I had a really great experience with co-teaching last year. I've been a TA a bunch of times before, but this time, my advisor treated it like co-teaching. It was a small graduate seminar. We would take turns prepping for class, then talk over the plans for class, which usually involved both of us leading at different times during the seminar. Then, after class, we would talk through the decisions we made (why did you skip that topic? why did you decide to open that up for discussion early?). I got to hear her thinking and decision-making processes while she was teaching, which was an amazing experience. We also had the students doing weekly memos, and we would each comment on the memos, and then read each others' comments before returning the memos to the students.
The whole thing was an incredible apprenticeship for me. I learned so much more than in a normal TA experience. But I think it was also fun for my advisor, because we got to engage in great conversations about the material before and after classes. I think she enjoyed being able to work over the readings with someone who was also experienced with the material, instead of limiting conversation to what was best for the students in the class.
The down side to all this bliss? It took like 3 times the amount of time it would have taken for her to teach the class alone.
I also took a class that my advisor co-taught with another professor that was a total disaster. The other professor was clearly unprepared and would hijack the class discussion and guest speakers for her own needs (she was writing a book on the topic). So I've seen co-teaching be great and I've also seen in be totally crappy.
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Posted by thistle to academicsecret at 10/14/2006 04:23:52 PM
