People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.
-Brian Eno, Brian Eno: Oblique Music, 2016
Begin anywhere.
-John Cage, Backpack Literature, 2007
Introduction
University faculty and K-12 teachers collaborate in many ways and for many purposes. Some of these partnerships focus on university faculty providing K-12 teachers with professional development such as university faculty providing classroom teachers with content-specific knowledge (Smith, Kindall, Carter & Beachner, 2016; Juarez-Dappe, 2011), while other partnerships focus on increasing access to higher education for students (Domina & Ruzek, 2012). These and other programs identify collaboration as an important part of their programs’ successes. In this article we discuss the idea of university-K12 collaboration in a different light. Our intent was to experience collaboration through co-teaching. Villa, Thousand, and Nevin (2008) defined co-teaching as, “…two or more people sharing responsibility for teaching some or all of the students assigned to a classroom” (p. 5). Villa, et al. focus their work on co-teaching involving K-12 teachers teaching together. One small difference in our co-teaching than that described by Villa, et al. (2008) is that our co-teaching situation included a high school English teacher, Davide, and two university faculty members, Sharon and Jenny, instead of all co-teachers being employed by the same K-12 school system.
Using Heuristics to Guide Collaboration:
A Classroom Teacher and University Faculty Members Teach Together
26
By: David Mattingly
Lawrence Central High School, MSD of Lawrence Township
Dr. Sharon Daley
Indiana University
Dr. Jenny Connor-Zachocki Indiana University-Purdue University at Columbus