Rick Wormeli is a National Board Certified Teacher, the author of six respected books in the teaching field, and an internationally known speaker on middle-level education, classroom assessment, innovation, and teacher professionalism. He’s also an educational consultant to National Public Radio, USA Today, and the Smithsonian Institution. Rick has been involved with MiddleWeb for more than a decade, both contributing his own insights and gathering teacher wisdom to support several of his popular middle-level books.

Rick is one of three guest experts participating in a MiddleWeb webinar for new teachers and those new to the middle grades. The webinar archive will be available after July 30, 2012.

This is a two-part article. See Part 2.

Four Fundamentals of Middle Level Teaching (Part 1)

by Rick Wormeli

The music starts with a low base beat, then it moves up the scale, adding more texture as it builds intensity. Our pulse quickens, adrenalin flows, and finally our classroom world crescendos and we are at full throttle, teaching like we’ve never taught before, affecting the future in ways we never dreamed we could. It’s a fantastic time to be a middle level educator!

It really is. With the transformative work of the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform and their Schools to Watch program, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Southern Regional Education Board (MMGW), plus new insights and support from myriad researchers and expert practitioners, we have more information on how to teach young adolescents effectively than we’ve ever had before.

When applied effectively in our daily classroom practice, it all works as promised. Best of all, politicians, business leaders, and those outside of middle level teaching are finally recognizing the critical role the middle years play in everyone’s future success, and they are supporting us.

In the midst of all this forward momentum, however, it’s important to float above the treetops and look at the larger landscape, to see what kind of job our colleagues across the profession are doing as middle grades educators.

What’s my outlook?

We could be doing better

In my capacity as a teacher trainer, I get to see the big picture of teaching and learning in the middle grades, traveling all over North America and abroad, observing a wide variety of middle level teachers and principals at work.

While most are doing well, some are not. In almost all situations in which schools and teachers could do better, one or more of what I consider four fundamentals of middle level teaching are in their nascent stages — or missing completely. Whatever we can do to help educators develop all four of these fundamentals is time well spent.

Fundamental #1: We must apply what we know about our unique students

Here’s a potentially insightful activity: let’s take out our lesson plans and circle those places where our expertise around the nature of 10 to 15 year-olds is clearly demonstrated. Do we end up with lots of circles?

This is not a group of slightly more complex primary students. Nor is it a group of immature high schoolers. These kids are unique. We can’t, for example, just assign a lengthier version of expository writing than students were asked to do in the early elementary grades and think we’re being developmentally appropriate for middle level students.

When I ask middle level teachers to show me how their lessons respond to the unique nature of young adolescent students, sometimes I get a blank stare. That scares the heck out of me. I begin to think these folks are teaching blind to the students they serve, and that can’t be good. There is a way to teach high school seniors that doesn’t work with middle school students — just as we can’t take what we know about 12 year-olds and think it works the same way with 17 or 18-year old teens. It all comes down to what we know about human growth and development.

So what is it about young adolescents that we should take into consideration when designing and implementing our lessons? Here’s a small taste:

They can’t all be lumped into the same readiness levels – emotionally, intellectually, hormonally, or physically. Girls mature faster than boys. Bones grow faster than muscles, so coordination isn’t consistent. There is discomfort in the growth plates on the ends of their bones that requires frequent movement to relieve, even in mid-lesson. With growth comes the need to eat – about every 90 minutes. They worry intensely over body changes, and they have an increased need for hydration. In her book Brain Matters (2010), Pat Wolfe reminds us that they have an increased tendency toward addictive behaviors and pleasure seeking.

Intellectually, the tools they’ll need for figuring out academics and life are not all in the toolbox yet. This makes decision-making, impulsivity control, moral/abstract reasoning, “reading” the situation, planning, understanding consequences of words and actions, and other executive functions intermittent at best.

They are fiercely independent, yet paradoxically, they crave social connection. This is the first point in their lives that they realize how wrong adults can be, and they’re not sure what to make of it. They move from concrete to abstract thinking, sounding like adults when talking about some topics, and young children when discussing others.

