{"id":9069,"date":"2023-03-05T09:59:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T09:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/?p=9069"},"modified":"2023-03-05T10:03:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T10:03:17","slug":"collaborative-teaching-enhancing-inclusion-at-international-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/collaborative-teaching-enhancing-inclusion-at-international-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaborative Teaching: Enhancing Inclusion at International Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The opportunity for teachers to ply their trade in the international school setting offers many unique experiences, both professional and personal. From the professional perspective, none is more rewarding than engaging culturally diverse groups of students in their learning on a day-to-day basis. Every student in the class brings their own unique language experiences, beliefs and values, along with their travel and unique third-culture experiences. In these settings, the opportunity exists for teachers to extend their repertoire of teaching practice, to ensure all students are engaged in the learning journey in their classes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a teacher, one quickly learns to see students in the class for what they can do, and what they bring to the table in terms of classroom discussions, group work and dynamics. Additionally, each student has a unique view of classroom behavioural \u2018norms\u2019 through their own cultural lens. Some cultures have very few teacher-student interactions in the classroom, whilst in others, this is a constant. The latter can be quite a shock for students from particular cultures, and take some time to adjust, extending the well-known \u2018silent period\u2019. Often these students become the most outspoken in the class! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viewing curriculum outcomes through various cultural lenses represented in the class is key to a teacher effectively engaging the students in their international school classes. Valuing each and every student\u2019s views or experiences, and positively acknowledging the political and economic systems from which they come is paramount to a positive and engaging classroom culture, based upon the saying \u201cjust because it is different, does not make it wrong\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The practicalities in terms of \u2018scaffolding up\u2019 for students whose first language is not the language of instruction at the school is a vital aspect of teaching in the international school sector. As teachers know, schools have various approaches to catering to students whose first language is not the language of instruction, from fully-sheltered language schools, to partially sheltered programs, and most recently the much-espoused collaborative teaching (co-teaching) domain. Having been fortunate enough to experience all three of these approaches, a well-organised and data-driven co-teaching program is the most effective for these students, both in terms of the all-important student well-being, along with academic performance. In short, in an effective co-teaching program, students feel connected to their school as they are not being sheltered away from the mainstream cohort for language lessons. In turn, students whose first language is the language of instruction are always in awe of what their peers achieve on a daily and hourly basis, this in turn makes the students in question extremely proud of their achievements, and this pride is clearly validated as they are seeing the academic bar which is set in their mainstream classrooms each and every lesson. Students rarely linguistically fossilise in effective co-teaching programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An effective co-teaching program in this context requires staff who are truly willing to share, collaborate and build professional relationships, through co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessing and co-reflecting through regular meetings (See Cycle of Collaboration graphic below). Having co-taught in this context across Year 6-8 Science and Humanities classes for six years, rest assured that co-teaching is the best professional development a teacher will ever have, and it is daily! Subject teachers become excellent academic language teachers, and language co-teachers become quite confident subject teachers. Effective co-teaching programs are first and foremost relationship-based, and without positive and collaborative staff relationships much effectiveness for effective student learning is sadly lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cycle of Collaboration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Students\u2019 academic language proficiency progression is accelerated exponentially in effective co-teaching programs in upper primary and middle school year levels (see data provided below – school name withheld), however, the catch is students who are in the beginning phase of their academic language acquisition journey can for various reasons become lost in the shuffle and may require sheltered instruction to accompany their mainstream class experiences. Experience and data demonstrate that intermediate and advanced academic language level students thrive in true co-teaching environments. This linguistic progression is doubled down in terms of acceleration through an effective mother tongue program at the school, ensuring additive bilingualism is occurring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The role of the co-teacher is to flesh out the academic language embedded in each unit of work and explain to students the regular independent study habits required to learn the required tier two and tier three academic language needed for each unit of work, prior to and during the teaching of the unit in question. Furthermore, effective co-teachers provide resources such as comprehension, pre-reading\/viewing activities and provide notetaking scaffolds, along with support resources for production tasks such as structural