Team Teaching: Point of View

I already talked to mom and dad about the lesson of today. It was kind of crazy... Kyle and I ended up staying up pretty late on Thursday night finishing up the final touches on the lesson. Team teaching is difficult on the note that it is hard to understand what the other is thinking, definitely have to be quite precise with explaining. In the end, however, things came together. So we stayed up until about 1 am or so working on it, practicing, going over the minor details that we needed to iron out (may I mind you that since I usually have to get up early I am normally in bed around 10 on the weekdays...). But then, we also got together again on Friday morning to work on it some more, I guess we just wanted to make sure we were 100% ready for this today. Also because since he recieved a 100% on his last lesson and I recieved a 96%, both professors told us that we did probably the best out of the class, so expectations were really high for us. Plus, our peers were really excited since Kyle and I have the same teaching style of being extremely creative in the lesson. Anyways, the script I posted yesterday was changed. Before hand, I talked to our professor running the idea of the topic by here, and just read below... she thought that Kyle and I were really fighting about the learning targets for the day...

Jen: I know you all are thrilled to be here in sixth period with Mr. Kendall and myself on a Friday! Anybody doing anything exciting this weekend?


I am actually doing something I have always wanted to do. Even though I am scared of heights, I am facing my fear and jumping out, feet first of an airplane…I am going to head out this weekend to go skydive with my fiancé. I am hoping the weather will stay nice, but you know Washington.

Kyle: Wow, skydiving. Well that’s absolutely terrifying. The highest I’ve ever been was Splash Mountain. You know, roller coaster, water…


Kyle: Alright well…

Jen: No, no you aren’t going to get out of telling us your exciting weekend! Your stories from the weekend are always fun to hear about, unless … there is something you want to keep from the class. So what ARE you up to this weekend?

Kyle: Keep from the class? No, not at all. I’m actually going to Wisconsin for our bowling teams championship match. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give me those disparaging looks.

Well, Ms. Curtiss why don’t you start us off for today and let us know what we are learning…

Jen: Start going over LT’s



Kyle: Jen, those aren’t the right ones

Jen: What are you talking about?

Kyle: No, they don’t include the history portion, those are only for English.

Jen: If you actually turned on your listening ears, closed your pie hole you would remember us discussing that today is about English, not History.

Kyle: That’s just not true. We discussed the lesson. We wrote up the learning targets, and these aren’t them.

Jen: You know, you have been on this power trip. It’s because you are a male and I am a female. What YOU don’t realize is that you have not been taking my ideas into consideration; you haven’t stopped to think that I just may have good ideas. I feel as if this is because you think you are always “right,” and it is your way or the highway; but there is another road to travel FYI.

Kyle: Wait, if I remember correctly, Principal Rochester gave me this project. I was supposed to choose an assistant. Assistant. Not partner. Assistant.



Jen: This is a partnership, NOT dictatorship.

Kyle: I completely agree, okay… class this is what we actually are learning today…
We are going to continue our unit on World War II by delving into an important topic and idea known as empathy.
(Targets are placed on overhead- Jen runs through them).

Empathy is defined as the identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives. What does this mean in layman’s terms?
(Class answers)

Then our lesson plan is a little long to put on here, but we have it video taped so if anybody wants to see it let me know, I will think about letting people view it :)