They crave competence, self-definition, creativity, vividness in learning, emotionally safe environments, control/power over their lives, physical activity, positive social interactions with adults and peers, structure and clear limits, and meaningful participation in school/community. Most of all, they want to belong.

Middle level teachers should be able to cite these attributes and many others without hesitation, and their lessons should reflect this expertise.

Where in our lessons have we provided concept vividness? Where have we helped students move from concrete to abstract? Where have we given students some decision-making power in their learning?

Great resources for getting up to speed on what is currently known about young adolescents include several excellent AMLE publications: Middle School Journal, Middle Ground, and Research in Middle Level Education Online. I also recommend An International Look at Educating Young Adolescents (Mertens, Anfara, Jr., Roney), Turning Points 2000, This We Believe (AMLE), and the pioneering work of Chris Stevenson, who wrote Teaching 10 to 14 Year-olds.

Fundamental #2: To become proficient, we have to fail a lot

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell offers compelling, researched arguments that we need about 10,000 hours in a skill or field before we are considered proficient in it. In our profession, the 10,000 hours is reached about the sixth year – perhaps earlier, if we include teaching work done over the summer. But for me, it wasn’t until the eighth, ninth and tenth years that I gained confidence in my own proficiency (and there are moments, even today, that I still have some doubts).

Gaining proficiency requires us to spend a fair amount of time failing. In every career considered a profession, the professional model works very well: We learn knowledge, we apply that knowledge in specific situations in our jobs, we get critiqued on how we’re doing, and we revise our knowledge and efforts in light of that critique. When we continue going through this cycle again and again, we mature in our field and are more effective as a result. It’s the stuff of teaching hospitals, professional development schools, architectural schools, CPA offices, police and fire department academies, law firms, journalism – every profession.

Effective middle grades teachers offer this same powerful cycle of learning to our students. And we do it with the understanding that we are guiding the intellectual development of insecure, morphing humans in transition.

Ineffective middle grades teachers, on the other hand, rely on antiquated teaching algorithms like: Read Chapter 12; answer 1-23 on p. 317; take notes on two lectures; watch one 35-minute video; practice with flash cards; take the test on Friday. From this sequence, they expect students to absorb and retain information in long-term memory. While any one of these actions may help students learn something in the short term, none of them are the best recipe for long-term mastery, which is the school’s goal or certainly should be.

If we want our students to achieve mastery of standards with any kind of consistency, we have to revisit content and skills repeatedly throughout the year, and in different contexts and from different angles. Learning is recursive. We don’t dare assume students learn something because we said something, and we don’t declare students lazy when they fail to learn. Instead, we create constructive responses to failure.

Let’s think through this using some science content. When we teach the noble gases: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radioactive radon (Rn), we list them and explain how they are odorless, colorless, and have very low chemical reactivity. We point out that each of their melting and boiling points are close together, so they are liquid only for a small temperature range. We tell students about their uses historically and in industry: deep-sea diving, space exploration, blimps, and lighting. We may include fun facts such as Helium being the second most common substance found in the universe, and its extremely low freezing point, about -457 degrees Fahrenheit.

But this procedure is simply knowledge conveyance. There’s nothing here about moving things into long-term memory through recursive practices, circling back over and over again with new approaches to the same content.

In my example, new units of study should incorporate this information about noble gases. We can require students to use this data in analyzing the effects of noble gases in new situations and inventions – ask them to draw comparisons between noble gases and characters in a novel – ask them to explain the Periodic Table’s taxonomy when discussing nomenclature and classification. We can also assign students to explain repeatedly, in a variety of formats, why a narrow temperature range between melting and boiling points matters, and which elements are found most commonly in the universe and which ones are most rare.

If we are effective “recursive educators,” we visit and re-visit the content/skills that provide the most leverage in our students’ education, assessing students each time, providing feedback, and engaging them in re-learning as necessary, however long and whatever method it takes. This means we allow students to re-do work and assessments over and over until they hit the high standard set for them, and we give them full credit for mastery when it is finally presented, not partial credit because they didn’t learn it on our prescribed timetable.

