Team Teaching Tips for Foreign Language Teachers
Introduction
This article seeks to provide team teachers with specific tips on how to function effectively as equal partners working together in the same classroom. These step-by-step tips are a basic guide to help you establish a dynamic team so you can experiment and find the approach that works best for you. For teachers who have never had a chance to team teach, or have perhaps avoided doing it for a variety of reasons, perhaps this article will help allay fears and give teachers a sense of what exactly team teaching `looks like` within the class.
From our work team teaching with one another and others in a variety of contexts (elementary, high school, junior high school, and international schools) in Canada, Mexico and Japan, we`ve had the chance to experience everything from wonderful to disastrous team teaching relationships. Based on these experiences, we have assembled a brief series of tips to help you and your classroom partner.
Background Literature
Team teaching, in the most general sense, encompasses a wide variety of arrangements. One specific form, which has become quite prevalent in recent years, is having two teachers in the classroom teaching simultaneously. This is becoming more and more common throughout Japan and in other Asian countries. Each year on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme alone, nearly 6,000 Assistant Language Teachers (ALT) come to Japan to assist Japanese Language Teachers (JLT) in foreign language classrooms (Horwich par. 22). Recently, Hong Kong launched a programme similar to JET called the Native-speaking English Teachers Programme (NET) Programme that also employs team teaching.
In foreign language teaching, particularly teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), usually one in the pair is a native speaking assistant of the target language. We’ll use the acronym NSA (native speaking assistant) to describe these teachers. The main teacher on the other hand, is usually more experienced and not a native speaker of the target language (hence the desire for a native speaking target language assistant). These teachers will be referred to as NNSLT (non-native speaking language teachers).
In some countries where the target language (in this case English) is a second language (TESL), student teachers are native speakers of the target language and work either with other student teachers or cooperative teachers. These pairs share the same L1, are native speakers of the target language and share the same culture as their partner. These pairs usually do not experience the intercultural difficulties that some TEFL teachers experience and since they are in the process of becoming certified (in the case of student teachers), do not necessarily experience the same conflicts that some JTE/AET or HKTE/NET experience in Japan or Hong Kong and elsewhere.
One of the advantages of team teaching is that it ostensibly produces a lower teacher-student ratio, but having two teachers in the class sharing turns speaking does not accomplish this. Only by running separate activities, dividing the class into groups - having both teachers circulate and interact with students is the ratio effectively lowered. Ideally, both teachers should constantly be actively involved in managing and teaching the class.
Aside from these government sponsored programmes, there are countless others which are privately organised also resulting in the presence of a second teacher in the classroom. Team teaching is most common in the domain of foreign language education, but is also starting to be used in a variety of other subject areas. It is a pedagogical approach rapidly gaining in popularity.
Successful team teaching has the potential to benefit all concerned. Teachers stand to gain in terms of their professional development. Team teaching provides teachers with a partner to help them set objectives, make plans, implement lessons and evaluate the results. They have someone from whom they can draw inspiration and who can provide them with constructive feedback on their teaching. Students benefit from the increased quality of the lessons and a lower student to teacher ratio.
Unfortunately, most teachers destined to work together do so with little training in how to team teach. For example, in Japan most training is done by observation of team teaching lessons with little analysis of the strategies/techniques employed by the team, often leaving Japanese Teachers of English nervous about team teaching.
Horwich explains that this lack of training can lead to friction between team teachers and unsuccessful lessons (par. 18). Browne and Evans similarly explain that: "Unfortunately, the implementation of team teaching to date often seems haphazard and lacking in clear objectives. Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) and students seem to have different expectations about the purpose of team taught lessons, with the result often being unsuccessful lessons" (17).
Many teachers refuse to team teach because in a sense, teachers are by definition `solitary creatures` reluctant to share the limelight or `be observed` by a colleague. However, in a successful team you should not feel judged or upstaged by your partner. Furthermore, in some situations teachers may not have been given a choice to work together and may not see the benefits of team teaching, or worse, not respect or get along well with their assigned partner.
Horwich, in