One Teach / One Observe

Today was my co-teacher's first observation.  We decided that in the future we would make sure to rock a co-teaching lesson for an observation but for our first observations for the year, we each wanted to fly solo.  We teachers have a hard time putting our ego aside sometimes.

We decided this would be a great time to use the One Teach / One Observe model.  There is a certain student of concern that we'd like to refer to Special Ed and we thought this would be a good day for me to start collecting some observational data.  (I am SO excited to be on this 'side' of the process!  Usually I am receiving student data from a referring Gen Ed teacher or working with a Gen Ed teacher to collect data / make observations.  But this time, my co-teacher and I get to be the one's who say, "Hey, this kid needs extra support!"  Of course, since he's in a co-teach classroom, he is getting some in-class support already but we both think he would benefit from IEP services, especially after hearing from some of last year's teachers that these behaviors are not new.) 

I'm the red dot far away!

One Teach / One Observe sounds really boring.  It WASN'T!  I had a Functional Assessment Observation Form all ready to roll with the behaviors of concern that I wanted to document.  Interestingly, the student of interest ended up going to the office within the first 10 minutes of class so at first I didn't think I would have much to do.  Then I remembered a method for collecting peer data to get a classroom baseline against which I could compare our student the next time he's in class. So, I whipped up a sloppy grid, picked 6 kids, fired up an online stopwatch and just...observed for the next hour.  It was actually pretty engrossing, especially since my observation windows were only 60 seconds long.  

I'll have to dig up some grad school books to figure out exactly how to tally and report my findings.  More observations (especially with the student actually in the room!) will have to be done but this day of observation gave me a good foundation from which we will hopefully build one or two things:  A behavioral perspective that will help us better structure his classroom day so he can be more successful, or a case for Special Education services.  I'll keep you posted as this process progresses.   

If you are co-teaching, how often do you use the One Teach / One Observe model?