As we wrap up our series on the 5 Habits of Highly-Effective Co-Teachers, we’re turning today to two small words that can have a huge impact during this season: peace and joy.  

Sure, you’ve heard them before, but you might be experiencing them this season with a new perspective. Virtually every facet of life is requiring just a little more of us than they used to during this time of social distancing, and all that comes with it. If going to the grocery store is now a difficult task, adding full-time homeschool on top of it seems pretty impossible on some days.

So it might surprise you to see that “peace and joy” are habits of a highly-effective co-teacher. But trust us here – it pays off in the long run. 

A hallmark of Classical education, as we employ at Austin Classical School, is the idea of character formation. The concept that rather than simply mastering skills (which they are bound to do), students are also working on the longer-term goal of becoming a thriving member of society. A person of character not just when they graduate at 18, but when they are 38, 58, 78, etc. Classical education has a longer view of the student and shapes their education accordingly.

Part of this character formation is learning to do hard things. Hard things are a part of life (hello quarantine!). And when we, as co-teachers and parents, can model the ability to tackle those hard things with peace and joy, we are setting our students up for success later on in life. They will encounter those hard things outside of the confines of their home or their school, so why not start practicing that for that now, when they are surrounded by people who are for them. 

Learning to approach a difficult task, like addition with re-grouping, a new level of Latin, or a challenging piece of literature, is not only just about gaining mastery of that particular skill. It is about gaining that skill and coupling it with character traits that will serve them for years to come: fortitude and temperance, for example.

We have a saying at ACS: Mustangs do hard things. It’s not that we’re pessimistic. We are actually filled with hope. Hope that the hard ground that is being plowed now will yield an abundance of fruit later. 

Modeling peace and joy while you, the co-teacher, tackle hard things shows your student that this is a truth that runs deeply, not merely a high standard you’re holding them to during math lessons or verb conjugations. 

• Model peace when your student can’t seem to stay focused. 
• Model joy as you see a new concept start to take hold in their mind. 
• Model peace when your littles can’t seem to nap long enough for you to finish a conference call, and joy when they want to join in the homeschooling fun. 
• Model peace when you need to take a break and walk away when things just aren’t going well.

Seeing you do this over and over again, even when it’s incredibly difficult, teaches them little by little that they can use peace and joy to navigate the ups and downs of life.

As a Christ-centered school, we take the Word of God seriously and try to infuse each and every area of our instruction with it. Each semester, the entire school memorizes a passage of scripture together. Who knew that when we started on James 1 in January, it would come so fully to life just a few short weeks later. 

Will trials come? Absolutely. There are days when peace and joy will seem a million miles away. On those days, cast your burdens onto the One who can truly give you rest for your soul. 

Disclaimer: We promise that this is something that we tell our co-teachers each and every year. But this year, it has taken on a whole new meaning in light of a global pandemic. As parents, we have the opportunity to model peace and joy in the midst of uncertainty each and every day in this season. And we pray that this season, despite its challenges, is one with a few blessings sprinkled in.

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As we look at some key habits of effective co-teachers this week, one thing that might be easily overlooked is the idea of communicating with the various stakeholders. In the midst of this extended time of learning at home, realize that you’re now a part of a new team – one that didn’t exist in this form a few weeks ago. And any team that wants to succeed has to communicate well and work toward a common set of goals. 

Some key dynamics to keep in mind as your team is getting off the ground is a tried-and-true model brought to you by Bruce Tuckman, circa 1965. 

Tuckman theorized all those years ago that teams typically go through 4 stages of development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Essentially, it boils down to this: 

• Forming: every team starts somewhere. Once team members are identified, goals are set, and everyone gets to work. So congratulations! You’re a part of a newly-formed team. Your team members likely include you, your student(s), your classroom teachers (if you have them), and your spouse or partner. Coordination and communication are key elements to surviving this stage. Go team!

• Storming: once your team is formed, you start to work together. Sometimes this goes smoothly, and other times you might get into some rough waters (that’s where the grace and flexibility habits from yesterday come in handy). As you can imagine, tensions might run high as folks learn their new roles.
  
  You are learning what it means to be both parent and teacher. Your spouse is learning what it means to support you in this new role. Your child is trying to figure out what it means to do school at home, without the familiar surroundings of their classroom and their friends. And your classroom teacher is learning to share the reigns with all of the parents of all of their students. In short: it can feel like a lot.
  
  Toes will be stepped on. Wires will get crossed. Confusion will reign (hopefully briefly) as new technologies and boundaries are established and learned. Thus, the “storming” title for this particular phase. Keeping lines of communication open is crucial as these choppy waters are navigated by everyone on the team.
  
