Ochoa, Jennifer

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Jennifer Ochoa

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Language Arts Journal of Michigan

The Joys of Teaming

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Language Arts Journal of MichiganVolume 12Issue 1 The Multicultural Classroom Article 131-1-1996The Joys of TeamingJennifer OchoaFollow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/lajmThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Language Arts Journal ofMichigan by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gvsu.edu.Recommended CitationOchoa, Jennifer (1996) "The Joys of Teaming," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 12: Iss. 1, Article 13.Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1509The Newest Member of The Family Jennifer Ochoa The Joys ofTeaming One rainy night in November. 1994. I sat gulping coffee to stay awake during a mandatory three-hour evening inservice which my school district deemed highly necessary and highly relevant. The topic of this particular meeting was "restructured time." When the inservice started. I was not only grumpy and tired after a full day ofteachingbut I had little knowledge of the topic "'restructured time" and little desire to learn more about it. Since I felt fairly negative on this particular evening. when we broke up into groups by schools to discuss the notion of team teaching, Ijoined the ranks of my colleagues who thought that teamingwould never work at our school. Many veteran teachers I work with remem­bered back to the 1970swhen team teachingwas widespread across our district. Those who had been involved in the "'old days." recalled teaming as a positive experience, but wondered why, twenty years later. our school district was paying this pricey speaker to bring teaming back when the school district had originally dumped the concept. We were then informed by our assistant principal that an edict had come down from above that all secondary schools in ourdistrictwould be involved in a team situation, so we might as well get used to the idea and figure out how we would implement teams in our school. I went home that night and forgot about the inservice until a few weeks later when my fellow teacher and friend asked me to be a part of a committee to develop a team plan at our high school. Initially I said "'no" because Iwas involved in too many activities and I really couldn't fit another meeting into my schedule. My friend was perSistent though. and she told me we had been granted release time from teaching to write the proposal. like a typical high schooler who will do anything to get out of class. I finally agreed to attend one meeting. From the first moment of the meeting. I was sucked inby the energyofthose present. Because ofthe enthUSiasm and commitment I could sense in the others. I was soon drawn into the plan. I began to love the concept we were developing, and I wholeheartedly agreed with the reasoning be­hind the kind of team environment we wanted to create. We decided to start teaming in our build­ingwith ninthgraders, since the statistics showed us that most students who got lost on the road to graduation fell away during their freshman year. Many students. upon entering a larger building with more people. more freedom. and some friends who could drive. started skipping school and hanging out with other students who didn't view school as important. The statistics indicated that many students who successfully completed their freshmanyearwithout attendanceproblemswent on to graduate. Thuswe wanted to focus on ninth graders. The plan. in its basic form. called for four core teachers (math. English. history and science) to share a common group of lOO-125 freshman. Although we asked for much more. we were only given the essentials: one team of four teachers. 64 Language Arts Journal of Michigan 120 students. close proximity for three of the classrooms. and two common planning hours. We felt the proximity of our classrooms and the sharing of the same students were necessary to give the students a sense of belonging. We thought the resulting family feeling would be important if we were to interest students in education. Our big desire was for the team to be a community in and of itself and for the students to feel a sense of continuity among their core classes. We felt that. instead of being four indi­vidual teachers with individual guidelines and expectations. we would instead become a big teaching machine that ran its various parts from the same motor. Therefore. we spent a lot of time discussing our individual teaching methods and philosophies. We decided what we could give up from our own practices and what we felt was absolutely necessary for our classrooms to run smoothly. In all, the process of compromise was not as difficult as I had envisioned. perhaps because my other team members and I are well­matched in personality types. We reasoned that a common set of expecta­tions and guidelines would help students be­cause they would only have to get acclimated to one setofrules. rather than four. Common guide­lines were alsonecessary to establish the commu­nity feeling we were striving for, so we presented the guidelines only one time to students (in their second hour classes), and we emphasized that these guidelines were for all oftheir team classes. Those who had been involved in the "'old days," recalled teaming as a positive experience ... Another goal we had was to improve our students' attendance. Since my school district does not