Chapter 11: Teaming

Chapter 11: Teaming
This chapter talked about how to effectively team teach at the middle school level. It starts out with a story about a girl named Umber, who is now living in the United States after moving from Pakistan. Umber has some difficulty with English and history because it is heavy in English, and she has not fully grasped the language. The story shows how the entire middle school team met with Umber’s mother to talk about ways to help her succeed in school; most importantly, the teachers talked amongst themselves about ways to shorten assignments or spread out deadlines so that she could get her work accomplished. The chapter also talks about the importance of making the information being covered in school relevant to the students. One of the ways that the book suggests to do so is by collaborating with the rest of the team to try and cover similar topics at the same time – this way, students can see how a given topic, like genetics, can be linked to subjects other than science. Lastly, the chapter speaks about the importance of having team planning times to work on the collaborative units, and the importance of communication. Without good communication, the teachers will not be able to work together to form lessons and the work will then suffer.
I liked the story at the beginning because I felt that it served two purposes; on one hand it shows different ways to differentiate instruction to help your students get the work done, but on the other hand it also showed how collaboration and team work takes place amongst middle school team members. I am a firm believer of the importance of making the information relevant to the students, so I think that when ever you can make real-world applications out of topics then your students will understand more and do better in school. I think that there would be little chance that the teachers could have helped Umber if it were not for the fact that the school must have been smaller and not one of the massive 2,000-plus student schools; this also shows how important it is for smaller class sizes and more individualized attention. I am looking forward to working with my classmates on our unit because I think it will be fun to put something together and get to listen to people from different backgrounds and subjects.