• Norming: once you make it through the storms above, people on the team are likely more comfortable with their roles and the associated expectations. Patterns are established, expectations are shared, and common goals keep everyone moving in the same direction. Communication at this stage could be developing a status email to your classroom teacher or finding a time during the week to check in with your partner about how things are going.
  
  Another aspect to consider at this stage is the idea of a feedback loop: how do team members communicate the need for something to change? How are issues raised before they become bigger problems?
  
  In this season where things seem to be changing on a weekly basis, having a tighter feedback loop (one that cycles through things more quickly) could benefit the team. 
  
  One feedback loop we “tightened” at ACS was the touchpoints between classroom teachers and our co-teaching parents. Previously, face-to-face time typically took place during Parent/Teacher conferences each semester. Other forms of communication happened weekly (lesson plans, status emails, etc.). However, as the landscape changed rapidly in March, we established a new weekly cadence to include online meetings with classroom teachers and co-teachers. This new “norm” has been beneficial in helping our teams more effectively embrace this new reality of full-time learning at home. The tighter communication feedback loop was a win for everyone!

• Performing: here’s where things can start to really shine, as everyone on your team starts to work in harmony (at least sometimes) and you start to get some “wins” under your belt. You become more confident and equipped in your role as a teacher. After a few weeks, schooling from the comfort of your own home becomes the new normal (at least for this season).
  
  A small, but very impactful, example of communication in the performing stage for our Mustang community has been Virtual Chapel. Prior to this season, chapel on campus was a high point of the day. Singing together and learning truths about God each day was something that everyone looked forward to. So what does a team do when that’s no longer possible? Virtual chapel! Our leadership now spends time each week putting together a chapel talk for our Mustangs, and this new slant on corporate worship is something that the community looks forward to each week.
  
  Now does the performing stage mean that problems don’t arise? Or that some goals aren’t met? Not a chance. The goal isn’t to avoid bad days, but rather, to work through them as a team. Communicating with your partner, your student, your classroom teacher, and your peers on both the good days and the bad days will help keep things on track.

Your school might have already established an expected cadence of communication. And your team might be well into the norming or performing stage. Great! Go team!

But if you’re struggling with this new role, take a moment to consider your team and consider where you might be on this journey. Communicate honestly and regularly with everyone so that you can start working together toward a common set of goals. Set aside time to gather your thoughts, and share them with those that are on this journey with you.

Yes, we realize that this sounds more like something you’d see on a whiteboard in an office in corporate America, but it’s applicable in the homeschool room (or the living room, or at the breakfast table) as well. Clear and honest communication, no matter what stage you’re at, will benefit everyone involved. 

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We’re back again with our series on the 5 Habits of Highly-Effective Co-Teachers. 

In our previous posts, Habit 1: Stewarding your time well, and Habit #2: Taking time to prepare to teach, we talked about how to use time to your advantage during this season. 

Today, we’ll switch gears a bit and talk about how learning together at home can be a blessing, but can also require you to operate with more grace and flexibility, both with yourself and with others. These concepts might be new to you, or you might be a pro by now. Either way, this season can only be enhanced with heaping helpings of both grace and flexibility, and we’ll look today at how those mindsets can help your days and weeks (hopefully) go by more smoothly.

If you’re entering into this season from a full-time schooling model, welcome to the wonderful world of co-teaching, which is essentially schooling at home and having a professional classroom teacher as your partner. And guess what – you’re both likely new to these roles! So this is a great opportunity for everyone to roll with the punches…because there will be punches (but hopefully not too many). 

In this season of homeschooling, what might “the punches” look like? It could be missing a Zoom meeting with your classroom teacher, or having to teach a subject area that you never mastered when you were a student. Maybe you got an important phone call from work at the same moment that your kiddo was having a “lightbulb moment” in an area of struggle. Someone could simply just not want to do school on any given day. 

Responding to situations like this with grace in this season means taking those punches on the chin with no excuses or residual feelings of guilt. Some days it means hitting the reset button (repeatedly!?), or just simply laughing in the face of failure or unmet expectations. 

And about that flexibility? We’re all getting better at that by the day, as we adapt to this changing reality of life in the time of social distancing and quarantine. Try adapting your routines to align with your children’s study habits (do you have an early riser or a night owl?). It could be that sending someone for a run around the block before tackling a tough subject allows for them to have more focus when they sit down to do their work. Remember: it’s your homeschool. You get to decide how it is structured and what makes the most sense for your family. What works best this week might not work next week. Flex and adapt as the situations, attitudes, and resources change. 

Both grace and flexibility allow you not to sweat the small stuff. And who are the recipients of all of this grace and flexibility?