scaffolds (relevant to text type), sentence frames and writing samples as required. There is much more to co-teaching than this brief overview, however these are very sound pillars upon which to build, along with knowing each student\u2019s current year-level appropriate academic language proficiency in the reading, writing, speaking and listening domains. The wonderful by-product is that all students benefit from these \u2018scaffold up\u2019 resources, not only the students whose first language is not the school\u2019s language of instruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next time you apply for an international school role, ask if the school has a co-teaching program, because it is one of the most satisfying teaching experiences a teacher can enjoy, and proudly watch your students fly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article was submitted by Tim Hudson, an academic language acquisition expert with 34 years of experience in teaching and leading EAL and other subject department teams at the secondary level in international school settings, including Shanghai American School and more recently the Australian International School in Singapore. Tim was also instrumental in building the very successful international student program at Fraser Coast Anglican College in Queensland, Australia. <\/em>

He is currently on sabbatical, offering tutoring services for EAL learners and consultancy services for schools in the EAL domain. <\/em>

His skills include curriculum design, assisting schools new to this domain in developing context-appropriate EAL programs, and enhancing existing EAL programs in schools. He has extensive experience providing professional development to subject-teaching teams across the curriculum in the realm of academic language acquisition and has a passion for EAL co-teaching. You can reach him at <\/em>aclangedge@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opportunity for teachers to ply their trade in the international school setting offers many unique experiences, both professional and personal. From the professional perspective, none is more rewarding than engaging culturally diverse groups of students in their learning on a day-to-day basis. Every student in the class brings their own unique language experiences, beliefs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[3028,3029,38,107,3030,32,2570,1069],"class_list":["post-9069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discussion-topics","tag-co-teaching","tag-collaborative-teaching","tag-cultural","tag-curriculum","tag-inclusion","tag-international-schools","tag-multicultural","tag-multilingual"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/students-g2d919b43b_1280.jpg?fit=1280%2C854&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2flVT-2mh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8139,"url":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/teaching-on-principle-how-cgc-builds-learning-cultures-in-every-classroom\/","url_meta":{"origin":9069,"position":0},"title":"TEACHING on PRINCIPLE: How CGC Builds Learning Cultures in Every Classroom","author":"ISCommunity","date":"November 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In previous articles in this series we looked at the first two elements in the CGC Learning Ecosystem: Define and Design. 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Class size affects not only the teacher\u2019s workload but also the ability to provide individualized attention and foster a dynamic learning environment. Similarly, the availability of aides\u2014whether\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comment Topic Highlight"","block_context":{"text":"Comment Topic Highlight","link":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/category\/comment-topic-highlight\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/classroom-2093743_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/classroom-2093743_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/classroom-2093743_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/classroom-2093743_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/classroom-2093743_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":101,"url":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/great-resource-want-to-work-at-an-international-school-in-jakarta\/","url_meta":{"origin":9069,"position":2},"title":"Great resource: Want to work at an international school in Jakarta?","author":"ISCommunity","date":"January 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Living in Indonesia website (www.expat.or.id\/orgs\/schools.html) has some excellent insight on the many international schools in Jakarta. There are many international educators interested in working at these schools.\u00a0 There are 27 international schools listed on the\u00a0Living in Indonesia website.\u00a0 Some of the international schools listed on their website are: El\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Great Resource"","block_context":{"text":"Great Resource","link":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/category\/great-resource\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/screen-shot-2012-01-15-at-1-56-43-pm.png?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1677,"url":"https:\/\/internationalschoolcommunity.com\/blog\/international-school-community-member-spotlight-22-laurence-myers-an-intl-school-teacher-working-at-international-school-of-kuala-lumpur\/","url_meta":{"origin":9069,"position":3},"title":"International School Community Member Spotlight #22: Laurence Myers (An int\u2019l school teacher working at International School of Kuala Lumpur)","author":"ISCommunity","date":"February 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Every 1-2 months\u00a0International School Community\u00a0will highlight one of our members in our\u00a0Member Spotlight\u00a0feature.\u00a0 This month we interviewed Laurence Myers: Tell us about your background.\u00a0 Where are you from? I am originally from Athens, Greece with a father from the US and a mother from Greece. 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