3 Informal Team Teaching Models That Work

Connecting educators with one another empowers them as professionals. My own research has shown that these collegial connections are correlated with increased teaching efficacy, as well as improved job satisfaction and work-life balance. For any teacher interested in trying team teaching in a relatively informal setting, there are several ways to get started that can give you a sense of whether teaming is right for you and your colleagues.

Formal and informal team teaching

At its heart, team teaching is simply having more than one educator involved in teaching a group of students. Teaming can be a formal, system-level approach with two certified teachers assigned to teach a group of students (for example, imagine four teachers who all share equal responsibility for the entire third grade in an elementary school). Teaming can also be less formal. What is essential to any teaming model is that multiple educators work together with shared responsibility for teaching.

Team teaching is powerful because it offers an opportunity for collegial collaboration among teachers at a depth that is difficult to match any other way. The key to team teaching is finding a strategy for working together that fits your school culture and schedule. In fact, recent research on team teaching has shown that the flexibility of what team teaching can be is one of its greatest strengths. Schools implementing team teaching are seeing success across a range of measures. For example, teachers have reported better work-life balance, and students have reported higher levels of both engagement and sense of belonging.

In addition to my research on formal team teaching, I have personally taught in a variety of informal team teaching contexts that have been professionally fulfilling and also given me an opportunity to learn a lot from my colleagues. Team-based staffing models are an exciting option for teachers who are able to participate, but some of the benefits of team teaching are available to teachers regardless of the level of formal teaming available. A consistent theme across research on team teaching is the importance of fitting the approach to the needs of the individual—what do you need from a teammate? Start small and see what makes a difference.

3 Teaming Strategies for Any Classroom

Observe each other’s classrooms. This was my own first experience with team teaching. My colleague and I had separate schedules and our own course assignments, but we were able to align our non-teaching hour to visit each other’s class every day.

As professionals we each brought an enthusiasm for different parts of the job. For example, my teammate was passionate about crafting excellent questions and fostering scientific discourse in his classroom. My attention had been on creating projects and lab experiences, and getting to think with him about questioning as I saw the results in his classroom pushed me to grow in ways that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. These dynamics play out often: The idea of collaborative autonomy shines through in a variety of teaming models because the idea of learning from each other is powerful regardless of when and how we make it work.

There is something powerful in talking with a peer about their goals for professional growth when you know their students, too. For example, my colleague once shared his frustration after a loud student outburst during a discussion. I was able to respond with much greater understanding because I was in the room and saw the same event from a different perspective. Getting into our colleagues’ classrooms makes them feel seen, helps us better empathize with their experiences, and can show us new strategies that push the observer to grow. Even one visit per quarter can produce meaningful benefits for every teacher involved.

Plan a project together. Teachers can collaborate as a professional learning community or work with another colleague to plan a project. One of my favorite memories as a student was working on an interdisciplinary project that combined English and social studies. The project was famous in our school, and every student looked forward to the unit; we analyzed the literary structure of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in English while we studied the history contained in the lyrics in social studies.

While the two teachers collaborated on the project design and sequence, they never actually taught in the same room at the same time. Despite the asynchronous nature of the project delivery, the students still felt the collaboration (and some good-natured rivalry between the teachers as well).

In my own teaching, I was focused on creating lab experiences, and collaborating with my colleague allowed him to ask questions that tested my assumptions about how the project should run. The collaboration made us both more creative and fostered a supportive and collegial dynamic that continues between us to this day.

Leverage technology to expand your team options. Digital technology has made it easier than ever to connect with people beyond the walls of the school building. For example, I currently work with student teams across my city as a collaborating professional where I meet with student teams every week to provide instruction. A strength of team teaching is the ability to differentiate: How could small groups in one classroom meet with another teacher via videoconferencing as part of a collaborative project structure? What if teachers and students could move between online and on-site collaboration to get feedback or work on a shared project?

I used a system like this in my high school classroom to collaborate with a graduate student for a couple of years when I taught biotechnology. We created a dedicated space in the classroom where students could easily meet with our teammate any given day, and every team worked with them at least once a week. When the graduate student and I met outside of class time to plan for the next class periods, we were able to compare notes about each of our unique interactions with the students, which made me look forward to each planning meeting. The sense of putting the puzzle pieces together as a team helped each of us feel shared ownership for the class.

These strategies offer ways to get some of the benefits of team teaching, even when you may not be ready to engage in a formal system for team-based staffing. However, you can also design your classroom environment to make these strategies easier and more effective.