Sometimes it Takes Two {Weekly Blog}

This week we started our third quarter and that means Introduction to Welding is over and Equine Science is in my schedule for my remaining time at Big Spring High School. Equine Science, is a content area I am weak in and am hoping to learn a lot from my cooperating teacher and students. The new aspect of this course is that I will be co-teaching with one of my cooperating teachers whom has years of experience with showing, teaching, and owning horses.

To prepare, I read the textbook, received a mini lesson from my cooperating teacher, and had all my documents prepared. I had an extra boost of confidence with having my cooperating teacher in the back of the room, ready to answer any questions and jump in as needed. My role was to lead the class and then to use her as a support as needed.    

With having only 3 weeks to teach, we decided to follow her lesson plans so it would be a smooth transition. Teaching only 3 days was the perfect amount of time I needed to understand the flow of our co-teaching and how to better prepare for the classes. Our co-teaching system simply works with me teaching the lesson and as questions are asked and or I conclude talking about a topic, I ask Mrs. Fulton if she has any further information or experiences she wants to share about. I know that I can prepared myself but I will not be prepared to answer every question asked, especially with many of the students being horse owners or riders. I believe that I would rather ask my cooperating teacher for more information or the right information rather then shorting the students.

Now that I have a feel for how co-teaching will function, I can better prepare the content and activities. My challenge is constantly finding activities that are meaningful but do not take a large amounts of time. This is a class I could just flow through the motions with so I am challenging myself to take the content or already prepared activities and add a fresh flare original component to them.

Co-teaching is probably something I will have the chance to do when I have my own program, because I may be a single teacher or I and my other teachers will teach at the same time. In knowing this is unique, does anyone have advice or a strategy to try to implement while co-teaching?