Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome advocates to another episode of the lead inequity podcast podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is Dr. Matthew Rhodes and Dr. Belinda Carge. So without further ado, Matthew, Belinda, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:00:18]:
Our pleasure.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:00:19]:
Great to be here.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:19]:
All right, I'm excited for today's conversation. We're going to be talking about co teaching. By the way, y' all are some amazing authors. Oh my gosh. Can I get this in frame? Co teaching evolved. Let me see, Let me try this.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:00:32]:
Okay, okay.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:33]:
Co teaching evolves partnership strategies for an equitable, inclusive and tech powered classroom. And of course folks, links in the show notes. Make sure you grab your copy if you have not already gotten one. But Matt, I'm going to start with you. I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:00:49]:
Yeah, so I have several roles. So my major roles, I support A6 schools. They're all adult education or non credit programs and I'm essentially a coordinator of ed tech and instruction and I'm doing a lot of professional development coaching with adult educators. They're teaching students English as a second language, career, technical education as well as like high school diploma. So it's very interesting. I get to go into like a nursing class at CTE or computer or business class and then I get to go into ESL classes working with many multilingual learners. And then we have students getting their high school diploma and we have students ages 18 through 80 in our program. So it's very, very dynamic in that regard.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:01:26]:
Then I'm a professor at San Diego State University in two different departments in special education and dual language. Then I also have a function at Concordia University Irvine where I work with doctoral students and they research underneath me. And in regard to co teaching, I co taught for many years before I took on my current role. But I continue to co teach now in the classroom when I am doing instructional coaching with teachers and while I'm presenting as well. So it's a really fun and engaging career that I have and it's always learning something new.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:56]:
You are a busy man. I will tell you one thing. Okay, so okay, you said 18 to 80 as far as high school diplomas, why not 81? I'm just curious.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:02:05]:
I mean we may, we might, I would have to check our records. And we also do citizenship as well. It's fantastic. Citizens of all ages and seeing people get their United States citizenship. And many people been in the country for many years. And it's great just seeing people make that journey as well. Everyone's in a different part of their lives, and it's all about lifelong learning.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:24]:
All right, I like that. All right, well, good, good, good, good. All right, Belinda, I'm going to throw it over to you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:02:31]:
Absolutely. I'm a professor at Concordia University, Irvine, where I work fully in the doctoral program. That's how met and previous to that, I have worked at several other universities. I've also taught overseas. I have spent quite a bit of time in the classroom, both as a classroom teacher, district office person, administrator Princip, and kind of landed at the university as a give back, meaning that after spending that time in the classroom myself co teaching, as well as helping others co teach, now it's my time to share with doctoral students in the research, which I love. I'm total research geek and also as an executive coach. And so I work for a company called 2Teach, as well as a couple other consulting firms where I go out and just support co teachers in the classroom. It's a lot of fun.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:03:20]:
All right, so again, the two of y' all are both very busy folks, so I'm glad you were able to take an hour of your time to meet with me. I'm just playing. I appreciate it, though. I want to start with you, Belinda, as far as co teaching, because I want to establish what does that mean? Because I'm sure folks that are listening might have all kind of different ideas as far as what co teaching looks like. So I want to start with you. Could you share a definition of co teaching?

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:03:44]:
Absolutely. Co teaching is when two teachers plan, execute, meaning actually co teach and implement together and assess and reflect on their practice. So start to finish, plan, actually have a lot of fun in the classroom together, and then reflect and pull around and notice I said co teachers, but I didn't define them. We traditionally think of general ed special ed, but in my role as an executive coach, I've spent a lot of time recently with, for example, ELA teachers who are co teaching with a general ed teacher or. Or a math expert who's coming in to support a general ed teacher. So it doesn't have to be general ed special ed. It could be any two teachers who are working together.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:04:22]:
Yeah. We also have it with, like, career technical education as well, where we have a language teacher as well as a CTE teacher in that type of role. Also, when we have even sometimes paraeducators in the class and sometimes even longtime parents in the class. I mean, it's very dynamic in terms of what it looks like. But really when it comes down to is what Belinda mentioned is just those three major components of co teaching, but it looks different in many different contexts.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:52]:
Okay, Okay, I like this. So I guess my question is why? Why would I need a co teaching scenario, Matt? Because I'm thinking like financially, am I paying for two teachers for the price? Am I getting two for one? Why would I need a co teacher situation?

