Blogs on Team Teaching

Throughout our first few months of team-teaching using Skype and a thirty dollar webcam to connect our two schools, we were extremely frustrated with our inability to incorporate Socratic seminars in World Dynamics. World Dynamics is a blended-curriculum course between two classrooms, twenty-three miles apart, where Earth Environmental Science, World History, and English I are taught simultaneously in order to give students a contextual understanding of the world.

Editor's Note: Through video observation, collaborative planning, and candid, constructive criticism, California high school math teachers Mike Fauteux and Rose Zapata have devised a formula to improve their practice and increase student achievement. After Edutopia produced this video, Mike and Rose, who teach at Leadership Public School in Hayward, CA, shared their insights with me about how to create a successful team teaching partnership.

My new book is just out, Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools (Jossey-Bass). You can preview it on Amazon. In it, I pose this challenge: "Imagine an Education Nation, a learning society where the education of children and adults is the highest national priority, on par with a strong economy, high employment, and national security."

Moving from traditional teaching to project learning takes effort: You have to be willing to rethink everything, from classroom management to homework expectations to assessment strategies. And if you're the only one in the building who is teaching this way, it can get a little lonely.