10th Annual Partnership Conference for Educational Renewal

A panel of four educators in a Professional Development School will share the ways that coteaching serves a range of inservice teachers' needs. The four have cotaught together in various configurations in several grade levels using a range of models, including team teaching, assisting, using stations, and parallel teaching.

Although the basic tenets of coteaching maintain that coplanning is an essential, nonnegotiable component, these educators have found that experienced teachers with some knowledge of each others' styles can, in fact, shift into a coteaching model that fits the moment. In addition to serving students better by having multiple knowledgeable professionals engaged with them at once, all four educators have benefited from the professional development component of their work together- even with its often impromptu nature.

The panel will present coteaching as having three characteristics that serve to legitimize its role as a form of inservice professional development. Specifically, coteaching is:
a. on site, in your classroom, and entirely embedded in the natural setting of your work;
b. on demand, at least in the respect that as a question or problem arises during the coteaching event another professional is there to respond, clarify, supplement, or even take the lead, as needed; and
c. always relevant, because it involves both the content and students that are the focus at the time of the coteaching event.

Panelists will share the ways in which they've grown through coteaching along with some innovative ways that coteaching might be implemented in any school setting.