Co-Teaching

STEM Teachers in Partner Districts

Teachers in our Partner Districts have rich experience and expertise in building classroom communities in their schools, as well as deep content knowledge to support their students. Faculty at Westfield State have expertise in content knowledge for teaching and a commitment to integrating culturally sustaining principles into STEM lessons. 

Co-teaching Opportunities

Co-teaching is a powerful opportunity for transformative collaboration between STEM-ACT faculty and partner teachers, as the work is grounded in the shared experience of the ideas, interactions, misconceptions, insights, and challenges presented by students. Built on a foundation of trust and mutual concern for learning, developed and deepened in the STEM-ACT Community of Practice, collaborators can plan, flexibly enact, and deeply reflect on pedagogical opportunities and choices that manifest in the classroom, bringing together individual strengths and creating a supportive environment to model and safely enact new approaches. 

Enhancing teacher preparation at the university

While co-teaching, WSU faculty will gain hands-on experience in working with students to promote positive learning environments in high-need classrooms among our partner schools, gaining the knowledge of experienced teachers who have developed successful strategies. They can then use those experiences to inform their education/methods classes to better prepare Noyce Scholars and all future STEM and education majors to serve in high-need classrooms. This improvement to WSU’s teacher preparation program is anticipated to increase scholars’ self-efficacy and retention in high-need classrooms, as well as improve the learning environment for students in their classrooms, providing broader impacts in STEM secondary education and university teacher preparation programs. 

Community of Practice

Co-teaching in partner district classrooms will also contribute to the Community of Practice developed through the Noyce program. Co-teaching will occur primarily in foundational mathematics and science courses and include some of the more challenging courses to best illustrate the challenges teachers and students encounter in the classroom. Co-teaching schedules will vary based on teacher needs and lesson plans, with one model being once per week each semester. Each year, one senior personnel faculty will engage in co-teaching once per week for one semester, with co-teaching rotating through the project team over the course of the grant to ensure none of the project team is overloaded.