If we are effective, we build our previous curriculum targets into subsequent assessments to see what students carry forward, which is the true testimonial for a grade (our grade as well as theirs). If the evidence offered does not reflect the high level presented during the original unit, then the grade for that standard, for that student, goes down until clear and consistent evidence of higher mastery is presented.

If we are effective, we focus these extended efforts primarily on the non-negotiable “Power standards” we have to teach — and we have to focus on those because there is not enough time during the school year to give this much effort to all the standards listed in our curriculum. We incorporate our colleagues’ course content in our own classes, and they use our course content in their classes, so that we all reinforce each other’s important learning.

NEXT TIME: To make all this work, we have to get very specific and very frequent with our feedback to students.

In my second post, I’ll talk about Fundamental #3: We Need a Heck of a Lot More Descriptive Feedback. And I’ll wrap up the final pair of fundamentals with #4: You Know a Heck of a Lot More Than Your Pacing Guide.

Anthony Cody spent 24 years working in Oakland schools, 18 of them as a science teacher at a high needs middle school. He is a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) and a Project Based Learning workshop leader. Visit his website Teachers Lead and follow him on Twitter at @anthonycody.

Over the past five years, Anthony’s policy-oriented Ed Week blog Living in Dialogue has become a rallying place for teachers who value their professionalism. He also writes about practice, as this 2007 advice for new teachers indicates.

By Anthony Cody

I started teaching at a middle school in Oakland, Calif., about 20 years ago. My first year was pretty rough. I was prepared to teach science, but my first semester I was given two periods of beginning Spanish, one of English, and two of science. My credential program had not really dealt much with behavior issues. The idea was to deliver a rich curriculum, and the management would take care of itself. If you are already teaching, you know this does not always work.

I floundered a bit the first year or two, and took help wherever I could find it. My best resources came from my colleagues down the hall. They had been at the school a few years and passed along valuable ways to make things work.

Here are a few of the things I learned:

• I learned to post a short list of clear, unambiguous rules and enforce them consistently. This is much harder to do than it sounds, and it took me many years to master.

• I learned how important it was to phone parents early in the year, with positive news if at all possible. Then the first phone call would not be one from me complaining about their child’s behavior. One parent I phoned in September told me that mine was the first positive call she had ever received about her child. When I had to call about some problems a few months later, she was there to back me up 100 percent.

• I learned to balance a negative phone call with a positive one. The days after I would make phone calls, the students would often come in and ask me, “Why did you call my house?” It was great to be able to point out that I was working with their parents in their best interests, and that I would make positive calls when behavior improved. I also found that my own disposition greatly improved after I made a positive call.

• I learned to keep a record of student behavior, along with any referrals to the office, so that the problems I had with a few students were clearly documented. I kept a record of phone calls home in the same book.

• I learned how easy it was to get into entertaining but fruitless dialogues with students when I was trying to enforce rules. It took me a while, but eventually I learned the best method was to give a warning or consequence clearly, and allow for discussion only after class.

Nancy Flanagan spent 30 years teaching in a K12 music classroom in Hartland, Michigan, much of that time in the middle grades. She was named Michigan Teacher of the Year in 1993 and was an early successful candidate for National Board Certification. As a member of the Center for Teaching Quality’s national Teacher Leaders Network, she co-authored two major TeacherSolutions reports on teacher professionalism. Today, she’s an education writer and consultant focusing on teacher leadership. She writes the no-holds-barred blog Teacher in a Strange Land for Education Week Teacher, where she recently wrote importantly about women’s leadership in ed reform. You can follow her on Twitter @nancyflanagan.

We suggested that Nancy ask herself some questions – the kind new teachers in the middle grades might ask.

by Nancy Flanagan

Let’s dispense with the obvious, right off the bat.

If anyone takes a job as a middle school teacher, someone–or more likely, many people–will ask them: Are you nuts?

It’s not even close to a fair question. It’s a reaction to a moth-eaten set of myths:

Children in America go through a uniquely individual process of growth and development. At any given point, not just the middle grades, they’re likely to hit speed bumps, experience periods where their ability to learn fluctuates, their interests shift, their relationship to the world changes, for better or worse. At all of these points, what happens in school matters–very much–in their overall intellectual advancement.