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:05:08]:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's two major points. One is creating more equitable opportunities in the classroom as well as inclusion. So when you have two teachers in the classroom, you can support more students. You can provide more direct instruction and intervention with students. You can also have various types of content experts as well as instructional experts relating to providing instruction for content area or for example, a special educator where they the instructional expert to support students with a wide range of disabilities. But again, it could also be a language teacher that supports the general ed teacher in developing language and they provide those series of instructional strategies to support those students. So I really think that those are kind of the major points. But also there's a lot of research pointing towards when you have two adults in the classroom and there's that degree of cohesion and planning, structured instruction, reflection, you're going to have a higher degree of student outcomes where you're going to see students of all ability levels and backgrounds do better in the classroom and they're going to learn more over time.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:06:11]:
That's definitely where I was going to jump in as an administrator. My why would be student outcomes? And an example, I recently worked with a school in Arizona, Fountain Hills Middle School. The administrator three years ago implemented co teaching. Her school was a level D on a grade of A through F. And this year she's getting awards for being a level A school. And in talking to her and really digging deep with her, like, what did you do? She she said, oh, slam dunk. When we went into co teaching, when teachers had to spend time together and to really think about planning and implementing and really look at students. For example, when you're with a co teacher, you can sit down and say, well, Juan needs this and Jessica needs this and oh my gosh, I can't forget Amy.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:06:55]:
She's my ADHD student. What are we going to do during this lesson while you're up there lecturing? I need something to do with Amy. So we talk about that as co teaching teams and every student is really focused on and that's where we see the value. So a school like Fountain Hills, we're in three short years, they have tremendous growth. Matt and I have been working with some schools in Southern California in San Gabriel, Selpa area, Selpa Special Education Local Planning area. There's eight school districts that we've been working with and these teachers are showing amazing data and we're asking teachers to take classroom data like we're saying do some pre post data pre before you started co teaching post. Let us know after say a unit or after a term together. These are secondary teachers and been sharing with us things like grades have gone up.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:07:44]:
So where an English teacher would share that prior to co teaching maybe she had probably 15 Ds and recently said to us I only had three. And she said I really feel that part of that is I have a partner now that I can talk with and work with for those accommodations and modifications that are needed for those low level students. So outcome is all about the why I'm loving this.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:08:07]:
Okay, okay, okay. I have questions, right? Because here's the thing. I'm familiar with like I did special ed, so I know about having prayers in the, in the classroom in, in regards to being with the teacher. Matt mentioned the, the language teacher support, maybe ell, multilingual learner, those kind of things. That all makes sense to me. But Belinda, what you were saying as far as at the, the school in Arizona, it sounds like there are two certified teachers that are collaborating together. So then I start thinking, all right, is that like a typical classroom might have, let's just say 30 kids in a classroom, are we taking in two classes and we're combining them into one. So now there's about 60 kids in a classroom which two teachers or is it the same about as far as the enrollments or classroom size, but with two teachers in it? Just, I just want to make sure I'm understanding.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:08:58]:
Belinda.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:08:58]:
Oh, I'm glad you asked the question. Here's the thing to remember. Every student with special needs in the United States has a role in general ed. So they should all have a home in general ed. So even if they're on a caseload of a special educator, they should have a home base, which I realize not every school, that's why I say should, but they should have a home base in general ed. So typically what we're talking about is a classroom of maybe 32 students depending on district. And in that classroom you would have maybe 27 students that were are general ed on that roster. And then Five students that are what we call caseload students that, that they're on the general ed roster because they deserve that opportunity in general ed, but they also have IEPs and that's where the person who's the caseload manager is then in co teaching with that person.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:09:49]:
And so that's why they are able to give up the time because they have roughly 20% of the population in that classroom on special needs or 504s or something like that. Does that make sense?

