{"id":6606,"date":"2018-10-23T04:20:23","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T04:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=6606"},"modified":"2018-10-23T04:20:23","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T04:20:23","slug":"working-with-a-colleague-who-is-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2018\/10\/23\/working-with-a-colleague-who-is-a-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Working With a Colleague Who is a Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"ChrisWorking With a Colleague Who is a Friend<\/h3>\n

by Chris Mares.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For some reason the phrase \u201cteam teaching\u201d has always had a positive connotation for me. I\u2019m a people person and a team player so it\u2019s understandable. I love teams and I love teaching. But what is team teaching and how should we set about it in a principled and positive manner? In this post I will describe one of my experiences.<\/p>\n

A number of years back, a colleague of mine, Laura, and I were sharing the same class during a four-week summer session. Laura taught in the morning and I taught in the afternoon. It was a small class of around ten students who ranged between low and high intermediate.<\/p>\n

Of course, we could have taught in a parallel fashion, simply focusing on the skill sets our classes were designed to focus on (listening and speaking for Laura and reading and writing for me). I\u2019m sure it would have been fine and the students would have been satisfied, but Laura and I decided we would do something different.<\/p>\n

As most of the students were only in Maine for the four weeks of the program, we wanted them to benefit as much as possible from our teaching.<\/p>\n

We arranged to meet every day, both before class and at lunch-time, to go over what we planned to do and to discuss the students in terms of how they were doing and what was going on in class.<\/p>\n

Very quickly it became apparent that there was a lot we could do in terms of recycling vocabulary, key phrases, and grammar points. We could also share details about what students had said, what they had done, and how they were feeling.<\/p>\n

Pretty quickly the students realized that Laura and I were talking to each other about what went on in the class. This impressed the students because they realized that we cared and that we wanted them to do as well as possible. This motivated the students and they became even more motivated than they already were.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we learned.<\/p>\n