Team-Teaching: why do it?

Although we, i.e. teachers, ask students to collaborate on lots of different assignments and, in general, are vigorous proponents of collaboration, the opportunities for collaborative work at the college level, involving college teachers, are strangely limited.  Collaborative work seems more frequent, and institutionally supported, when it comes to scholarly collaborations, in particular in the sciences. Yet when it comes to teaching, collaboration is given short shrift.

Doug and I had an incomparable opportunity when we got a Dean's Program Initiative Grant to team-teach this course in Reading.  I was apprehensive and not at all apprehensive going into the semester.  This might seem a strange contradiction, but here's why: I completely trusted Doug going into the experience; I trust him as a teacher, scholar, friend, and this meant that even when I wondered what was going on, even when I felt in deep water with some of the class material, I knew we'd be fine.  I knew that even if we flopped, whatever that might mean--but we've all experienced classes that flopped--we'd still be fine as collaborators and colleagues.

This, in my mind, is one of the most important ingredients of team-teaching: trust. And I can't even take credit for this insight, because it's one Doug formulated first.

The other is compatible teaching-styles.  Such compatibility is not a given; in our case, we developed it over the span of several years, exchanging ideas and observations about teaching.

A third that comes to mind is the desire to learn from each other.  I had already learned a lot from my conversations with Doug about teaching, but I had not seen him in action. Nor did I really understand what English Education research looks like.  In particular, I had no idea, no real idea, about its emphasis on observation and listening and reflection. Once I understood that, my role as team-teacher became much clearer to me because I became more comfortable with the role of observer, listener, and thinker. We don't always need to stand at the helm, guide discussions, tell, tell, tell--instead we might drink coffee, as Kate suggested.

We'd like your help to figure out what team-teaching makes possible (and what it doesn't), what worked really well, and what less so, the benefits and challenges of a team-taught class for you, as students, and anything else that you want to share with us about your experience and perception of this team-taught course.

What are your thoughts? Let us know.