Here’s the takeaway: Stop stereotyping middle school teaching and–especially–middle school students.

Now about those questions I’d ask myself . . .

How can I build trusting relationships with these students?

You can’t be a good middle school teacher unless you know your students well and genuinely believe in their capacity to learn. That’s Job #1: Who are these kids? What is it like to live in their world? What’s underneath their public personae? Do they have goals? Dreams? What are they good at–what lights their fire?

Ask questions. Share your own stories, occasionally. Prove you’re not going away — that you’re committed to their learning (which is different from being entertaining, cool or too buddy-buddy).

Be patient in this work. Middle-grades children are excellent at detecting insincerity, and they will keep pushing you to reveal cracks in your friendly demeanor. Trust begins with mutual regard and keeping lines of communication open — especially on days when the teaching-learning cycle breaks down. Practice tolerance. Have faith. Remember that relationships, like bones, are often stronger in places where cracks have had to heal.

How can I set up a classroom environment that encourages my students to express themselves openly and genuinely respect others?

This is harder to do — and more important — than it may seem. From the physical layout of the room, to the handful of critical understandings and procedures you instill as part of your daily work together, thoughtful design for interaction and constant analysis of what’s working/not working are essential. They’re also wildly underestimated by those who equate “classroom management” with rules and consequences.

Your goal is to make your room a place where each person feels heard and valued. This is not something that can be accomplished immediately, nor does it have much to do with “decorating” the room or moving the furniture around. You can’t feng shui your classroom into a place where learning is facilitated. Sometimes, you don’t even have your own space.

A brief, illustrative story: Once, my middle school held a contest to see which homeroom could create the best door decorations for Christmas. The prize: donuts and cocoa for the winning class. The stated objective was building school spirit; administrators and office staff were judges. I had some personal reservations about the competition, but I wanted the kids to handle the question of what to do with this collaborative (and mandated) task.

They grumbled. Figuring it out would cut into their limited free time to finish homework and chat during advisory period. They correctly connected the sugar bribe to our administration’s desire to have the building look festive for parents coming for December events. They knew gung-ho teachers would pull out all the stops to “win” — and that had nothing to do with “building a learning community.” There was muttering about how Christmas sucked, really (these were 8th graders). Then they went deeper: Didn’t this just feed rampant commercialism? Wasn’t the idea that people were happy during the holidays a marketing ploy? They were on a roll.

In the end, they put butcher paper over the door, and scribbled their ideas on an improvised graffiti wall. There were sketches (including a Star of David), cartoons, and taped-on items — battered ribbon bows, broken toy parts, dead pine twigs. It was the talk of the building; students came to read The X-mas Wall and write their own thoughts. It was an interactive display until mid-January. Of course, the judges chose an elaborate, teacher-funded door with flashing lights and real evergreen boughs–but my students weren’t in it for the donuts.

My contribution? Provoking the discussion, and getting paper from the art supply closet, where students weren’t allowed. But it took a lot of restraint on my part. And an environment where students could kick ideas around.

How can I deconstruct my assigned curriculum, highlighting and hammering home the things my students really need for high school, college and adulthood?

Most new teachers are given a set of content standards, goals and benchmarks — or, at the very least, textbooks and other required materials. That’s a good thing. Teaching well involves vastly more planning than most people realize, and that planning is incredibly complex. There are always key concepts that must be taught, skills and knowledge to measure. That’s the easy part. Getting advice from your colleagues is an essential launch strategy. Playing it safe is a good bet, at first.

But you didn’t become a teacher to follow someone else’s lesson plans. Ultimately, you became a teacher to teach kids what they need most — and that’s a matter of expertise and human judgment, not black-line masters, course outlines or even clever videos. Sooner rather than later, you must look at the prescribed curriculum and decide: Which of these things will my students need for the next test? Which will my students need for the next year? Which will they need for the rest of their lives?

