Bethlehem University

English department
English 218
Reading for academic purposes

Article: Shall we dance? Team Teaching as Supervision in the English language classroom

Aseel Nassar
Spring 2012

Summary The writer starts the article by talking about a traditional dance for the northern coast, (La marinera ) in a teaching context , it is a metaphor for transformational . leadership. And for team teaching in the article n one cool !une e"ening, the writer asked a #eru"ian teacher her permission to team teach some key instructional target strategies with her $nglish language learners. The first %uestion that they faced is (who will lead) but when the lesson began, she passing to him who in turn passes the instruction back to her and she to him again. t was like a dance and a different way of super"isions. So team teaching positions super"ision as reciprocal, .reflecti"e, ongoing, and it help $&L teachers to continue de"eloping as professionals The writer defines super"ision as a scary word associated with power o"er others as opposed to power with others. And he asks why we teachers when we let super"isor enters our class we lose balance and we curse, tremble, sweat, shake and roll our eyes in disdain and gi"e a fake smile ' t is associated with those rare moments when another teacher is in the class room. (ut it doesn)t ha"e to be that way* the relation can be changed to become super"ision in the form of team teaching and that helps in many ways. So, team teaching becomes a catalyst for mutual growth within a community of supporti"e professionals. The writer proposed team teaching as a form of collaborati"e .super"ision not powers o"er others it can be power with others by team teaching The writer talks about his experience when he created a team teaching with a teacher and he says that they both felt responsible and e"ery one of them focused on a group and by this way they ga"e attention to all students so he and his colleague)s decided to try it again the next e"ening and the next day . After this experience the writer found some +steps that can be followed to achie"e a perfect team teaching which are

Team teaching initially re%uires careful planning but it becomes more impro"isational -, with time Team teaching re%uires grace and whate"er happens, the ultimate rule is to not make -. .your partner look bad &ind an eager partner (team teaching is not for strangers, it demands a climate of -/ mutual trust and risk taking 1ot e"ery teacher or super"ising- teacher is ready yet for team teaching , so do not -0 . insist or try to force yourself on some one who is not ready team teaching is more effecti"e if there are real reasons for wanting to ha"e another -2 teacher 3oin the lesson . for example one teacher has a reputation for smoothly orchestrating complex group acti"ities , then others might benefit from orchestrating an ( acti"ity with that teacher ( different teacher excel at different things Set a feedback after the class to find out what you accomplished together and what you -4 .didn)t accomplish and how instruction could be more effecti"e next time .Team teaching re%uires a balance between stepping in and backing off -5 (oth participants ha"e to enter the experience with the idea that they are teaching and -6 .learning with and from one another 8ith team teaching, students feel they are getting more for their money-two teachers -7 .for the price of one &inally, Team teaching creates spaces for teachers to de"elop themsel"es in a cooperati"e way and instead of asking (how to) they ask (how can we together, because sometimes we need and want another person to lead, to teach us a step or two. 9r, at times, we lead another follows until the steps become confident and fluid.

:eflection+ The writer was not clear in his article and he distracted my attention many times because he started it like a story when he met #eru"ian teacher and asked her to form a team to teach together and didn)t understand the idea that she thought him asking her for a dance know it is a metaphor for team teaching but think it is silly to mention it more than one time then he 3umped to talk about how they were dancing in a hidden meaning refers to team teaching. Then there is the title ;<ow we began; but he didn)t talk about how we can begin a team teaching he started talking about super"ision and about the duties that teachers ha"e. And those teachers feel scared from the super"isor. Then he come back to talk about the teacher that he met and about the classes that they worked as a team together it was a boring and the information were not arranged in a clear way. (ut now know what team teaching is and what the steps that can help in doing it . Linguistic benefits+ new some words which are + =The acronym ($&L teacher) which means ($nglish as a foreign language.) dumb because didn)t know that . =>eteran+ someone who has been in"ol"ed in a particular acti"ity for a long time. = ?atalyst+ describe for a person or thing that causes a change or e"ent to happen. = :eciprocal+ action or agreement in"ol"es two people or groups who do the same thing to each other or agree to help each another felt so

= ?urriculum+ means all the different courses of study that are taught in a school, college or uni"ersity. =heuristic+ method of learning in"ol"es disco"ery and problem @sol"ing , using reasoning and past experience .