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:02]:
Yeah. So like maybe the other teacher or another teacher takes on a smaller group session. Maybe like the kidney style table. Tier 2 type of situation. Tier 3 type of situation. So is it something that we recommend that we have at least three tiers of instructional, like multi tiered systems of support or just kind of like having those little side groups to provide the extra resource.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:10:25]:
Co teaching works good for all of that. So if you think about the different types of co teaching, okay, so one type of co teaching you were just talking about, if I wanted to have a small group off to the side, could be alternative teaching. Okay, and let me give you an example of alternative teaching used in a very effective way. So high school math, algebra class, they work together. Every Thursday they do an assessment that has three problems. If you as a student get all three of them correct, you go to enrichment. If you as a student miss one, you choose, you can either go to enrichment or, or you can stay back. But if you miss two or if you miss three, you're coming to the small group over here.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:11:06]:
So it's called alternative teaching because one of the teachers is going to do an enrichment activity and the other teacher is going to take that small group and reteach a different way, show them a different method, maybe pull out some edtech tools that are going to really guide them for learning those principles. And then we're all together the next day, moving on. So we don't do this every single day. Now let's say the next day comes and now we're going to introduce a new unit that next week we're going to be looking at a geometry unit. Let's say those same two teachers decided to do a conversation co teaching. And what they did is each one of the teachers is up in the front of the classroom and they're having a conversation about geometry together. Like hey, why would you use geometry? What happens in everyday use of geometry? Hey, let's look around the classroom. What kinds of things do we have? Wow, look over there, that flag, it's rectangle.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:11:57]:
And they would have this little conversation in front of the students co teaching some of the learning. Here's a little trick. One of those teachers is probably the ed specialist and they're probably asking questions of the general teacher that they know their students don't have the answers to, but they're afraid to ask. So if I ask those questions and I know my students are listening because we're having this cool conversation, kind of like Oprah talk show. We're having this fun conversation. They're listening and they're picking up information. So that's an example of one day we did alternative, the next day we did conversation co teaching.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:12:30]:
And it's very dynamic too. I mean it can within one lesson you can have team teaching to begin and a conversational piece while they're doing direct instruction on the geometry problems. Maybe they're trying to find or let's just do Pythagorean theorem because that's pretty typical geometry. But maybe they are both showcasing and modeling how to do that particular equation. And they're doing that conversation piece. One's modeling how to solve that particular equation. And then one is also then on the side, maybe they're labeling it on the triangle or they're asking particular questions. Then you can go into a particular piece where it's the parallel piece where maybe that half the class needs to be retaught that as part of an intervention.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:13:12]:
So one teacher goes to the side of the classroom or to the back and provides that direct instruction again while the other teacher is providing maybe additional guided practice that further extends learning. And there also can be times where like Belinda's example for that alternative piece or it could be station piece. So. So two tables, you have each of the co teachers providing direct instruction related different problem sets with students or ones providing that direct instruction at that one table. And then one of the co teachers is monitoring the other station. So I mean it's very dynamic and you can switch between these strategies. And that's when really where we want to go in co teaching. Because a lot of times we see when co teaching starts where it's just one teacher doing most of the work and one teacher just observing or supporting students one on one.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:13:58]:
So we want to take it from that beginning step to that more dynamic piece.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:14:03]:
Okay.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:14:04]:
One thing we find is teachers often don't understand and so modeling is the best. Like when Matt and I are doing a professional learning or professional development together, we actually model various ways to co teach so they get the idea of what it is. Because what we don't want to happen is we don't want there to be one teach and one just support all the time. Because the research is very clear that that model of one teach, one support is a down here model. Like we don't see improvement with students during that model. We do not see. Like as a principal, why would I want to put two teachers in a classroom if one of them is just going to walk around and say hi to different students? I need them both using their certified credentials or certifications if they're going to be up there working together. So we try to get them past coach one support because that's what they all want to do.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:14:51]:
Like we'll. Last year I did a training of maybe three sessions and I met with a group of principals and they looked at the list of 11 CO teaching strategies and they went, so they all been taught these. And we're like, yeah. And they're like, well we don't see them. And so I had to go back to the teachers and be like, come on you guys, we taught you. You do some time to use them. Because they all want to just do one teach, one support. They want to lecture.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:15:12]:
And it's like, no, no, no, we're going to be more innovative. We're going to. Student engagement is the game here. So let's figure out how we can use both of your certifications to engage all the students in the classroom.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:22]:
So Belinda, you've already kind of touched on it because we, we start off by talking about what does co teaching look like. And you've given some amazing examples of, of what that could look like, but there's what it does not look like. So I kind of want to piggyback a little bit more. Man, I'm gonna throw this one at you as far as like, what are some examples of what co teaching should not look like?

