[instrumental music]
>> MARILYN: Hi. This is a Council for Exceptional Children Quick Take. CEC is the largest
professional association in the world that advocates for students with
exceptionalities and their families. Our topic today is co-teaching with remote
learning. I'm Marilyn Friend, I'm a former general ed and special ed teacher, a
former faculty member and university department chair, and I'm a past
president of CEC. Now, though, I mostly spend my time working with schools and
districts really trying to make co-teaching effective for everybody
who's part of the process. Now...next slide please.
This session came about because of conversations that were going on. People
were saying "Oh, what's going on with you with co-teaching? What's happening? How is
this going to occur in this pandemic time with virtual learning and
lots of problems with it?" And so rather than trying to guess what was going on I
made a decision to contact a number of people find out what they were doing and
take their advice and share it with you. So what's in this session is actually
thoughts from professionals in all of these states. By the way it occurred to
me that might look like a pandemic map of some sort, but it's not; these are the
states that replied to a request for information. So let's spend just a minute
on a starting point and talk about what's going on.
Have you ever heard these sorts of things being said in the past few weeks?
For example, "we're building this plane as we're flying it." "This feels like the Wild
West of co-teaching." Or, "we're doing the best we can...it's like we're starting
over again with our whole co-teaching program." There are reasons for this and
what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about that. The first thing that's going
on that's I think causing a lot of confusion and a lot of questions is that
co-teaching depends largely on your remote learning format. And there are
several that are out there right now. The first one is the most basic. Packets are
being sent home, maybe it's a hardcopy or maybe on a flash drive, the students have
devices and teachers are making phone calls for contacts. This of course does
not feel particularly "co." A second option is that there are packets being sent,
sometimes via email or the hard copy or flash drive, but then teachers and co-teachers
are holding electronic meetings. Zoom, WebEx, Hangout, Meet, you name it.
There are all kinds of options with phone calls as an alternative for
students who don't have access to those other electronic options.
The third option that's fairly common is that lessons are being recorded students
are being directed to use devices to watch the lessons, they have assignments
that go with those lessons, and then there are discussions and question
asking sessions at scheduled times. The last option is synchronous instruction.
There's one high school that I spoke with where they're following the same
class schedule they have when school is face-to-face and students go to their
courses and they're expected to fully participate. If you think about these
four options you can see quickly that what looks like co-teaching is going to
vary wildly based on what's happening. It's compounded by the fact that in
several states I heard this: "We started with packets and we
thought this would probably be short-term. As we have learned it's
long-term until the end of the school year, we are gradually shifting to more
virtual synchronous instruction or to recorded lessons." And so another
confusion factor is the fact that it's changing it's not always the same. now
Now another factor that's having a huge impact are the students and their
families. These comments were made by many people across many different states,
starting with attendance. That is, are students actually showing up? Attendance
is being affected by a lot of things. For example, some students don't have
internet access. They simply don't. I have to tell you that we have a home place in
very rural area and we were there and we were being annoyed because we were
behind a school bus that kept stopping, and I was like "why is that school bus
out, schools aren't even in session." We figured it out fairly quickly. The school
bus was making the standard round, stopping at each rural home; someone on
the bus was handing to a parent who met the bus a packet of information for the
students to use for learning. If you're in a place with really good
resources in suburban or urban area where there are not a lot of these
connect issues it's probably hard to imagine, but if you're in a place that's
very rural, both the access and the equipment access can be serious. I've
even heard from a couple of places that buses are being used, equipped with Wi-Fi
so that they can go to a place that has enough population density like an
apartment complex, and students can access Wi-Fi by sitting in the parking
lot, even if they were not allowed to get on the bus. So there are a lot of things
going on for families. Other things that are in this list include these kids
don't have proficiency in using the electronic tools, whether it's
synchronous or asynchronous especially younger children.
There's scheduling challenges families may have to send kids to a
relative while the parent works since parent doesn't, the family member the
caregiver doesn't have access. Caregivers may not available, be available.
