Second grade teacher Becca Bradley offered to help out with an intervention time that divided the lesson in half, allowing Bradley’s second graders to participate in the lesson and benefit, as well.

“For 22 years, I’ve always felt like I’ve been stuck in this room, and it’s all on me,” Sinden said. “I mean, I can do a lot of things, but I can’t do it all well. So, I feel like teaming with second grade, it’s just opened up so many opportunities, and their ideas have been great.”

The small rural school district of 617 students in Jackson County is one of two schools in Michigan starting its second year of a “team teaching” pilot that moves away from a traditional “one teacher, one room” model and assigns a group of teachers, aides and other staff to an entire set of students, sometimes combining multiple grades.

While the team teaching model is intended to look different depending on the needs of the school, students typically learn from multiple teachers a day, sometimes with multiple teachers or educators in the room at the same time. 

At Concord, time is set aside for daily breakout math and reading group instruction in the lower grade levels. During these lessons, younger students are blended with different grades, while older students in grades 8 to 10 participate in cross-curricular learning units teaching teams have devised. For instance, eighth grade students combined their studies on science-based environmental policy with math to demonstrate the pros and cons of the policy.

About 100 miles to the east in downtown Detroit, team teaching has helped the staff of the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences focus on their strengths, assigning each of its teachers in kindergarten and second grade to a specific group of students for their phonics work.

Early returns on team teaching are positive at the K-8 charter school, with data showing improved scores in math for second graders who were a part of the pilot this past fall, Chief Academic Officer Monica McLeod said.

Like several of the schools nationwide that have adopted the team teaching model during its recent reemergence, McLeod cited two concurrent objectives: To attract and retain talented teachers and to make the profession more sustainable and connected by giving teachers more ownership over student learning.

“It pushed all of us to lean into our strengths and our trust and belief in each other,” McLeod said.

Created a shared responsibility

The team teaching model was introduced in Michigan last fall through the , a nonprofit that designs, funds and supports programs to recruit, develop and retain teachers. The initiative partnered with , which trains teachers on strategic staffing models and helps schools develop staffing models that work for their students.

With , MEWI CEO Jack Elsey said team teaching is one of several initiatives his organization has taken on in recent years in its comprehensive view of the educator pipeline. 

With three more Michigan school districts debuting the staffing models this fall and 12 schools implementing strategic staffing statewide, Elsey said there is cautious optimism that team teaching could present benefits for both teacher retention and student achievement.

“I think overall, teachers feel better supported by their colleagues because they’re in the same physical space with them,” he said. “They can talk about those kids among people who know those kids just as well as they do and they can say, ‘You know, I’m really struggling with delivering this math lesson, can you deliver this math lesson to my kids today?’ because I think you do it in a better way.”

For Concord, participating in the pilot made sense with more than half of the district’s teachers becoming eligible for retirement in the next few years, Superintendent Rebecca Hutchinson said.

Teachers have reported that the pilot has helped them get to know their students on a deeper level and dive deeper into the core curriculum, Hutchinson said. It’s also helped teachers lean into their strengths, while allowing them more planning time and collaboration with members of their teams, Hutchinson said.

“It creates this distributed expertise, but also this shared responsibility,” said Hutchinson, who is in her 18th year with the district, including the past six as superintendent. “It’s not just about who’s in front of me and what’s in front of me right now.”

Elevating the teaching profession

Foundationally, ASU has a “no one model” philosophy behind Next Education Workforce’s role in helping redesign teaching models, allowing for a distribution of expertise with the intention of deeper, personalized learning for students.

In Mesa Public Schools, the largest public district in Arizona, Next Education Workforce Executive Director Brent Maddin says there is evidence that teachers working in teams are than their colleagues in traditional classroom models. 

Mesa also has seen correlational data show teachers in team models are more effective than their colleagues in traditional classrooms and are happier and more engaged in their work, Maddin said.

“Our work, in particular, is largely focused on the educators and creating the conditions for them to thrive and to do their work differently,” Maddin said. “We’re not coming in with a particular ‘one size fits all’ approach. Instead, whatever the staffing model ultimately becomes is co-constructed by the educators in the communities in which the model is being implemented.”

Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences decided to start slowly, with just kindergarten and second grade teachers agreeing to participate in its first year.

Teachers were instrumental in both designing and tweaking the model early in the year, switching morning small group meetings focused on social-emotional learning to daily themes like “Motivational Monday” and “Talk about it Tuesday.” While students saw each of the grade’s five teachers every day for different subjects, they were assigned to a home room teacher and a classroom that was designated with the name of a fruit.

Toward the end of the year, second grade teachers gave team teaching the ultimate endorsement in a Power Point presentation to administrators and third grade teachers explaining why the model should follow their students into the next grade. The school kicked off the academic year expanding the pilot to third and sixth grades this fall.

“It was amazing,” second grade teacher Lindsay Solomon said. “I could stand up there and teach, and my co-teacher could go around and support scholars. Even if there was a behavior issue, she could quietly put that fire out without me ever having to stop teaching.”

Second grade teacher Tayla Watson described the relationship she had with team co-teacher Broyles as complementary, with each other’s strengths helping in areas where the other might struggle. With five grade-level teachers sharing a roster of 115 students, it also allowed the teaching staff to more easily cover for each other when there were absences, Watson said, resulting in fewer interruptions to student learning.

“I think we have a lot more trust from our administrators and our leaders, because we are united and working together,” Watson said. “I think that that is something that could really elevate the teaching profession.”

No one model

At Concord, team teaching looks different in every grade. Children in second and third grades are combined and assigned a homeroom teacher who acts in a role similar to their classroom teacher. In fourth and fifth grades, students also are combined, but there are two teachers in the room at the same time. In higher grade levels, teachers come in for 30 minute subject “rotations” for each of the four core classes.

As an eighth grade teacher last year, Kayla Taylor could co-teach the humanities, with Taylor leading the way and another teacher providing additional oversight and support. 

A student teacher was added in the second semester, bringing a third educator to the mix that allowed for more small group learning. This year, Taylor will teach ninth and 10th grades, with different weekly planning days on the schedule for both grades. Despite more planning between teachers to make it happen, Taylor said the model was effective in making a better use of students’ time.

“Even though the schedule was more traditional, we were able to do more in terms of stations or kind of differentiating the instruction depending on individual student needs,” Taylor said. “That wasn’t necessarily just the students with IEPs or 504 (plans) but also the advanced students and the students in the center, to ensure that everyone was continuing to make progress.”

Hutchinson said there have been early signs of success, with both eighth and ninth grades reducing the number of students failing or needing to recover credits. 

With the district expanding team teaching to 10th grade this year, Hutchinson said each grade level continues to map out its own plan for its newest set of students, with shared goals around cross-curricular collaboration, “deeper” learning and building communication and reasoning.

“When you feel like you have a high sense of collective efficacy around the success of kids, it’s rewarding when you can sit down and make a plan and put that plan into action and that kid will succeed,” she said. “That’s the ultimate gift.”

The Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative and The 74 both receive funding from Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies.