Whoever said it first is right – co-teaching is like a marriage. I remember hearing that in grad school, when I was studying to be a special educator. My professor was lecturing on different structures of co-teaching and how to support students with special needs effectively with two teachers in the room. He started to discuss the importance of having a strong and open relationship with your teaching partner. At that point, I had already completed my first round of student teaching, in both general and special education settings, and I found that I couldn’t quite relate to what my professor was saying.

In my then limited experience, I had developed a few strong relationships with the educators with whom I was working with, but nothing felt like a marriage – it felt more like I was the little, annoying sister to the “big kids”, asking them questions, observing them, dying to be like them. There was that – and there was my relationship with the 9th grade English teacher that I was set up to co-teach 3rd period 9th Grade Literature with. What we had didn’t feel like a mutual relationship to me – the teacher told me on more than one occasion how disappointed she was in me, and how she expected that because I was a college student, I would have a lot more ideas and strategies to impart on her and her classroom. She once sat me down and said, “Lauren, I don’t want you to have the misconception that you’re doing well.” In my first 2 weeks of being a student teacher, I felt crushed. I walked out in tears (if I’m going to be honest, perhaps I was hyperventilating). Our relationship was not equal, and I resorted to avoiding her whenever I could.

Fast forward almost a decade, and just now am I starting to truly get it. I’ve worked as a co-teacher in a variety of settings, with a variety of personalities, and some great things have happened. A special education and general education co-teaching partnership is like a marriage – but it’s up to the partners whether it’s a strong marriage, or one headed to the divorce courts.

Even though my professor said it, here’s what I wish I knew and truly believed when I started my career as a special education teacher:

1. Play your strengths (and encourage your partner’s strengths!). Humans are humans. We are each different. We each have strengths, and we each have weaknesses. One teacher might be a great classroom manager, but struggle with organization. Another teacher might be incredibly organized, but struggle when it comes to working with kids on the autism spectrum. All of this is okay and manageable if both teachers support each other. In my best co-teaching relationship, we were hyper-aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Her strengths were in organization, management and clarity – she made sure that every paper was in the right place, easy to find, and spoke with incredible lucidity – so clear, that children were never confused by what she was saying. One of my strengths was in communicating with children who struggled with behavior, particularly with children with autism spectrum disorders. Because she and I communicated so well, we were almost always able to play each other’s strengths when difficult classroom situations arose. For example, when she saw me start to get too wordy with a direction, she’d jump in and restate it clearly. If a child began to throw a tantrum during one of our lessons, I was always able to wordlessly sneak away, trusting that she’d continue the lesson, and help redirect the student. Our relationship was so strong that we were able to switch between the roles of general education and special education teacher not only daily, but within a lesson. The kids legitimately were unable to tell who was the general education teacher and who was there for special education.

2. If something feels strange, name it. But, don’t assume that you know why your partner is acting a certain way, and don’t argue. When I started out as as a special education teacher in a sixth-grade position, I was assigned as a co-teacher in a science classroom with a teacher who had been at the school for close to two decades. On our first day of teaching together, she directed me in a firm voice to walk Jay, a sixth-grader with autism, away from the classroom because “it is unacceptable to disrupt a classroom”. Looking back and knowing what I know now – I would have talked to her that day, stated what happened and how it made me feel, and then listened to her. How was she feeling?  What I ACTUALLY did, however, was bottle it up and start to resent her. Every time she did something like that again, it only validated the story I created in my head for her. It was unhealthy, and didn’t help our children. On the contrary, if you refuse to assume that you know what someone is thinking, you might find yourself surprised by the reason. I had another conversation with a teacher in another position a few years later, regarding how we were working with one of our children with autism who was on a behavior intervention plan. We had gotten into an email conversation about how we each disagreed with what the other was doing. I ended up pulling her aside, and had a conversation. Turns out, she was under pressure from her administrator and was feeling stressed by the demands of the plan – something I had never considered when developing the plan with her! To this day, she and I are friends, and often come together to brainstorm ways to help make behavior plans manageable for teachers at our school. Long story, short: if something is strange, say it! It can be hard to do that, but if you don’t, you risk creating a negative story that will hurt your relationship and impact how you work together with students.

3. Be yourself. Trust yourself. I think that the biggest mistake that I’ve made in my years as a co-teacher were the times in which I wasn’t truly myself. In the name of avoiding conflict with a co-teacher, there were times when I tried to be someone I wasn’t – and, it always (ALWAYS) hurt me in the long-run. There was one time, several years ago, when I was working with a teacher in a co-taught math classroom. She wanted the majority of the block to be silent. If children did not meet that expectation, they would be asked to the leave the classroom. While I understood the expectation for silence, I struggled with the consequence – invariably, the same students would be asked to leave, day after day, and it seemed to be creating a culture of defiance and disrespect. It, however, ended up being something we didn’t talk about…which allowed each of us to develop stories in our heads about each other. Clearly, the consequence she was giving was something that she felt was right, but was something I didn’t agree with. Could we have discussed this? Yes. Could we have come up with a compromise and have felt better about it? Yes. But we didn’t. Be true to yourself and fight for what you believe is right – but, also, be willing to allow others to be true to themselves and try to understand their reasons for doing things.

4. Set expectations, and hold each other accountable. When I think about what made my best co-teaching relationship so strong, I think about how well we communicate and hold each other accountable. What helped the most was before the first day of school, we sat down and “interviewed” each other. We completed an interview, asking each other questions in a number of categories like personality, habits and preferences, special education, and so on. When we set up our classroom, we already KNEW what to expect from one other, which helped us when we met our students and challenges began to arise.

The biggest message: own your role, be flexible and care for your co-teacher! The more that you are willing to hear your co-teacher’s thoughts and ideas, and the more that you are truly willing to work together and communicate for the good of your students, the better the relationship will be.