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:15:45]:
So I'll give you an example of what happens. All too much in co teaching. But let's look at it in a secondary lens is that say you have two CO teachers but you only work together for one period a day and they don't get the plan. It's very much just both teachers come in. The general education teacher provides about 80% of the instruction while the other co teacher provides just support one on one with students. Maybe does a little bit of small group here and there, but that could be rare. Or they're just mostly observing. One of the worst examples I've seen is essentially the co teacher.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:16:17]:
All she did was sharpen pencils the entire period and give them the Students that need needed them. So certified teacher as well, certified teacher in the classroom, sharpening pencils. It was, that's just a non example of what we don't want, we won't, we don't want that happening in classrooms. So that's not a good investment at all. And in we see that oftentimes when they only have one period to work together, there's no planning time. So just for us to move beyond those bad examples is that there needs to be structures in place so that they can be successful. For example, having that planning period, teaching multiple periods a day or if you're in primary they're teaching half the day together or a couple hour, three hour block just so that they have that continuity. Because if you have a co teacher, for example, that's a special education teacher and they're teaching with two or three different co teachers throughout the day, one period a piece and then they have two other classes that they're teaching by themselves and as long as their caseload, ultimately that's a recipe for your co teaching program to really not show much growth in terms of student outcomes.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:17:23]:
It's probably going to be very much the same same as it was beforehand. And it's unfortunately it's an investment that won't yield what they're what, what everyone's looking for. So we really want to move beyond that. And I, we see it too often than not in schools when they're implementing co teaching and we really strongly, strongly talk about you need to develop these supports in your co teaching program to ensure that that doesn't happen along with training and that coaching piece so that they get that feedback and coaching throughout the year, especially if they're a new team working together.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:17:56]:
Okay, so I heard make sure you have planning time developed so that maybe that's a PLC or just a planning hour or something like that during the day. I also heard make sure you have structures in place and it might can't be just one class period together. It needs to be either all day or at least a good portion of the day. Why are the, why are those things important in order for it to be effective when it comes to co teaching?

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:18:19]:
Belinda it's all about consistency. All about consistency. So think of yourself if you're a student in that classroom, if you see those same adults every single day, period two, that they are both teachers and you can go to either one of them and that they are the experts in that classroom. But if you only see one of those people like once a week, it's like who's this strolling in working with my teacher? She's an aide. They don't even realize that that's a certified teacher. So you have to kind of think of it from the student perspective. They need the consistency. They need to know who are the adults in the room and who are there to help them.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:18:54]:
And once they see that both those teachers have the expertise and both those teachers are there to help, that's when we see the growth in student outcomes we were talking about earlier. Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:04]:
Do you recommend that? Because I know again, I know para versus teacher collaboration, there's a hierarchy there. But when there's two teachers that are certified, they both come in with the same credentials. Is there a hierarchy structure or do the students like, how does that work? I guess, because I know Matt mentioned something about team teaching earlier, but I'm just curious, how does that structure work?

