which trains teachers on strategic staffing models and helps schools develop staffing models that work for their students.
With three more Michigan school districts debuting the staffing models this fall and 12 schools implementing strategic staffing statewide, MEWI CEO Jack Elsey says there is cautious optimism that team teaching could present benefits for both teacher retention and student achievement.
“I think overall, teachers feel better supported by their colleagues because they’re in the same physical space with them,” he says. “They can talk about those kids among people who know those kids just as well as they do and they can say, ‘You know, I’m really struggling with delivering this math lesson, can you deliver this math lesson to my kids today?’ because I think you do it in a better way.”
- In Mesa Public Schools, the largest public district in Arizona, Next Education Workforce Executive Director Brent Maddin says there is evidence that teachers working in teams are more likely to remain in their district than their colleagues in traditional classroom models.
Data also shows Mesa teachers in team models are more effective than their colleagues in traditional classrooms and are happier and more engaged in their work, Maddin says.
The 74
