I have the pleasure of working with some amazing grade level teacher teams that include preservice teachers in their planning. Experienced teachers scaffold teaching for preservice teachers by allowing them to observe each subject area before beginning to teach it themselves. All teachers attend weekly planning meetings together and ideas area shared by both preservice and inservice teachers to make learning more effective for students. In fact, they allow preservice teachers to plan units, teaching them when they are in the classroom, while their cooperating teachers teach these planned lessons on days when preservice teachers are not in the classroom. This working relationship brings new ideas to classroom teachers, while providing opportunities for preservice teachers to grow as planners and teachers.
One area where preservice teachers may add ideas is integrating technology across the curriculum. Since all these preservice teachers are required to have an iPad in our teacher education program, they bring ideas of ways to use devices with students in effective ways. Their cooperating teachers know the curriculum and pedagogy, and some use technology more or less depending upon availability of devices. When they work together they plan lessons that include technology in various ways. As a teaching tool, these team teachers help each other by supporting the technology and troubleshooting when infrastructure may not support the lesson. As a learning tool, these teachers together decide how and when to check out and use devices with students.
When teachers team for the benefit of students and value each other's input, exciting things can happen in the classroom. I get excited when I see online curriculum components effectively used in addition to the regular paper text, and even more excited when I see preservice teachers using their iPad to find answers to student questions in real time, create graphic organizers during guided reading, and provide an online reading station for students. Now as schools move toward 1:1 devices with students there will be even more opportunity for students to use technology to ask questions, locate answers, and share learning multimodally...hopefully! I believe teaming will be an important way to integrate these exciting and necessary technology skills and strategies into our schools.
