CO-TEACHING IN QUAKER ENVIRONMENTS: SUPPORTING TEACHERS THROUGH QUERIES AND CONVERSATIONS

Hannah Ellwood

Background

The topic and area of interest for my action research was naturally engendered. I began teaching at Friends School of Atlanta seven years ago, and during the frst six years I had the opportunity to work with an excellent co-teacher. We went through all of the phases of co-teaching: forming, storming, norming and performing, and then because of various circumstances, I found myself moving to a new age group with a new co-teaching partner this year. In creating this new partnership, I realized that I had questions and curiosities about how co-teachers are supported through the phases of their professional growth and relationship.

My action research focuses on how school administrators particularly elementary division heads and assistant heads can support co-teachers in Quaker school environments. I began this work by reading some of the research literature on the topic of co-teaching. I quickly discovered that almost all research focuses on co-teaching in the context of a general education teacher and a special education teacher collaborating to support students in heterogeneous and inclusive classrooms. Although I found the acquisition of this background knowledge helpful, I knew that, at least in my community, most co-teachers have a general education preparation and practice.

With this insight, I chose to more closely focus on my research on the experience of Quaker schools in general education classrooms, particularly elementary school settings. Additionally, I discerned that I wanted to understand and support the experience of school leaders in school settings where co-teaching is a regular practice. I had personally found that the support provided by school leaders was varied and somewhat inconsistent, and this provided the inspiration to engage in this line of inquiry and gather knowledge about positive practices, which might help guide school leaders as they support co-teaching teams.

Explorations

After I gathered background knowledge and solidified the direction of my action research work, I decided to deepen my understanding of school leaders supporting co-teachers through the collection of perspectives from elementary division heads and assistant division heads in Quaker schools. Using the Friends Council on Education network of school leadership, I provided a brief survey to a variety of colleagues in Quaker school settings. The small group of respondents included women, men, leaders new to their position, long-serving leaders, retired leaders and included the perspectives of people of color. The questions provided in the survey outlined the basics of what I wanted to discover:

How do you support new co-teaching teams?

How do you support highly functioning teams?

How do you support co-teaching teams in challenging or difficult circumstances?

How do Quaker beliefs and practices inform your support of co-teachers?

As you might expect the responses were as diverse as Quaker schools! In reading through and thoughtfully assessing the detailed answers provided by the respondents, I was able to distill a few consistent themes. Noted the most frequently and with the most emphasis was the importance of kind, regular and effective communication between co-teachers. Across all of the responses, this was the most persistent refection. School leaders also mentioned different ways in which they support this essential component of successful co-teaching: regularly scheduled check-ins with teams, questions or queries for new teams to complete before getting started, and one-on-one meetings with individual teachers to gather impressions, feedback, and provide support.

Another frequently mentioned topic was the careful, reflective nature of creating new co-teaching teams. School leaders highlighted thoughtful assessment of teachers’ strengths and growing areas as a prerequisite to successful new partnerships. Additionally, many of the divisional heads suggested that, when possible, teachers should be able to participate in the decision-making process for their new co-teacher. The work of creating new successful co-teaching teams seemed to be an intricate dance coordinated by school leaders.

Finally, the last frequently discussed topic was the importance of seeing that of God, light and goodness in all while doing this challenging work. While there were many different terms used, almost all leaders mentioned holding the light of all people at the forefront of the process of creating and supporting successful co-teaching partnerships. Particularly in diffcult situations, school leaders emphasized leaning into this Quaker belief and allowing that to guide their listening, refection and response.

All of the gathered responses contributed to these learnings, and I look forward to using these synthesized themes to develop queries to further support this important work.

Next Steps

My next steps are to continue to work on developing queries to support leaders in supporting co-teaching partnerships. The work of creating open-ended, clearness quality questions is not to be done speedily or taken lightly. I have synthesized my understandings from the research portion of this work, and created three areas or periods of co-teaching that the queries might fall under:

Queries for new/forming co-teaching teams

Queries for working co-teaching teams

Queries for challenged co-teaching teams

I plan to develop a series of queries and share them with our network of Institute for Engaging Leadership alums and participants as a way to make this new resource available to current and future leaders at Friends School across the country. I think this work could be thoughtfully continued particularly through the lens of my fnal question “How do Quaker beliefs and practices inform your support of co-teachers?” This last topic of discussion truly brought forth the most nuanced and complex explanations, and could certainly be further explored through more research and inquiry. The interesting and engaging topic of supporting co-teachers in Quaker schools demands further research and inquiry.

HANNAH ELLWOOD

Kindergarten TeacherThe Friends School of Atlanta Atlanta, GA

My beginning in education was early. The daughter of two “school people,” our lives were guided and formed by school calendars and communities. I came to Quaker education as a young adult seeking a school community that felt aligned with my values and where I could grow as a teacher. found that in both Wilmington Friends School and The Friends School of Atlanta. I have served these and other school communities in various roles - teacher, Summer Camp Director, long-term substitute and aftercare teacher. I believe teaching is a calling regardless of the exact circumstances of the work, and I have been continually called to do it. In joining the Friends Council Institute for Engaging Leadership, I hoped to increase my ability to impact my and other Quaker schools positively. My action research work is intended to do just that!