What is ‘team teaching?’ Michigan schools shake up the 'one-teacher' model

• Two Michigan school districts are testing a staffing model where teachers work in teams and share students, sometimes combining different grade levels
• There are early signs of student progress, but teachers say building trust among teachers is critical to making the idea work 
• Team teaching could be a strategy to improve teacher training and job satisfaction 

CONCORD — In a hallway lined with backpacks, jackets and student art, second and third graders walk to their home classroom. 

The students are coming from small group lessons, where some of them have been with classmates a year older or younger than them. 

It’s part of the district’s experiment with “team teaching.” Instead of a single teacher working with a single group of students all day, a team of teachers will share students, putting different grade levels together for some lessons. It’s all in an effort to increase student achievement but also encourage stronger staffing in the long run. 

Almost 100 miles away, teachers at Detroit Academy of Arts & Sciences are doing something similar. 

“In a traditional one-teacher, one-classroom model … we expect one teacher, one adult, to be all things, to all kids, to all families at all times. And that's just not sustainable for anyone,” said Detroit Academy of Arts & Sciences director of talent Dara Klein. 

Students learn from several teachers a day. In Concord, this happens during literacy and math group instruction. In Becca Bradley’s second grade class, students learn from one one of eight people for literacy instruction: a second grade teacher, third grade teacher, special education teacher or aide, or Title I aide.  

“I feel like with one classroom and one group of students, you have one teacher that's really invested in you,” third grade teacher Amanda Arbuckle said. “But this model gives investment for so many different staff members to build relationships with kids. So the kids really like it.” 

Teams look different in the middle and high school settings but generally students have cross-curricular projects developed by teachers from several subjects. 

Concord has teams for second through ninth grade while DAAS has kindergarten and second grade teams. 

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Leaders at both Concord and DAAS acknowledge the need to start slow before expanding the practice to more students.  It takes time for teachers to build trust with each other, district planning to ensure teachers have common planning times to make their plans work and flexibility to adjust when there is negative feedback. 

“In a one classroom, one teacher model, there is such a heavy sense of responsibility to be all things to every kid,” Concord Superintendent Rebecca Hutchinson said. “And for years that has led to teacher burnout. 

“It's incredibly difficult to think that you may be the only person that is wrapping around a kid. But with team teaching and shared planning time and very intentional conversations around where students are at and what they need, you now have a model where the teachers are sharing that burden, right? There's more people brainstorming about how to help students become successful.”

Concord and the Detroit charter school are working with the nonprofit Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative (MEWI) to pilot the team-teaching model in select grades. MEWI funds teacher-team training from the Next Education Workforce Initiative at Arizona State University, selects districts to participate and supports local districts as they develop team teaching plans. 

Concord plans to expand team teaching to 10th grade next year, while DAAS plans to expand to sixth grade. MEWI founder and CEO Jack Elsey said there will be four additional Michigan districts using the team model next year. 

MEWI has committed $1.9 million to support team teaching efforts in the schools. 

There are some early signs of progress: Concord 8th grade and 9th grade class failure rates are down from the year before. At DAAS, more second grade students are proficient in math or reading mid-year compared to previous years.

More data is coming: there will be teacher survey data from ASU and there will be end-of-year student assessment data.

“It’s a model that a lot of folks have not had exposure to, nationally, let alone Michigan,” Elsey said. “And so it’s completely understandable that people would have, you know, potentially strong doubts out of the gate. I think what we know now to be true is by and large, teachers like it.”

At DAAS, there are roughly 115 second grade students. But instead of five teachers splitting up the responsibilities, they share the students. 

Every second-grader interacts with all five of the school’s second-grade teachers and a reading specialist who is a certified teacher each day, said Klein, the director of talent at DAAS. 

There's a “family meeting” every day where students talk about their goals. Each student is still assigned a home group, with each group named after a fruit. There are the dragonfruits, lemons, cherries, kiwis and blueberries. When students learn with students from another home group, some call that “fruit salad.” 

Finally, the full grade is broken into three groups to receive their core instruction: those groups are called the lions, tigers and bears. In each classroom, there are two teachers. 

There’s a block for phonics and science, English language arts, and math. 

DAAS second grade teacher Tayla Watson teaches all three sections of math with another teacher.

She told Bridge she is good at helping students practice math fluency skills but struggles to leave enough time for students to fill out their exit tickets. These tickets assess if a student grasped the learning objective of the day. 

But her teaching partner is great at exit tickets, and the two instructors both play to each others' strengths and make up for any weaknesses. 

“Really and truly, the only way to actually identify that issue or that poor practice and change it is to have somebody who is in your room with you see that. And then even if she still forgets fluency, well, I remember. And even if I still forget exit tickets, she can remember.”

Training teachers in a world where teaching is less lucrative 

Michigan district leaders have reported they have a harder time finding people who want to be teachers. At the same time, student proficiency is down from pre-pandemic. 

There are now several state programs that provide tuition-free or heavily discounted options for people to become teachers. But the state also has hit an “all-time” high for the number of teachers with only a temporary credential, according to a recent Michigan State University report. Plus teachers who go through an alternative-route certification process are more likely to leave the profession in their first five years than those who follow a traditional teacher preparation path, according to a different MSU report. 

That brings a sense of urgency to ensuring teachers are well-prepared and effective at helping students who are struggling. 

Hutchinson estimates 60-65% of the Concord certified teachers will be eligible to retire in the next three to five years. 

Team teaching, she said, can expose student teachers, and paraprofessionals who may become teachers, to more teaching experiences at a faster rate.

Traditional student teaching often means an aspiring teacher learns primarily from one experienced teacher, but student teachers can learn from several teachers through the team experience, Elsey said. 

At both DAAS and Concord, teachers talk about the need for trust among teachers. 

“Traditional teaching, when I came in, it was a silo,” said Concord high school teacher Jen Couling. “You went in your own room, and you did your thing, and that was it. But now we've really learned to rely on one another.”