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:19:28]:
Matt, you know, ultimately want to have that parity between both of the teachers so that the students shouldn't be able to distinguish them as different. They should just distinguish them as both teachers in the classroom. Really the biggest piece is what we suggest at the beginning of the school year, and this is even before the first week of school. Hopefully the co teaching partnerships are selected at the end of the year prior to that. But really developing that essential agreement, there's like, essential agreements can develop a document essentially, kind of like a contract of essentially how each individual in the classroom is going to teach and take on various roles and essentially looking at how are you going to navigate classroom management, how are you going to navigate instruction? What's that going to look like? What's your planning routine going to look like? What, what are some of your philosophical differences and similarities really taking time at the end of that prior school year as well as at the very beginning of the school year that they're going to be working with is developing that essentially agreement and coming together and setting those roles for both co teachers so that then they can have those norms as well as really nothing in black, nothing in gray as they start the year. Obviously, it may change those essential agreements throughout the year a bit here and there as they adjust. But having that in place creates a degree of parity between the co teachers because all the expectations are set and each of them should know what needs to happen on their end as well as together to be successful.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:20:57]:
And when we say parity, we do mean parity in terms of the equitability of the teachers. But on the other hand, it's important to realize that both those teachers bring gifts to the classroom that we want them both using. So for example, if I have a general ed and a special ed teacher working together, the special ed, I would expect them to be able to really show some cool accommodations, modifications, universal design for learning. I would expect them to really be able to up the bar in terms of some of those intricacies needed for students with special needs. On the same level, I would expect that general ed content expert to be able to dig really deep in the content. And maybe the specialist doesn't know all of the content, but I would expect that general ed specifically person then to step up and be teaching those components. And what happens if we allow teams to stay together over time is they both learn from each other. So if I'm the specialist and I'm co teaching two periods a day, but I have two periods that I'm also working with just students with special needs, now I've learned all this cool content from these general ed teachers that I'm using with my students over here, which rightly so, they should have.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:22:07]:
Similarly, that general ed teacher who is by herself maybe fifth period, maybe she co teaches second and third and then she's by herself fifth period, she's using the UDL that she watched her colleague model or she's using the accommodation. Like she'll say, oh wow, I saw him accommodate a seed throw. Maybe I can use that same accommodation for Juan and try that out. So we see the gifts that are given back and forth and that's something a lot of people don't talk about. But when you're in those classrooms as a coach and you really watch good teams, that's where you really see this quality parity coming where we can up the bar. Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:45]:
All right, all right, all right, all right. So let's, let's shift over to our leaders, right? Because I'm sure some of my principals out there like, oh man, this sounds amazing. I'm currently at a B or C or D or an F or whatever it is. There's always room for growth. And I'm looking at maybe some options who are coming up on the summer and maybe this could be an opportunity to kind of dig in a little deeper as far as research and finding out those things. Let's talk budget, right? Because that's going to be a lot of principals challenges like, well, how do I justify two teachers in the classroom or how do I make this work? Do you have any, either of you have any information or insights into how we can make this model affordable?

