It's a Wild Ride - The Team Odyssey

The following is the team's story documenting their evolution from working as individual teachers into a team with shared philosophies. It speaks of their professional growth, personal commitment, and the emergence of an exemplary middle school team.

"We help each other think. What we can't get done by ourselves is almost always possible if someone gives us enough time to plan together. When we were at the Albertson's Teaming Symposium this summer our team was working on some major curriculum ideas. We knew what we wanted but couldn't create a logical path to get there. Our brains were exhausted at the end of everyday. On the last night of the week we holed up in our hotel room and would not go to bed until we had a breakthrough."

The History
Meile and Theresa first met in 1990 when they both worked at Jerome Middle School. Theresa was a special education teacher at the time and Meile was a 7th grade math teacher. Jerome Middle School was going through the transformation from a Junior High to Middle School. Part of the transformation was to implement an inclusion program for the special education department. The first part of the year Theresa worked with one 8th grade team and one 7th grade team (there were four teams in all, two 7th and two 8th). The other special education teacher worked with the other 7th and 8th grade team. This was necessary because the school was on split-sessions where one half of each grade attended the morning session and the other half attended the afternoon. Theresa covered the morning session while Meile was a 7th grade teacher in the afternoon. They never saw each other for the first half of the year.

Philosophy

During the year, Meile discovered she had some crucial philosophical differences in how the special education teacher should work with the regular teacher. She thought the special education teacher should be more of a co-teacher and take more ownership in the workings of the class. She envisioned someone who would blend into the classroom and work in much the same way as the regular teacher. The special education teacher would adapt curriculum so that the special education students could reach their IEP goals and be successful in a regular classroom. Most importantly, all students should perceive the special education teacher as an actual teacher, rather than an assistant. Receiving help from the special education should not stigmatize students. The person Meile worked with operated in direct contrast to all of these ideals.

In the meantime, Theresa was working with one 8th grade team of teachers that would barely let her come into the room. They were threatened with having another teacher in the room and did not buy into the inclusion philosophy. The other 7th grade team that she worked with didn't mind her coming into their classes but did very little to help make her a part of their class and curriculum.

The principal was fielding concerns from both Meile and Theresa and discovered a perfect match. In the middle of the year he switched Theresa so that she worked on Meile's team and moved the other special education teacher to the other team. The rest, as they say, is history. They worked together through the rest of that year and all of the next. Theresa was also now working with only 7th grade since the school was no longer on split sessions. She divided herself and three teaching assistants among the two 7th grade teams (each team had a language arts, social studies, science, and math teacher) to cover the special education students with appropriate in-class curriculum adaptations. It was during that second year that Meile and Theresa discovered they had more in common than just their ideas about how to educate special education students.

The Beginning
They were both assigned to the school improvement committee to investigate ways to increase student achievement. The school was performing below the expected state level and received some money for school improvement. They attended several conferences together and found that they had similar philosophies on topics such as integrated instruction, school-to-work integration, performance-based assessments, and the importance of teaming among teachers and students. At one of the conference sessions, Meile had written Theresa a note about putting together a grant that would fund integrated instruction, teaming and some technology to help with implementation. Neither one had written a grant but decided it was the only way to bring their ideas into reality.

Challenges
They had some major barriers to implementing a fully functioning team. The most important one was that Theresa was split between two teams and was finding it hard to adapt for eight different teachers with different philosophies. She needed to be committed to just one team and load that team with all the special education students in the 7th grade. Then she could only adapt and co-teach with four teachers. To offset this, the other team would receive the entire group of Chapter I students (as teachers can attest, there is very little difference between Chapter I students and special education students except paper work). If this kind of structure could be put into place, they would then be faced with the next obstacle; finding other teachers to form a new team whom shared their same beliefs. Theresa had the advantage of knowing all the 7th grade teachers and had an idea who might be open to participating in a higher level of teaming. The third obstacle was to write the grant and get the money. And the last major obstacle was to get a block schedule so that different types of learning activities could take place.

Team Development
At the end of the second year, all four of the obstacles had been overcome. Their principal formed new teams, encouraging building teachers to align themselves with other teachers having a shared common educational philosophies. Theresa and Meile were able to form a team of like-minded people to work with for the next year (each team had approximately 90 students and three core teachers excluding special education staff). The principal also created the most ideal block schedule. It allowed their team to have the flexibility to switch to one of three different team schedules depending on the activities for that unit. Then they wrote two grants and received $10,000 for integrated instruction and some technology (very limited, but at the time the school didn't even have one modern computer). Meile and Theresa's new team then spent the entire summer developing integrated units with performance-based assessments. At the core of every unit was the concept of building a team in which diversity thrived while unity was created.

Introduction of Technology
With their grant money they bought the most powerful computer made at the time (386-they were awed by the CD ROM aspect), an HP printer, several software programs, and enough videos for every student to produce a video portfolio of their learning activities. A thousand dollars was used to buy books for their integrated units that were based off of literature and the grant also funded several out of classroom learning field trips and team excursions.

Their grant money also paid for trained professionals to come in on the first day of school and send all the students and teachers on their team through teaming activities similar to rope courses. Their students didn't even know what teacher taught what subject for about a week. But by the time they were immersed in class instruction they had all bought into teaming philosophy. They had the most disciplined group of students they have ever had to date.