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

in her efficiency and holding all students to high standards. Although she is a veteran teacher of 20 years, she is new to the co-teaching system of Crossroads High School. Helen’s actions are motivated by her concerns of test readiness and possible lack of experience with co-teaching. Her need for constant control and inflexibility, have lead her deny Mary from their co-teaching partnership. Instead she tells Mary what her roles are instead of working together.
Jim O’Hara is a high-school student who has language learning delays and auditory processing deficits. Despite his disabilities, Jim stays motivated due to his success and positive experiences in a special education environment. This motivation comes from his desire to keep up with his classmates and go to college on an athletic scholarship. With Helen being his teacher his productiveness and motivation have declined. He no longer feels successful or supported in an environment where his spelling grade tests are displayed for all his classmates to see which has led him to continue to cut class.
1. What are the issues/problems in this case?

The main issues in this case have to do with the teachers themselves and their lack of communication and collaboration.

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

aside and thus they lost sight of what is truly important in their partnership, what is best for their students which they didn’t do.
Discuss the common problems and issues faced in co-teaching.

The common problems and issues faced in co-teaching is the difficulty of working with someone whose teaching style is different, inequality in the classroom, and grading/planning. Working with someone whose teaching style is different can be a problem in a co-teaching setting because if the teachers can’t agree on certain ideas their lack of trust and communication will divide them. Some teachers can’t put their pride aside or aren’t as welcoming to new teaching practices as others which could hurt a co-teaching partnership. Divisions like these could lead to an inequality in the classroom where either teacher feels dominated by the other or the classroom is physically divided into a special education and general education side. Grading and planning could also be an issue faced in co-teaching because with inclusion students have different types of needs so the criteria may not look the same for all the students. This is why it is important for teachers in a co-teaching partnership to communicate because by doing so they could collaborate by planning and grading together to discuss criteria, goals, and overall adaptations that could be integrated into the curriculum so that their classroom could be effective for all students and learners.