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:23:24]:
Absolutely. All about scheduling and as A matter of fact, we have a whole session like of PD that we do for administrators on scheduling because let's start at the secondary level. Most of the time when you do scheduling, you're looking at your sports, you're looking at your music, your art. But no, you need to look at academics first. And if you're really looking at academics first, then if I can schedule the students with special needs, the students who are EL learners, the students who need a little extra help with those certified teachers, if I can start laying out my schedule that way, then I can fiscally plug in some of those other areas instead of starting with those other areas. And I know it's hard to explain, but it really does work when we start doing that because we start to see where a couple of those art students needed this and a couple of those football players needed that. And before you know it, I don't need to bring in an extra tutor, I don't have to hire an extra one on one for this classroom. And you know, you start looking at those kinds of things because as an admin I want to look at the whole budget.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:24:27]:
And if I have at my school and I'm thinking of a specific school I just worked with middle school in Maine, she had 10 one on ones. A one on one is say a child with autism where the parents have advocated to hire an adult to be a shadow and be with that child every day. Okay. The school had to pay for those 10 students. Well, when they moved into a CO teaching they realized they didn't need any of those one on ones anymore. Because when you have two adults in the classroom, you're able to sneak over there and support the child in the way the one on one was doing. Otherwise the one on one was just sitting back watching what's happening in a classroom. They weren't like actively involved until they were needed.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:25:07]:
Where when we have co teaching going on, the teachers are savvy enough they can pick that up. So fiscally that school, when we got rid of the 10 paraprofessionals and we used that money then for some of our co taught classrooms, all of a sudden that's where they really saw the value add. So you have to be innovative and you have to think strategically. There's some really good research out now talking about this is a cost effective model. This is not something that you spend a lot of time on. And the one thing you have to remember as an administrator, not everybody has to have an extra co teacher because you have to look at what are all these Specialists at your school, what are they doing anyway? And when you really sit down. I sat down with an elementary school this year and we mapped out all the specialists. So we took the reading specialists, the math specialists, the ela I mean, the English language specialists, the three special ed specialists, and we said, what are they doing during the day? Well, we found there were times when they were working with just one or two kids.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:26:05]:
Well, that's not cost effective. Wait a minute. Why couldn't they be co teaching at that time, still supporting those two students in the classroom, but also supporting 15 others or whatever? So you have to really look at the big picture as you lay this out. And schools who do this find that it's very effective and it doesn't cost a lot of extra money. I know at the beginning you think, oh my gosh, this is going to be so expensive. But when you really start digging deep about how you've been using these people, you start to see you have people out there that you can have co teach and you don't need to bring in an extra person or hire another person. So keep that in mind.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:26:42]:
And what's fantastic is in our book, we talk about integrating these specialists into the classroom as well as providing really a lot of good nuggets to leadership on how you can set up the structures in place in your school or district so that it can be effective. So there's a lot of really innovative ways that you can really implement this and really not increase costs. So I think that it's something that leaders just really should take a look at and look at, you know, their budget, but also look at, like Belinda mentioned, all their specialists in their particular school or in their district and how they're utilizing them in ways. And how many students are they actually serving? So I think that that's a good question they should ask themselves.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:27:24]:
Another resource for administrators would be this book, which is a book I wrote last year. It's Watch List and Ask and Learn. And it's a book on how school leaders can create inclusive classrooms. And there's a whole chapter in there about finances and how you can have some fun with your budget to create a co teaching environment.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:43]:
One of the things that. One of the biggest takeaways I've heard from that part, this part of the conversation is not every teacher needs to have two teachers or not every classroom needs to have to teachers. And. And that that was the biggest piece for me because I was thinking, I just assume like we're doubling up all classes, but that may not be a necessary cost or if you will. So thank you for bringing that clarification.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:28:06]:
And if I was starting out with a school, I would say let's look at the data. Where are the lowest performers at the school? Like where are the D's and the F's? Let's start there. If I look at say a comprehensive high school and a lot of D's and F's are showing up in history because think about it, there's a lot of reading in history and the sciences, there's a lot of reading in science. That's where I'd start my co teaching because let's bring in some experts that can help with supporting that reading so that the students can up the bar content wise. And then once we have that going, then we can try some other areas. I find schools want to jump right in and do English and they want to do math. And yet when you think about it, most English teachers are pretty good at accommodating. Like that's what they do.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:28:49]:
They teach people to read, they know how to accommodate languages. So let them do that. And let's use our co teachers in areas like the history, the sciences, the math, where we don't always have the expertise.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:29:02]:
Well, listen, I will tell you this. I have learned a lot. I have one more question in regards to the leadership piece and then we're going to wrap things up. I'm just curious, like what kind of support can a. Because I, I heard you mentioned, Belinda, that you did some training and then you realized There was like 11 points that this teacher should be doing. But then there was a piece where it's like, oh shoot, they're not doing all of these pieces. So what kind of support can a school principal, administrator, even an AP give when it comes to making sure that co teaching is happening effectively?

