STRETCHING ACADEMIC TIME: THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF FACULTY TEAM TEACHING

It was the end of the spring semester and we were overtaken with academic optimism about working together in the fall to teach in the Block, the Elementary Program methods courses that were taught in a block of time in order to include an extensive embedded field experience. We decided over a lunch meeting that we would integrate the four courses thematically and plan and teach using a team approach. In theory, our goal was that no one person would be seen as solely responsible for a discipline and that we would all share in the work of planning, teaching, and assessment. Though we met frequently during the summer in preparation for the fall start we were still building the ship as we sailed into the first week of the semester, requiring many hurried hours of planning and preparation. Imagine the reaction of the students who were used to isolated strings of learning suddenly finding them all woven together? The first student questions were to be expected: When are we doing math, really? Isn’t this supposed to be language arts time? What do you mean, an interdisciplinary unit? The idea of dropping the boundaries among the disciplines and bringing the walls down was disconcerting for students and they experienced serious disequilibrium. In the end, in their My Story presentations and Exit Conversations, we really learned what they had learned. In this paper we will share our experience with team teaching and the rejuvenating joys as well as the stressors, as we journeyed into new territory and tried to align the workload with the inflexible structure of academia.