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For many, teaching can be an isolating experience. You teach behind closed doors, often with little interaction with other adults during instructional time. One exception can be found when you are assigned an instructional aide or co-teacher, who is often present to support the learning of English Language Learning or students with disabilities. Even in schools where collaborative planning is the norm, collaborative instruction—particularly among teachers of different disciplines—is uncommon.  

If collaboration is increasingly expected, like in curricular integration, where do teachers learn to do this effectively? Teacher preparation programs may provide coursework on collaborative teaching, in a required special education course, or in curricular integration, more likely in an elementary preparation program. But the reality is that much of this learning is abstract, not practice- or field-based. It remains the purview of book knowledge (theory), not craft knowledge (practice). Developing integrated lesson plans or reading about the different types of co-teaching is not sufficient, to truly learn and develop such practices and mindsets, they must be experienced.  

That proposition—the best practices we wanted our teacher candidates to internalize and actualize had to be experienced—was the driving force for our study of a co-taught, integrated curriculum in elementary teacher preparation. Brandon has a social studies background, while Stephen has a science background. For a time, we taught in the same elementary teacher preparation program, teaching the methods courses for our respective disciplines. We observed a program where our teacher candidates were learning about models of co-teaching and curricular integration, but that learning was largely limited to readings and the creation of hypothetical curricula. We were not certain that our teacher candidates would experience these practices in their field experiences. And just as important, even if they did experience co-teaching and curricular integration during observations and practicum, would they have the opportunity to reflect and engage in sense-making about what they observed? 

We started with a simple premise: We would develop an instructional unit on interdisciplinary instruction for our methods courses, and we would co-teach this unit in both classes. Along the way, we would document our development and enactment of the unit. What we thought would be a simple, straightforward exercise—identifying the unit’s focus, designing the activities/learning experiences, determining instructional responsibilities, and constructing the research design for the larger study of teacher candidate learning—became a months-long negotiation of our disciplinary differences, the shared curriculum, and our instructional status in the co-taught classroom.  

Like many teachers before us, we found that good co-teaching is grounded in a strong relationship and professional understanding with your co-teacher. For us, co-teaching was less the issue. Had we co-taught the same course, together, we would have had the opportunity to collaboratively build a relationship with our teacher candidates. Or, had we been teaching the same discipline, we would have had a shared language and expertise we could draw upon. But, we had neither. We were not teaching the same students, so we lacked pre-existing relationships when entering the other’s classroom, leaving us feeling like outsiders. And, we lacked the disciplinary knowledge and expertise of the other, so we ceded instructional responsibilities in an unfamiliar environment.  

This is not to imply that we failed in our co-teaching experiment. We were re-invigorated as we learned new pedagogical approaches and disciplines in teacher education. We engaged in extensive curricular redesign, and we were able to model for our students the realities of constructing co-teaching practices and an interdisciplinary curriculum—the benefits and challenges. We also showed our teacher candidates what it meant to learn as teachers. We are always in the “act of becoming.” We will have successes, and we will have failures. What matters is that we learn from both. We also encouraged our students, exhibited through our experience working together, to take risks. Identify like-minded teachers. Inquire into the possible links between what some may see as distinctly different disciplines. And then, develop and enact teaching that draws on the best of both.