Far too many teachers see instruction as a series of boxes to be filled, moving from chapter to chapter, lesson to unit, quiz to test. Their students may comply, but see little relevance. It’s the things that students need to be successful adult citizens — productive, happy, curious — that will generate your most engaging lessons. Think long-term.

How can I embed real tasks and responsibilities into the assignments I give my students?

So much of being in middle grades is play-acting — rehearsing for “real” events and challenges yet to come. Take middle school students. They don’t drive, legally work at paying jobs, go on dates or vote. They crave real responsibilities, even as they fear being put to the test. They want real audiences, even if they’re uncertain about their beliefs and have not yet learned to construct an effective argument. They’re not adults, but they don’t benefit from being considered “too young.”

A truly excellent middle grades teacher will take seriously the work and opinions of his or her students. Seventh graders can write credible letters to the editor and mount impressive dramatic productions. They can solve real problems without following an algorithm. They can design structures, debate issues that matter to them, and craft poetry. They can compose songs, and sing them while accompanying themselves. They can hand off the ball to someone under the basket, and lead a campaign to get healthier food in the cafeteria.

Every time we give middle school students genuine leadership roles and real jobs, there is a possibility that they will fail. But too much hovering, scaffolding and doing something merely for a grade, rather than a tangible outcome, pushes middle grades kids to act more like children, just when they want most to try out their adult skills and options.

My best advice to you? Keep it real.

Rick Wormeli is a National Board Certified Teacher, the author of six respected books in the teaching field, and an internationally known speaker on middle-level education, classroom assessment, innovation, and teacher professionalism. He’s also an educational consultant to National Public Radio, USA Today, and the Smithsonian Institution. Rick has been involved with MiddleWeb for more than a decade, both contributing his own insights and also gathering teacher wisdom to support several of his popular middle-level books.

This is the second of two articles (Part 1). Rick is one of three guest experts who participated in a MiddleWeb webinar for new teachers and those new to the middle grades. The webinar archive is now available.

Four Fundamentals of Middle Level Teaching (Part 2)

by Rick Wormeli

In my first post about the Four Fundamentals of Middle Grades Teaching, I highlighted (1) the need to shape our lessons and our teaching strategies around what we know about the adolescent learner, and (2) the importance of “recursive” teaching, the practice of looping back to earlier content and integrating it into our students’ on-going learning experience. We make it stick by asking them to process the content in new ways.

At the end my first post I wrote: To make all this work, we have to get very specific and very frequent with our feedback to students. And that’s where we pick up here, with the 3rd fundamental aspect of teaching tweens and young teens.

Fundamental 3: We Need a Heck of a Lot More Descriptive Feedback

Middle school students can learn without grades, but they can’t learn without feedback. Let’s make descriptive feedback, not just any feedback, a priority. “Good job!” is not descriptive, nor is “You can do better” written in the margins of a student’s paper. Try specific feedback like this instead:

• I can’t find evidence for your claim. Can you help me find it?

• Your speech had the required content, but your audience was not engaged. Looking at your audience, avoiding a monotone voice, and personalizing your examples would have engaged them.

• You followed the directions of the lab, but you had an additional variable that negatively affected your results. What was it, and how will you adjust your methods so the variable doesn’t occur again? 

Having students do their own descriptive self-assessments is also a critical component of effective learning. When students complete tasks, we can ask them to write a letter to us comparing their own efforts with exemplars we provide. Where does their attempt match the model/exemplar? Where does it deviate?  We can ask them to do an item analysis of their test performance as well: Which ones did you get correct? Which were incorrect, and why were they incorrect? What actions will you take to learn the concept properly?

We can place a special mark at the end of any sentence with a punctuation error — or near a mistake in the order of operations in a math problem — and that can signal the student to “find and correct the error.”

When teachers not only identify mistakes but provide the correct fact or procedure, they’re promoting passive student learning. It’s learning that does not last.

On the other hand, when teachers put up a flag, declaring the presence of errors, and give students whatever tools they may need to find and correct their mistakes, we instigate active learning that endures.

