Working Together to Support Student Learning

At the J. Turner Hood Elementary School, we work to meet the needs of all individual students through seizing opportunities to have professionals work together across settings. This is an intentional practice designed to exercise our inclusive practice and implement co-teaching.  We do host co-taught classrooms at the school but, this belief system, based on the following definition, carries throughout our practice in all classrooms. Cook and Friend (1995) defined co-teaching as: “Two or more professionals delivering substantive instruction to a diverse, or blended group of students in a single space” (p. 2).

We have embraced the Cook and Friend definition of co-teaching across classrooms. As you walk through the school, you may observe our reading specialist in a kindergarten classroom teaching a Fundations lesson with our kindergarten teacher. You may witness an occupational therapist in a grade 3 classroom supporting students with some emotional regulation tasks. You may see our school psychologist and our speech and language pathologist teaching a social pragmatics lesson collaboratively.                                   

We are also very proud of our co-taught classroom model. Co-teaching is the practice of pairing teachers together in a classroom to share the responsibilities of planning, instructing, and assessing students. In a co-taught setting, the teachers are considered equally responsible and accountable for the classroom. In these learning spaces, a general education and a special education teacher are paired together as part of an initiative to create a more inclusive classroom.

I was able to solicit feedback from a few of our third-grade students and this is what they shared relative to their experience with co-teaching:

“This is my first time having two teachers and it's pretty awesome because there is always someone to help me when I need it!"

"I love having two teachers, especially now when we are online and in school. There is always someone who is teaching in class and 1 on the computer screen online with us. Everyone gets attention."

"I love being in this class because you both help me so much when I need it. I always feel so comfortable and can tell both of you when I have trouble. "

We exercise these practices as we truly embrace the school model “Hand in Hand: Together We Can.”