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:29:36]:
That's a great question. I think the major support would be make sure your teachers have time to plan together, even if that means pulling them out of a PLC so that they could have their own CO teaching PLC or if you have a little extra Title 1 money, for example, that you could pay them for an extra hour before or after school, something like that, where they could really plan once a week. But quite frankly, I think also understanding co teaching yourself because they know what to look for in the classroom. So when you walk in the classroom, when you see them just doing the one teach one support, when you see them later on in the hall, you can be, hey, that was fun seeing you guys co teaching. What strategy were you using? And when they say one Teach one support. You can then say, well, have you tried station teaching? Have you tried role play? Have you tried alternative? And be knowledgeable yourself to encourage them. I think that's a really nice way without getting in their faces, but it tells them that you know what you're talking about.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:34]:
Love it. All right, well, I'll tell you what. I have thoroughly learned a lot from today's conversation. It's something that I'm going to definitely look into a little bit more in consideration of how I can improve the schools that I'm working with as well. Matthew, I would love for you to share any final words of advice out there to our listeners.

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:30:50]:
If you want to get started with co teaching or you already have a program, there's so, so many resources out there, including our book and our website codeting evolved.com where you can get started. And I really recommend really evaluating your program every school year, whether you're starting or whether you are in the thick of things and really thinking about what have been our challenges, what are our pain points, but also what are we doing effectively. And really focus, if you're a leader, on the structures that you have around co teaching and also how are your partnerships determined between your CO teachers. And ultimately looking at student data throughout the year quarterly is a great way to look at it. And then looking at and seeing what's, what's being what's effective, what's not effective, and constantly learning and providing professional learning for your co teacher, provide instructional coaching for them, give them professional learning opportunities where they're able to see co teachers in action, whether that's at your own school site or a school in the district, or it could be a video, it could be visiting another school in a neighboring district. So there's a lot of things that you can do to continue learning about this and implementing it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:31:56]:
All right. And Belinda, what do you got for us?

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:31:58]:
I'm a real advocate for inclusion and equity. And I believe that in general ed and in special ed as well as other areas of society, if we can have people learn together and be together, they will be more successful. For example, we don't have banks for kids with disabilities. We don't have grocery stores for people with disabilities. We need to be together in society. Co teaching allows that to happen. One of my favorite researchers, Dr. Eric Carter from Vanderbilt, he says early segregation does not merely predict later segregation.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:32:29]:
It ensures that. And what he's talking about is when we have students with special needs that are often segregated environments and not getting the opportunity to be in these general ed classrooms where co teaching is happening, they don't get the experience of society. They don't get to be a part, a true member of society in terms of integration. And that's very important. So I would say look at the big picture, look at the big umbrella. And co teaching is one piece under that huge umbrella of, of moving forward and really integrating and supporting the lives of the students we work with.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:33:01]:
All right, well, thank you again for your time. Matthew, if we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Dr. Matthew Rhoads [00:33:06]:
You can follow me on social media, Matthew Rhodes on link or droads. Edu or Matt Rhodes 1990 or visit my website at Matthew Rhodes.com or our website CodeTeachingEvolved.com okay.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:33:18]:
And Belinda, if we want to reach you online, how can we get in touch?

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:33:21]:
Absolutely. The co teaching evolved. I spend quite a bit of time on LinkedIn as well as a little bit of time on X. And that would be just Dr. B.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:33:31]:
All right, there it is. Once again I have, let me, let me pull up full screen here because this is a large book here. Once again I have the authors of Co Teaching Evolved Partnership Strategies for an Equitable, Inclusive and tech powered classroom, Dr. Matthew Rhodes and Dr. Belinda Carge. It has truly been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Belinda Karge [00:33:53]:
Thank you. It's been a lot of fun.

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