• You! We can’t say it enough – you are new at this. No one masters a new skill without lots (and lots!) of practice. Your goal during this season is not to become the best homeschool teacher that ever was. Your goal is not to have your student ace every assessment. Nor is your goal that your days would go as perfectly as planned. The simple goal of loving your family well is more than enough.
  
  Like we said in Habit #1, there will be days that everything doesn’t get done. Show yourself grace. There will be days when bad attitudes abound (maybe even yours). Show grace and hit the reset button.

• Your classroom teacher (if you have one): Remember, if you’re partnering with a classroom teacher, they are also new at this. Giving them the gift of grace and flexing with them as they learn this new terrain will do wonders during this season.
  
• Your student. Kids are notoriously resilient if given the opportunity. However, odds are that this is a huge change for them. Dealing with the multitude of cancellations, the lack of time with their friends, and learning to see you in a new light (teacher!) is a lot to ask of them.

We like to tell our new co-teachers that some days will be absolutely amazing in this role. Some days will feel like a complete nightmare. Most days will be somewhere in between. 

Revel in those great days and soak them in. Reflect on those difficult days and use them to change things for the next time around. And for everything else? Just remember that you’re not alone in this journey!

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how tweaking your patterns of communication can help everyone stay aligned while learning at home. 

The post Habits of Highly-Effective Co-Teachers first appeared on Austin Classical School | Austin, TX.

Welcome back to our series on the 5 Habits of Highly-Effective Co-Teachers. Like it or not, this season has made homeschoolers and co-teachers of us all! While we typically spend several days preparing our collaborative community of ACS Co-Teachers about how to fulfill their role during the school year, we thought it might be helpful to share some of that content with all of the new co-teachers that are learning this new skill of homeschooling. 

If you didn’t catch our previous post, Habit 1: Stewarding your time well, be sure to read through that if you can, as it has a lot to do with today’s topic, Habit 2: Taking the time to prepare to teach.

That’s right – we’re still talking about time! What a gift time can be when used well!

We realize that every school is approaching this season differently, so some of these items might not apply. However, our hope is that by outlining some key practices with regard to preparation, this will set you on a course to succeed in your new role as a homeschool instructor (and yes, you can add that to your resume!). 

First and foremost, realize that teaching takes time. Teaching well takes even more time. Setting aside time to prepare to teach is a habit that, if developed, will pay off in huge ways. The steps below will take you through preparation, instruction, and reflection, and each one of those components will hopefully help your days and weeks go well. 

So without further ado, let’s talk about how taking time to prepare to teach might look:

• Read the lesson plans and teacher’s manual (if you have access to it) before you teach. It’s simple, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. While classroom teachers develop lesson plans weekly, this new reality of writing them for parents to use is likely a new world for most. The lesson plan is your map for the week: it will let you know where you’re going and will tell you how to get there. (If you’re lucky, there might even be treasure at the end!)
  
  We realize that you might not have access to the teacher’s manual, but if you do, there is valuable information there that can help you fill in where you might be uncertain, answering questions like “How do I introduce that concept?”, or “How do I teach this when I didn’t learn it this way?”. Most of us in this co-teaching role are not formally-trained educators, and that’s OK. Asking for help or searching online for resources are great ways to build some teaching skills.
  
  Reading through the Lesson Plan before you teach is critical to stewarding your time well. Knowing the topics that you’ll cover before you introduce them to your students will help your instructional time go more smoothly. Taking this time to prepare allows you to determine what subjects might be best taught early in the day, or while your littles are napping. You might even realize that there’s something that you really enjoy and can look forward to sharing with your student!
  
• Gather and organize your supplies: once you’ve thoroughly (and possibly repeatedly) read through the Lesson Plans (and textbook pages, and worksheets, and teacher’s manual), it’s time to gather the things you’ll need to teach. Again, it sounds simple, but you might be surprised at how taking the time to mark pages, find usable pencils with erasers, and print off all the pages will actually save you time later when you’re in the middle of your instructional time. 
  
  So pull out the textbooks you’ll need. Mark the pages you’ll be referencing. Print the worksheets that you’ll use and organize them in ways that make sense to you. Is there work ahead that requires colored pencils? Grab them now and make sure they are sharpened. Is there an art project that will require copious amounts of tape? Set that aside before you need it.
  
  Organize your homeschool supplies like a chef would their kitchen: mise-en-place (French for “put in place”). Scrambling around in the middle of instructional time looking for a sharpened pencil or a misplaced workbook has the tendency to derail your day quickly.