have a rigid attendance policy, ninth graders figure out quickly that they can probably get awaywith skipping classes. We wanted them to get a different message-to get good grades theyneeded to be in class, andwe would do all we could to see that they were there. Thus. from the first day of school we closely checked our stu­dents' attendance by keeping hourly lists of ab­sences and comparing them at the end ofthe day. Beginning that first day. we started calling the parents of students who were suspiciously ab­sent. The threat of discovety seemed to work because absences and random hourly skipping fell sharply. We began to address our third goal-to make sure our students were having a successful edu­cational experience-by working to make both students and parents feel at home at school. We established several practices to help parents have easy access to all of us and to infonnation about their child's progress in all classes. We began by sending letters home to the parents telling them about our two hours of common team planning time and inviting them to contact us during these times. We made it known that we were willing. even anxious, to meet with any parent who had a concern or question about his or her child's classes. Making monthly phone calls home to report on evety student's progress in all classes also becamepart ofour practice. We targeted students in our individual second hour classesbecausewe use this class as a homeroom for the team. As we met daily, we monitored each student's perfor­mance in all four classes. Each team teacher became responsible for reporting progress in all four classes for all thirty students in his or her second hour by calling parents. We were amazed to find that parents looked forward to our calls. They told us they felt much more in touch with school and their child's place in school because of these calls. Another practice we institutedwas""Ibe Home­work Hot Line." Evety day after school, we re­corded a message on an outgoing-only machine (the kind they have at movie theaters) telling the happenings and homework in each class on the team. Through letters and phone calls home both parents and students have become very familiar with this number. The old refrain "but Idon't have any homework tonight Dadl" no longer works for our students. Lastly, we built the "we are one" theme into our Fall Open House and Fall Conferences. We were placed together as a team inone ofour rooms for these events. rather than being placed in different sections ofthe building with our depart-Spring 1996 65 ments. To add to the atmosphere we purchased a party-size coffee maker and bought cheap cook­ies. Food and drink impressed our parents so much at Open House that we had 60 percent of our parents come to conferences, an almost un­heard of figure at my school. These methods we have developed for parent/teacher interaction have worked well. I truly believe most of our parents feel comfortable with their child's educa­tional environment this year, and they feel that the teachers reallyhave their students' bestinter­ests at heart. We were amazed to find that parents looked forward to our calls. Most results of our program have been posi­tive so far. We have created a close-knit commu­nity for our students and ourselves. My team­mates are all men, and each of us has very different personalities, but we are all in our second and third year of teaching and so we're still green and optimistic. Because as a foursome we have grown into good friends, we have unin­tentionally furthered the creation of the family setting. The students know we "hang out" to­gether, we like each other, and we really are united. Because of the comfort level we have estab­lished with the students, they seem to be always with us. They come early to our rooms before school. Theystaywith us at lunch. They stay after school. In fact. this fall, the four of us went to the Homecoming game together, and our kids came and sat with us then, too. As a teacher, being on the team has made for the most comfortable and best year of teaching I have had so far. Because I am responsible to three other teachers, I am much more organized and on top of everything I am doing in my classroom. I have to plan and explain everything I do in much greater detail because I need it to fit with what the others are doing. In terms of behavior manage­ment, it is much easier to follow through on the guidelines because three other people are using the sameones. Butmost ofall, we have found that having the same students and having the time to work together as professionals is a completely different experience from being a lone teacher. Whenever I need to talk about some of the situa­tions of the day, I have three other people who know what I'm talking about and whom I'm talking about. We can easily track behavior prob­lems and compare behaviors in different class settings. When we confront any problem behav­iors. we have not only our own experiences with the student to draw from, but three other peoples' experiences as well. It's even nice to share amus­ing and positive student anecdotes with each other. Being on the team has made me a better teacher and I think it has made the kids better students. I don't know why our district dumped the concept 20 years ago, but I'm glad they consideredbringing teamingback. I can't remem­ber what teaching alone feels like anymore. 66 Language Arts Journal of Michigan 

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The Joys of Teaming

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