Helen Williams Co-Teaching Case Study

Mary King is a student-centered teacher who takes pride and values the relationships she forms with her students. Her classroom is a safe and trusting environment where all the students are welcomed. As a special education teacher of fifteen years who has successfully experienced co-teaching, she is motivated by seeing her students succeed. In this case, Mary is trying to make things work with Helen for the sake of one particular student, Jim O’Hara. Her lack of assertiveness right from their first initial meeting and onward leads to their unsuccessful teaching experience because in order for all their students to be successful the teachers must have a professional co-teaching experience.

Helen Williams is an English teacher who takes pride

From the very start Helen Williams was controlling and not cooperating with the ideas of Mary King. Before meeting, Helen already created lesson plans even though she knew she was going to be working with another teacher. Instead of discussing and working together, Helen dictated Mary’s role in the classroom as “helping the ones having trouble” which not only divided their relationship, but their class and students as well. Helen and her inflexible ways led her to dismiss Mary’s instructional ideas and initiated an ineffective co-teaching experience. Helen had complete control over the classroom which defeats the purpose of a co-teaching partnership. This dominance and control caused students with disabilities like Jim O’Hara to lose hope and motivation. Jim O’Hara was unable to pass his spelling tests due to his disability. In this setting it was both Mary King’s and Helen Williams’ job to find different techniques to modify and/or accommodate instructional practices for students like Jim to be successful. Due to the lack of communication in their partnership, the adaptations to the curriculum were ineffective because they weren’t on the same page. This is a problem because not only was Jim skipping class, he was also failing English and could potentially lose his scholarship. Mary King’s lack of assertiveness also resulted in this ineffective teaching partnership. When they first met Mary King believed that “Helen had made up her mind and that discussion would be futile so she said nothing”. In order to have an effective teaching partnership, communication is a key component. So by Mary trying to avoid potential conflicts and confrontation it hurt the relationship even more because it was that first day they met that a discussion about their roles, objectives, and goals should have been discussed. They were both unable to put their differences