Low morale, pay leads to AZ teacher shortage, schools respond with 'team-teaching' model
Fox News
AZ schools created a team-teaching model in order to combat declining enrollment and teacher shortages. This model gives teachers more control and the kids are able to learn together.
Five years ago, faced with high teacher turnover and declining student enrollment, Westwood’s leaders decided to try something different. Working with professors at Arizona State University’s teachers college, they piloted a classroom model known as team teaching. It allows teachers to dissolve the walls that separate their classes across physical or grade divides.
The teachers share large groups of students — sometimes 100 or more — and rotate between group instruction, one-on-one interventions, small study groups or whatever the teachers as a team agree is a priority that day. What looks at times like chaos is in fact a carefully orchestrated plan: Each morning, the Westwood teams meet for two hours of the school day to hash out a personalized program for every student, dictating the lessons, skills and assignments the team will focus on that day.