An administrator’s guide to co-teaching

Nicole Katz

CO - Overcoming Barriers, CO-Collaboration Strategies, CO-Collaboration Tools, Co-Teaching

Murawski, W., & Bernhardt, P. (2016). An administrator’s guide to co-teaching. Educational Leadership. 73(4), 30-34.

Overview

In this 2016 article by Murawski and Bernhardt, the authors have create 5 main concepts to help school administrator’s successfully foster co-teaching in their schools. “1. Provide many opportunities for professional development on inclusion, collaboration and co-teaching. 2. Establish scheduling strategies. 3. Partner the right teachers. 4. Supervise and evaluate strategically. [&] 5. Improve, increase, and institutionalize co-teaching practices” (p. 31-34). In other words, foster an environment where co-teaching would thrive by being that frontrunner manager and cheerleader.

Review

Developing a relationship with your fellow teachers is critical, but almost impossible if the school administrators are not on board with co-teaching or simply don’t value the school library/resource center/learning commons. In this fairly recent article, from January 2016, authors, Murawski and Bernhardt focus their attention and just that, administrators. From listening to my husband and his colleagues over the years, I have heard over and over about the lack knowledge or interest that many administrators have in Special Education students, often still living under the idea of special ed students being seen and not heard, and some even choosing to neither see or hear them. Which is an absolute crime to me and knowing how some administrators (because obviously – I hope- not all are like that) treat special education, I can only imagine their lack of interest in co-teaching. I like this article because the authors don’t even give the reader the option to opt out of co-teaching. Their attitude is, “Co-teaching shouldn’t be seen as a ‘special education thing’ but rather as a ‘best practices in education thing” (p. 31).