WORKSHOP #1: Evaluation (SWOT Analysis) of Team Teaching in School Year 2013/14

OVERVIEW:

WORKSHOP #1: Evaluation (SWOT analysis) of team teaching in school year 2013/14

Group formation:Work in language-based groups of preferably 3 but no more than 4 members.

Goals and objectives:Reflect and give feedback (individual & group) on your team teaching for the school year 2013/14.

Steps:

(1)15 min: Individually evaluate (SWOT analysis) your team teaching experiences with your Slovene co-teachers in the school year 2013/14. Bear in mind both the process of lesson planning as well as the lesson implementation/delivery.

(2)25 min:Share and discuss your individual analysis in group and jointly provide feedback in a written form.

(3)20 min:Share and discuss group views and comments.

Evaluation (SWOT analysis) of team teaching in school year 2013/14

• Long-term planning and collaboration (for teachers who were employed from September)
• Experience working with a variety of teachers who teach a variety of subjects
• Teaching in new teams and overcoming the challenges involved

• Working with the same teacher over a number of years enables the FT to be more adaptable to and with the SLO teacher (and vice versa) and able to foresee pitfalls or problematic areas.
• The FT knows/is better aware of his/her co-teachers strengths and weaknesses.
• The FT‘s taking the lead role in a team can in fact lead to success in the team teaching process on any given day.
• Beginning with a new colleague can lead to fresh ideas and better analyzation of one’s self as a teacher.
• New teaming opportunities with a non-language teacher proved to be a positive experience because the SLO teachers were willing to team teach and had clear goals in mind.
• Teaming up with another FT in the classroom motivate Ss and favorably add to the Ss learning experience as well as clearly demonstrate ITP roles within the classroom for Slovenian teachers.
• Being able to reflect upon, repeat, adapt, and tweak learning units based upon what worked, what did not work, what could be or should be improved, proved to be valuable in designing team-taught lessons/learning units.
• Defining content has improved after working with the same school over a longer period of time.
• Flexibility proved to be a two-way street on both the FT and Slovenian teachers‘ parts. Slovenian teachers were flexible enough to adapt to the FT‘s schedule and the partner school’s schedule, and the FT was flexible enough to juggle his/her schedule to fit the needs of the SLO teachers, Ss and school.

• Willingness to try new things
• Willing to discuss taboo / foreign topics
• FT can complement with cross-curricular topics (particularly with literature)
• Falling-in easily with new colleagues
• Working with lots of different subjects / teachers
• Efficient (regular) planning
• Enriching building on existing lessons
• FT given independent schedule organization
• Know teachers well enough now to have open honest conversations about working together.

• Solving problems in Maths
• Connecting Environmental topics and Chemistry
• Story Slam (planning with everyone-else)
• Mock UN conference, public speaking

• Modelling, this was planned in a non-traditional but more natural manner, proved to be the most significant team teaching achievement.
• SATs programs with other foreign teachers were excellent because each knows the elements of ITP, his or her role as well as learning outcome expectations and this adds to a heightened level of Ss interaction and learning within the classroom.
• Expanding the traditional language team-teaching experience to the non-language classroom (e.g. biology cow’s eye dissection).

• Modelling – positive feedback
• Organization of Delf
• Ideas=shared
• Hand-outs better

• Working with new teachers
• Collaborating in new subjects

• Working with a new teams/at different schools will prove to be challenging as well as opportune in the sense that new experiences will occur.
• Working with a younger age group might be a bit fearful but is helping the FT to think about his or her style, materials, abilities, etc.
• Using SATs to team teach with other foreign teachers will be a welcoming and challenging experience.
• Approaching non-language teachers, planning for and executing CLIL learning units will prove to be challenging as well as quite welcomed opportunities.

• New Satellite school... organization is difficult, but lessons have been successful
• A lot of work with 4th year students, and positive outcomes.
• OIV with Samuel – building and improving

• Improve planning
• Do lessons over several hours to allow for preparation and follow-up… perhaps more project-based.

• To continue to build on curriculum lessons and organization
• To improve OIV attendance and community involvement
• To work more with other subject teachers and better integrate with the lessons to be cross-curricular with lessons and projects.

• Cooperation with non-linguistic subject
• Spontaneous authentic conversation
• Given topic + lessons + go
• Responsibly for exchanges
• Advanced support

• In some cases, failure to adjust lessons according to students’ levels
• Sometimes doing too much, instead of delegating tasks to colleagues

• Adapting to other styles of teaching is difficult to do.
• Lack of or no planning sucks (is appalling). Why can’t this be structured into the schedules from the top down (from principals to teachers or from the ministry to principles to teachers?)
• When the second teacher is too mellow, perhaps the first teacher overtakes the other. Finding the right balance proved to be challenging.
• In several instances the FT failed to define the roles and the SLO teacher felt left out or overlooked. Again is goes back to proper planning.

• Lack of professional teacher training with high school students

• If team teacher doesn’t plan at all or leave time for discussion, feeling of uselessness… need just 10-15 min. of discussion to plan

• This year there was no planning time with the art teacher, which I had regular hours with, which resulted in poor team teaching.
• Trying to teach too many students (I still forget names.)
• Though team teaching, I still teach “alone” while teacher “takes a break”… it works, we did plan together, the lesson is successful, but it’s not team teaching.

• Lack of Slovene
• Lack of social confidence
• Divided in schools
• Tolerance to take lead
• Lack of clarity

• Subconsciously swapping roles of guest teaching and team teaching, frustrating colleagues in the process
• Failed to confront colleagues when they did not do their part, and doing all the work in the end

• Allowing myself to take the students’ comments, attitudes, and misbehavior personal
• Allowed myself to be upset based on external problems… need to learn to compartmentalize.

• I’ve learnt which teachers I can strong-arm versus others that I jive well with.

• Allowing 1 teacher to dominate the lesson.
• Not setting concrete planning time with all TTs.

• Time table couldn't be properly planned
• Some issues with non-language teachers, for example, team teaching planning was not on the same level

• Lack of focus within the open curriculum to better define the content of a particular course or to better define learning outcomes proved to limit the curriculum/team-teaching experience overall.
• Having meetings at Zavod on the same day as SATs courses hampered progress.

• Being at multiple schools
• Student behavior
• Other teachers not understanding how to team teach
• Lack of planning time, whether it’s time constraints or a TTs preference not to (and sometimes email doesn’t work for planning)
• Too many personal external commitments (FT and TT)
• Other teachers being caught up in necessary curriculum tasks
• Other schedule conflicts that aren’t communicated to FT (class field trips, trainings, appointments, etc.)

Prepared by

Petra Založnik

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