Let’s remember that it’s the descriptive nature and frequency of the feedback that really matter. It’s critically important, in fact, and it must be a purposeful focus in our lesson design, not just something we do when we “can get around to it.” In each lesson element, identify how students will receive feedback about their growing understanding. The feedback can come from themselves, peers, teachers, or others. If it’s frequent and descriptive, they will be able to use this feedback to revise their efforts and be assessed anew.

Fundamental #4: You Know a Heck of a Lot More Than Your Pacing Guide

The pacing guide for our subject says we should be on page 83 today, but students are not ready for that content or they mastered it long ago. So what do we do?

As highly trained professionals, we now go “off the map” and teach what is developmentally appropriate for our students right now — not what a curriculum committee sitting in a conference room over the summer presumed our classroom realities would be at this moment of the year. Yes, it’s helpful to have clear standards and a pacing guide’s schematic presentation of learning, but we do not treat it as prescriptive. We reserve the right to adjust things as necessary in order to live up to the school’s mission – teaching every student (including the kids who are most challenged) to higher levels than they thought they could achieve.

If we find a smarter, more effective way to teach something, we’re ethically bound as professional teachers to use it instead of trying to “honor” an ineffective pacing guide that didn’t foresee the unique situations before us. The alternative, student incompetence, is not acceptable. Put another way, we can never sacrifice our students in order to be able to say: “I am perfectly aligned with the pacing guide.”

If a particular book we all agree should be taught at this grade level is not the book that best fits a subset of our students, and we know another book in the same genre will work better, we should be allowed to use it. If we teach all the same standards through that more effective book, we should be permitted to use our judgment without suffering the death stare of the department chair. We must have an educational reason to make such changes, of course, not just a mood or whimsy.

Teachers sometimes forget that schools are not set up to teach. They are designed to protect the status quo, to conform to accountability requirements created by non-educators far above us in the food chain, and to best meet the needs of students who get it first. For any student who needs more, less, or different instruction, including the pacing and manner of instruction (and that’s most middle grades students on any given day), school conspires against them.

In order to teach everyone, we need the professional fortitude to break with standardized practices as needed.

Mindless adherence to instructional pacing and technique regardless of the students we serve is middle grades malpractice. Seriously, would we want our own children in classes with such teachers? We have a professional obligation to invoke our intellect. We make informed responses to the needs of each student we serve.

To build and retain the trust necessary to be allowed such autonomy, we must demonstrate thoughtful decision-making based on up-to-date knowledge in our field, including both subject and pedagogical expertise.

We need to be well read in our field and to participate in national conversations. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals are as swamped with work as we are, but they read the latest journals and court cases weekly in order to keep up in their fields and provide the best service to patients and clients. As true professionals, we must do the same.

Are there other fundamentals for middle level teaching?

Yes, but the four I’ve described in these two MiddleWeb articles tend to be the ones most commonly missing when things aren’t going well. Shoring them up with sharply focused professional development for both teachers and principals will go a long way toward making middle school not only effective for students, but also vibrant places where we can happily dive back below the tree tops and play that teaching music with great passion and vitality.

Enjoy the years ahead!

Miss Part 1?

Rick Wormeli is a long-time classroom teacher, now education consultant, living in Herndon, VA. He can be reached at rwormeli@cox.net.

Special education teacher Elizabeth Stein is a 20-year teaching veteran, with experience in both upper elementary and middle school. She’s currently a teacher and new-teacher mentor in Long Island NY’s Smithtown Central School District. Elizabeth is National Board Certified in Literacy and a contributor to Education Week and other publications.

Elizabeth will be one of three guest experts at our free new-teacher webinar on July 30. Seats are going fast. If you don’t get one, be sure to check back for the archive and downloads after the event.

by Elizabeth Stein

When I became a special education teacher nearly two decades ago, many colleagues told me that my excitement for teaching was because I was new. They sighed, groaned, and said, “Wait a few years.” I remember thinking, what are they talking about? I knew way back then that my passion for teaching and learning would never diminish—it would only intensify. And it has.

It’s a passion for teaching that leaves me raring to go to work each day—even after all these years. What’s my secret? The source goes deep down to my core and vision, and can easily be summed up explaining that I am constantly asking myself: What can I do for children?