Special educators really need to touch base with caregivers, sometimes to help
kids figure out what they're doing, and those individuals are not necessarily
there. Another issue, there are lots of these, is that students have other home
responsibilities. This has several different versions; I heard several times
that older siblings are taking care of younger siblings and they're simply not
available to go to school. I've also heard in some homes there's only one
computer available and so who gets to use that depends. There are also other
insecurities that we're all aware of, food and housing are just two of them, to
say nothing of psychological insecurities in this day and age and so
there's just a lot going on. Finally, student motivation.
I heard, one person wrote and said it's very interesting how students are a lot
less interested in their screens now than they used to be. For some students
it's about organizational skills, for some students it's about if they don't
have the understanding of how to use the tools they lose their motivation right
away; and so some teachers are even finding they have to step back and
really instruct students on being a virtual student and that that has to
happen before kids can actually access the technology. Now, if we're going to
make it work, here are a few of the ideas that
teachers are sharing. First, as I start this, understand that co-teaching is
complex all the time. When we add it in a virtual or a remote
environment, all it does is exponentially compound those complexities. And so
everyone is on a path and the start of that path is to really work at
strengthening the partnership. For example many people are finding they
need to treat this kind of co-teaching almost like it's a new relationship. In
many ways, it is. A key question is "how are we both truly present in that remote
instruction, whether it's virtual, whether it's synchronous, whether it's with
packets, whatever it happens to be." Another area of emphasis is that the
collaboration involved really must be structured. It can't be a hit and miss, we
can touch base here and there, we'll see how it works out. That was more
understandable as this was getting going, but it really now needs to be a little
bit more clear when and how we meet and what we accomplish during those meetings.
Another piece of this is to clarify the roles and responsibilities of each
professional based on the format that's being used. Some people are finding that
special educators are being relegated almost to a role of being a helper or
being the cleanup crew or being the tutor for particular students and that's
the only role they have, which clearly is not appropriate. Planning must be a
non-negotiable. Lessons shared sometimes a week in advance, advance copies or
advanced recordings, so that teachers can make changes in them, can cue them, can do
whatever needs to be done. There also has to be negotiation on assignments. One
thing that I heard over and over again is that students are being overwhelmed
and that when they're getting multiple assignments someone has to step in and
figure out what's reasonable for them. And perhaps most importantly right now,
we have to be patient with each other. That's probably true in your own
household. For co-teachers it really has to be the case because we never quite
know what the stressors are in the other person's life but students are
entitled to their education; this model requires the participation and students
obtaining the general ed, gen ed and so that means we've got to strengthen the
partnership. Next I want to spend a couple of minutes on synchronous
co-teaching. The best piece of advice I heard in
thinking about this is that we, the remote co-teaching should mirror
face-to-face co-teaching. That includes using the three high-use co-teaching
approaches, stations, parallel, and alternative, as a routine part of the
lessons that are delivered. Now, on the side, some people say stations, maybe not
three, that independent thing might not work so well although if it does that's
great, but some people are just using two stations. Platform options are being used
to create rooms for instruction in those small groups. Most of the platforms have
some kind of a mechanism, whether it's a platform designed for schools like
Schoology or whether it's a Google option or whether it's Zoom, I know zoom
has meeting rooms, and what people are finding is if they use those tools it
works very well. The caution is that student groups need to be created there
sometimes heterogeneous and sometimes homogeneous. One set of individuals
commented that they had to step back because the students who are more
proficient in the synchronous co-teaching tend to talk more, they tend
to ask the questions, they were dominating. And the first response was "oh
well let's just split the students," and the special educator was taking the
students who were not participating which ended up being all of, literally
all of the students who struggled. It was not done in a way that was intended to
not be best for kids but they realized that that was not going to be an
acceptable strategy. That means you have to really monitor student participation.
In one online conversation the comment was made that students with disabilities
actually are enjoying the synchronous co-teaching and are not shy at all about
speaking up, but other people are reporting that students with
disabilities in particular feel like if they ask a question or make a comment
that's off topic or off target during instruction, everybody can see them and
everybody's focused on them and that they're very intimidated. So we
have to be careful about that. Whatever is being delivered as
synchronous instruction, do be careful about documenting that students are
receiving their services. Remember they must be getting their specially-designed
instruction, but the advice is to not record this kind of instruction. In fact,
you might want to take a look, there are Quick Takes led by Dr. Kelly Grillo.