• Consider a routine: we realize that your homeschool might not march along to the precision of a school bell, and that is in no way the expectation with this suggestion. But take a look at the different components of your day and consider what areas might benefit from a little routine.
  
  If everyone tends to wake up around the same time, spending time around the breakfast table together before the day starts could be a nice way to establish the tone for your time together. Or if you have students that roll out of bed throughout the morning, consider having a touch-point over lunch.
  
  Are afternoons dragging? What if you had read-aloud time with popcorn to look forward to every day? Or maybe having a celebration time at the end of the day if everything got completed?
  
  Routine will look different for every family. Considering the season we’re in, having little spots in the day with some anchors might serve you well.
  
• Doing the work: there’s no secret sauce to having a smooth homeschool day. Every day will look different.  Set your expectations accordingly, look for the joy, and hope for the best!
  
  Teaching takes time, so guard that well. If you’re in a position to grade your student’s work, that takes time, too. There will also likely be times that you will need to re-teach a concept, and guess what? That takes time as well.
  
  Keep Habit #1 in mind as you tackle the actual teaching: what are the “big rocks” that you need to work on first during your day? Tackling those early will help you and your crew feel like progress is happening, and that’s always something to celebrate!
  
  Consider the type of student you have. Do they learn best while they are moving around? Great! Maybe review spelling words while playing a game of catch. They might be the kind of student that learns best using their hands. No problem – write those spelling words in shaving cream on a cookie sheet. You have the freedom to be as creative as you want to be with your lessons.
  
  Your job during this season isn’t to recreate the classroom experience. Your homeschool is your classroom, so use it to your advantage when it comes to working through your lesson plans for the week. Taking the time to think through all of these facets in advance will allow for better days on the whole.

• Take time to reflect: you might be tempted to skip over this one, but doing so would rob you of some powerful lessons, both for you and your student. Take time to pause and think through your day or your week: what went well? What could be tweaked for next time? What are you thankful for? What contributed to a good day or a hard day? What was a complete fail? What was an unexpected surprise?
  
  Taking the time to think back will allow you to see what changes you might consider for the future.
  
  This is also a great conversation to pull your student into and get their thoughts. How did they think things went? What would they change for next time?

Well, that’s a full-enough list for today. Check back tomorrow as we tackle Habit #3: Rolling with the Punches (with grace and flexibility). 

The post Habits of Highly-Effective Co-Teachers first appeared on Austin Classical School | Austin, TX.

Whether you’ve been homeschooling for years, or you just picked up the reigns a few days ago, there’s no doubt that this season has required us all to make some adjustments. While we normally spend a week each school year training up our co-teaching parents about how to succeed in their new role, we wanted to share some of those “best practices” in case you’re new to the life of learning at home. 

This list may contain things that you’re already doing well. If so – keep up the good work! On the other hand, if you find yourself struggling as you tackle your new role, then our hope is that this list will be a blessing to you. 

So this week we’ll be sharing with you the “Top 5 Habits of Highly-Effective Co-Teachers,” starting with Habit 1: Effective co-teachers steward their time well

In this season, where we simultaneously have both an abundance of time as well as an abundance of tasks to fill that time, it is important to make your waking hours work for you. Many of us are now trying to balance the regular tasks of life (hello laundry, we see you!), along with fitting in work and school and board games and home haircuts and….it seems endless on some days. 

So how does an effective co-teacher (yes, that’s what you are now – congratulations!) steward their time well?

Looking at the lesson plans for the week might be overwhelming to you, and that is completely normal. One way to best utilize your time during each week with regards to teaching your students is to tackle the big rocks first. You may have heard the anecdote about fitting various rocks, pebbles, sand, and water into a jar, as Steven Covey shared here. The trick to getting all of the objects into the jar was to start with the biggest items first. 

In the same way, the “big rocks” of your homeschool day might be the hardest subject for your student. Maybe it’s a difficult new concept in math. Or your student might have a hard time with spelling. Whatever your “big rocks” are in the context of homeschooling, try tackling those first, maybe even first thing in the morning (after a hearty breakfast!). If nothing else gets done during the day, school-wise, you’ve at least finished a huge task together, and that’s something to celebrate! 

Now let’s be honest: there might be a day that your big rocks are things like laundry, managing a migraine, or simply setting aside time for yourself to rest and recharge. The beauty of schooling at home is that you get to decide how to use your time. And on some days, school work might not be a big rock. That’s ok.

Stewarding (or looking after) your time well during this season will hopefully help things seem more manageable, especially when it comes to co-teaching. Check back tomorrow with best-practice #2: Preparation is key. 

Until then, may these words from Psalm 90 encourage you today: 

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands;
yes, establish the work of our hands!

Psalm 90:12-17

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