You Do Everything

As you may have read, I was thrown a major change up this past week.  I went from co-teaching 2 humanities blocks and a reading intervention class to co-teaching only 1 of those blocks and adding a double period of Special Ed math and a period of Special Ed Language Arts.  Worse than my switch was the change for a number of students who were pulled out of their Gen Ed classes with no warning and minimal explanation.

I learned about the switch on Monday, I only had 2 days left in my 8th grade co-teach classroom so I told my co-teacher, let me know what I can do, I'll just support you in whatever way you need as you get ready to teach on your own. (BTW, this is her first year teaching so the co-teaching thing was a real wild pitch at the start of the year.  She might have been pleased for this particular change up and getting the room back to herself!)  And we went along and co-planned for the next two days.  We were reading "The Treasure of Lemon Brown" by Walter Dean Myers.

There are some resources out there for co-planning.  2 Teach LLC has a number of lesson plan example for co-teaching with elementary and secondary templates to use that allow you to clarify who's doing what, when and with whom.  My co-teachers and I haven't gotten this specific but we will need to.  Mostly our planning time is: "What do we want to do today?  I'll take this part, you do that part."  Which is how my soon to be non-co-teacher and I left it that Monday morning.

I teach in different rooms all day long.  So, after a minute (second??) or two of debrief with my last teaching partner, I pass in the halls with the students and hope to get to my next class on time.  As I rushed in on Tuesday, my co-teacher says with a smile, "You're doing everything today."  

Wait. What??  I'm internally yelling, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't how co-teaching works!!"  And, "You don't tell me what to do!"  With a little whine, "I don't FEEL like doing everything and what exactly are we doing anyway?"  

But part of my inner dialogue sounded like this, "Dang, teach, tell it."  I was proud of her for being directive and taking the period pretty much for herself to catch up and solo plan as needed.  I had told her I would support her in any way she needed and what she needed was the blessing of time.  And she got it.  

I L.O.V.E. reading out loud with students.  I love reading to them, listening to them read, watching 8th grade lips move as they read along with a reader, hearing little gasps and groans of understanding along the way.  Love it.  And these kids were pretty amazing at detecting an upcoming twist.  I think modern stories need to be filled with ever greater twists and turns to surprise young readers because they seem to take very little at face value in a story.  They EXPECT a twist so they're out-twisting the author sometimes.  Did you think maybe Lemon Brown's son was Greg's dad?  This was one theory in the class.  It's not the actual twist in this tale but I think it would make a great story.  

So, I happily did everything for the period while my colleague, a first year teacher, got herself together to make it through another day.  Not exactly the co-teach model but it was exactly what she needed.  I also needed a day with these kids before I said goodbye to most of them.  I was happy to leave the class on this note.  I hope I was helpful to my partner and that the kids enjoyed reading together as much as I did.