LEAP into co-teaching

 Our school offers a program called LEAP (Lakefield’s Education Apprenticeship Program) which hires teachers on a one-year contract position who have recently finished their Bachelor’s or Master’s of Education. The goal of the program is to provide mutual benefit: new ideas from the mentee and wisdom and experience from the mentor. Since late August, I have had the privilege of working with a Teaching Fellow (Lakefield’s identifier for these teachers), Travis Fuchs (@TTHFuchs), fresh from earning his Master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Travis and I have initiated numerous projects together. We have built a course from scratch (Environmental Science SVN 3M). We have successfully worked together to transition and partially implement a ‘flipped model’ of instruction into the AP Prep Biology 11 course (SBI 3U). We have also engaged in a research project which is exploring the literature around student misconceptions in biology. In all cases, the process has been truly collaborative. Travis’ knowledge and understanding of the educational literature, his energy, and his impeccable work ethic have helped to create a much richer product that (in my opinion) has helped improve student understanding and engagement. The work we do together has resulted in a partnership that has allowed both of us to contribute, grow and challenge each other in ways that are always in the best interest of students. I have learned so much from having him in 4 of my 5 classes. We constantly push each other for the sake of mutual growth as we ask each other “Why not…” or “How might we…” questions. The timeliness of the Cohort 21 experience together with working collaboratively and co-teaching with Travis has provided me with a truly enriching professional experience that will be hard to match. There is so much synergy and power when we work to get collaboration right as educators. Rather than try and relate what he might say, I have invited Travis to offer some of his reflections below. Both Travis and I wish to thank Joe Bettencourt (@JoeJbettencourt) at LCS for implementing and executing the program. His tireless work has made LEAP a success.

Hello! I think I’ll start by explaining how excited I was to hear of a program like LEAP. For me, there were two main things on my mind when I applied to Lakefield. The first was to gain experience. Having just completed several years of post-secondary schooling I was aware of the gap in my pragmatic teaching knowledge. I had studied a lot of the theory of education, and knew what would work on paper, but I was missing the vital classroom time. However, rather than jumping head first into the profession, I wanted to be eased into it (teacher burnout and the sink-or-swim mentality of first year teaching was always on my mind). I think I liked LEAP so much initially because of its resemblance to medical education. The LEAP portion of my teaching journey was like a shortened version of residency. Secondly, I have always thought that good pedagogy (teaching kids) should directly translate to good andragogy (teaching adults). We consistently tell our students that working collaboratively is an invaluable experience for all facets of process and product. I always wondered then, why do teachers largely teach alone? Should we not practice what we preach to offer the greatest boon for students? I think, in my experience, that LEAP does this. Mike and I are consistently able to try new things, incorporate the latest in educational thinking and, perhaps most importantly, we have time and an atmosphere of critical collegiality to reflect on what we just did. This team teaching model, being the only model I know, is so cemented in my teaching ethos that I will work hard to create effective collaboration wherever I land next year and beyond. Mike’s experience, knowledge of students, and how to build lasting teacher-student relationships, as well as expert familiarity with the curriculum, allow us to have a teaching practice that directly mimics the hallmarks of sound pedagogy: iterative, collaborative, and reflective.