5843: Co-Teaching: Partners in Practice

Speaker: Betsy Butler, Course Developer

Betsy Butler: Hi, I'm Betsy Butler and I'm the course developer for course 5843 Co-Teaching: Partners in Practice and as a former co-teacher myself for about eight years, I really appreciated the way that this course digs into the different aspects of co-teaching and how the intentional planning of co-teaching needs to happen so that teams can be successful and students can get what they need from that team. I really appreciate the idea that all types of people can co-teach whether they are paras, whether they are specialists, or even just two different content areas or just in general. I think it's an important dance to learn how to do and I think teachers will get lots of ideas in this course of how to do that.

Betsy Butler: One of the things I love about this course is that there are so many frameworks that are discussed so that no matter how you are co-teaching and in what environment and with whom you're working, you'll be able to find ways and strategies to make sure that each of you holds the specific spot that you need to as you're presenting to students, and as you're planning. One of my favorite assignments is called a communication creed. And that really boils down to the heart of what co-teaching needs to be. That you need to be able to have a very clear communication path between co-teachers. And I think this is a part that often gets missed when people are either told they need to co-teach or they are set in a co-teaching situation. So I think this is gonna be a great course for teachers either before or within a co-teaching partnership so that they can be as effective as they can be.