Any transitions from a self-contained elementary classroom to a large middle school with different teachers or from middle school to a large high school can sometimes cause students to fall through the cracks, leaving them adrift and not sure how to cope. Having the same set of teachers working with students throughout the school year helps prevent these failures, since teachers are able to collaborate and share knowledge about students. Parent conferences with the team of teachers can sometimes pinpoint problems early on and proactively stop problems before irreparable harm is done. Interdisciplinary units in the core classes also help to keep students engaged and use real-world opportunities to apply their learning. A common planning time with teachers of different subjects allows the team of teachers the opportunity to craft lessons together incorporating skills from all subject areas and to coordinate lessons to prevent overloading students with important assignments all due at the same time.
Since middle schools generally have fewer elective choices, their scheduling allows for more flexibility and makes teaming easier to accomplish. A middle school with approximately 500 students per grade level could form three teams of about 150 to 175 students each per grade level. Each team would have the same language arts, math, science and social studies teachers, who would be free to plan together and conference about their students. Teams sometimes vote on names, mascots and colors -- anything to help form a cohesive bond among the group. Teams can even change the daily class schedule to accommodate students’ needs, for example, scheduling a speaker in a science class who needs more than one class period to talk. The team can easily adjust times without involving the entire school.
High schools, which have a greater number of electives, find that scheduling students in purely academic teams can be more difficult. Freshmen are the easiest to schedule and the most in need of help transitioning to high school life. As students continue through the grade levels, different elective choices are available, thus adding to the number of different teachers needed for the curriculum. Sports teams or music groups like band or choir can provide the sense of belonging students need. Sometimes all that’s available to students at this level is an advisory class, generally with the same group of students from year to year. These students meet and discuss issues as they arise. While not as effective as a pure academic team, anything a large school can do to provide the students with a group within the school helps.
The concept of teaming provides students a home base and a sense of belonging often missing in large schools. The students can form close associations with their peers and teachers. Teachers also have more of a sense of community when working with a team of colleagues both in planning and solving student issues. The most common teacher complaint about teaming is the lack of common planning times, since teachers need time to plan lessons together and discuss student problems. Overall, schools effectively using an interdisciplinary teaming approach report students show more achievement and higher self-esteem than schools not using teaming. Teaming may be a difficult way to schedule students, but the rewards speak for themselves.