This simple yet profound question provides the focus I need when the going gets tough. This question keeps me in the mode of turning my passion into performance. I’m talking about purposeful performance that links my core values with an empathetic awareness of the views of those around me.

Special education teachers have challenges similar to those of their general education peers: mastering content, fine-tuning technique, and collaborating with colleagues. Yet special education teachers face additional responsibilities that include, but are not limited to:

• understanding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA);

• considering accommodations and modifications for learning;

• aligning IEP goals, state standards, and district expectations;

• creating a climate of tolerance for diversity at the classroom and building level;

• researching and applying strategies to help make the general education curriculum accessible for a diverse group of special needs students;

• collecting data to monitor students’ progress of IEP goals;

• apprising themselves of behavior modification techniques.

At a glance (and even when given considerable thought) the job can seem overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. I think the secret to success lies in building a strong sense of “self,” so that you can focus your energies on answering that question of mine: what can I do for children? This sense of self is an absolute must as the year slowly cranks into high gear.

The Challenges of Co-Teaching

Inclusion is one setting where a special education teacher’s core teaching values can get lost in the shuffle if we don’t stay completely tuned in to our purpose. In an inclusive classroom setting, the special educator joins forces with the general education teacher. The challenge of implementing well-thought-out lesson plans or finding the co-planning time can become a bit daunting. Over the years, I’ve identified three possible realities that can emerge from the inclusion experience:

1. You find yourself in a co-teaching relationship where instructional philosophies match perfectly. Life is great.

2. You find yourself balancing your instructional philosophy with your co-teacher’s, with mutual respect for each other’s perspectives, roles and goals. Life is good—and balanced.

3. You find significant differences between you and your co-teacher that are not easily resolved. And you become frustrated, quiet, passive, intimidated, and hesitant to set the teacher in you free.

Most special educators would agree that the third option is a shameful situation to be in. I have far too many memories of special education colleagues over the years who have said to me, with a note of despair: “Please don’t let me be observed in my inclusion class—because that is just not me.”

On the bright side, this third option can be avoided. A balance can be found. One sure way to accomplish this balance is to keep your values firmly in place while considering the perspective of those individuals you must collaborate with. Let’s think about this by joining in on an imaginary meeting. Get comfortable and pull up a chair. Here are the points of view you must bring to the table, if you want to be successful:

• First, you will see instruction from the perspective of your students. This view will reveal all of their interests, experiences, thoughts, and needs.

• Next you will see the parents’ view, which includes the hope that their children can become independent and successful.

• Then you will see the perspective of (and the demands upon) your co-teacher. You’ll have a clear view of the curriculum, standards, assessments, and grade book.

Take a deep breath. And never forget to breathe out. Take it all in, because you must think about all views as you consider how best to do your job. You must know your students’ needs and goals. You must search for the best possible outcomes for them and their families. You must track students’ progress and provide specific data-based evidence for that progress. You must never, ever become quiet or intimidated. Because your students need and depend on you, you must look your co-teacher in the eye and ask: What can we do for all these children, in partnership?

When we keep in mind the perspectives of all involved in the education of our students with special needs, we can guard against feeding the frustrations that an inclusive setting can evoke. So keep an open mind and don’t forget your core values—they will help you sleep at night.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: A clear understanding of your core values is critical when embarking on a special education teaching career. You will teach alongside many colleagues each day—some who share your teaching philosophy and some who do not. But it’s all about what you can do for your students and how you can guide them to become self-advocates. This sense of values, this mission, becomes your focused strength. When your core values are set, you grow personally and professionally. And your values will evolve as you evolve.

Finally, you must keep expanding your knowledge and skills. Continuing the learning process for yourself helps sustain your passion for teaching and learning. You must always take some time to learn from:

• your students

• the views of everyone around you

• current research and current events

• your everyday experiences

• your significant observations

Our students need us to teach every day to the very best of our ability. We must do everything we can to build the strength and wisdom—and sometimes the courage—to keep our promise to them.

This article first appeared on the web at Education Week Teacher. Republished at MiddleWeb with permission of the author.

Photo: Emile Wamsteker, Education Week