Those address both the privacy issues involved in this virtual
environment we're in and the necessity of accessibility for virtual
environments, and those are both great and really should be used.
Now that's synchronous co-teaching. Let's spend just a minute on asynchronous
co-teaching and what that looks like. First, if there are recorded general
education lessons, in some instances special educators are taking those
recorded lessons and they are either adding particular scaffolds like
an outline, some guiding questions. Sometimes they can put those recordings
into something like EdPuzzle, the app that lets you annotate, and
students can't go forward until they answer a question and so they're doing a
supportive role so that when students do look at recorded instruction they have
some guidance. I'm also hearing that special educators are breaking this type
of lesson material into smaller chunks and having students complete one chunk
before they go on to another because otherwise they are simply being
overwhelmed. With asynchronous, virtually everybody is scheduling some kind of
co-teaching meetings with students, and the advice of course is that special
educators participate in those meetings. They should be scheduled, they should be
on a regular basis, how frequently I wouldn't even begin to try to recommend;
but it's really important that all students have access to those meetings
as long as the students are showing up. In addition,
most special educators that I contacted seem to be also arranging additional
private times for one or both of the teachers to meet with the students to go
over material again or to answer their questions or to guide some of their
practice. You know if you're using one of the apps where you can see the students'
screens, you can actually see the student working and guide the student but that
often is being done away from the co-taught environment, it's not done during
the meeting with all the students, but some students do need that and it's really
important that that becomes something that both teachers participate in at
least occasionally. It's also really important for students with disabilities
that teachers stay in very close contact with parents.
Sean Smith did some research a few years ago on virtual learning and co-teaching
within that and he found in his work that parents are actually the third part
of the co-teaching, it becomes a triad instead of a pair, and we want to be sure
that they are part of this. Another piece we can do that helps, I think you can do
this in both synchronous and asynchronous but especially with
asynchronous, every student in the classroom should have his or her own
folder, so that work related to SDI as well as accommodated lessons or other
materials that you need to provide to students, can be done within the context
of the quote/unquote "general classroom," but delivered with privacy so that it's
not embarrassing the students. Now just a couple of other suggestions for you.
First, we want to avoid overloading students. You might want to check with
your co-teaching; some related services providers are asking students to do
things outside of the instructional time, then you get high school students or
middle school students with assignments for multiple teachers, and then you get
special educators trying to give kids additional work that's responsive to IEP
goals and there really has to be some conversation about what to expect of
kids, remembering their stress levels, what's reasonable and what's a
reasonable balance of what everybody else is doing and what would be most
helpful for this student. Parents as co-teachers, of course we want them to
participate as much as possible and they should be able to ask their their
questions. I actually had one person tell me that because math can be a little bit
of a sticking point, the math coaches are getting on to phone conferences with
special educators and parents of kids with disabilities because the math
coaches can just help out in terms of clarifying if there is a question a
parent has and the special educator's not sure how to answer it. It's also really,
I'm, and I think that's the last point that was up there in terms of enlisting
other supports, and so you might think through who else in your school
could be of assistance. There's a lot going on right now and it's really
important that we all share, it's really important that we put our heads together
to make this work the best it possibly can. With the link to this Quick Take,
there is a way for you to share what you've been doing and what we might do
if we have enough response is do another one of these and update people with
literally more hints and tips from the field. I thank you for participating in
this I hope that you are safe and that your family is safe and that you are
managing in the complex world that we live in these days.
Thank you.
>>MEGAN: Thank you so much to Marilyn for taking the time to talk to us today.
As she mentioned there will be a link underneath the recording of this video
that you'll have a chance to contribute some of your co-teaching successes while
working remotely and discuss some of the challenges, and we'll use that
information to provide some follow-up Quick Takes. Thank you everyone so much!