A year in review

Year six is in the books. This year was a nice change from the first five years of teaching. I taught two 8th grade English classes filled with a mix of gen. ed. and ESE students. I was given the opportunity to co-teach 7th grade English this year which was a wonderful experience. Co-teaching is a lot like parenting. Instead of two parents you have two teachers in the classroom. Students are interesting when they are trying to figure out this way of teaching. They often ask who is the actual teacher. For some odd reason they find it strange that there needs to be two teachers instead of one. We never really told them the real reason for why there must be two teachers. One is for the general education students and the other one is for the special education students. A couple students take having two teachers as an advantage. For example, if I say you cannot use the restroom they will wait two minutes (or two seconds) to ask Ms. C if they can use the restroom. Both of our responses are the same. This scenario is depicted in the picture. I just told a student no for getting a drink and then once I turn around he decides to ask Ms. C for a drink...the response was also no.