On December 16 and 17, 2015, NPR’s new training division, Comprehensive School Solutions (CSS) partnered up with The Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) to present a professional development workshop on co-teaching by Dr. Marilyn Friend. The workshop, “Co-Teaching: Classroom Partnerships for Student Success” was offered in two locations in New York City, and was attended by over 100 teachers from the metro-NY area.
The full-day workshop addressed the drilled down on the questions “How do we build (or renew) our co-teaching partnership?” and “How do we create instructional intensity through co-teaching?” The day consisted of a mix of small group work, presentations, videos, and discussions focused on creating classroom partnerships. Dr. Friend captivated the audience with tips on how to form productive and efficient work teams and how to foster inclusive practices.
There was much praise from the participants for Dr. Friend, who is one of the nation’s the pre-eminent authorities on co-teaching. In addition to being an in-demand speaker, Dr. Friend is the author of the best-selling book Co-Teach! Building and Sustaining Effective Classroom Partnerships in Inclusive Schools, the laminated reference guide Co-Teaching: Strategies to Improve Student Outcomes the laminated reference guide Co-Teaching: Strategies to Improve Student Outcomes, and hosts a popular co-teaching video series which includes The Power of Two, More Power, and Releasing the Power, all of which can be purchased on www.NPRInc.com
Enthusiastic participant feedback included:
- “Excellent presentation on coteaching models! The examples given were extremely helpful in understanding the models. we are looking forward to turnkeying the information and focusing our work on station teaching and specific ‘SDI’ planning.”
- “As a first year ICT team, this was extremely helpful and will help us drive our instruction from this point forward.”
- “First PD I have been to in a long time that I am walking away with practices I want to implement in my classroom.”
- “This was an awesome PD. It shed light on what I really can work on and start doing in my classroom. I thought I was doing all that I could but I have learned so many strategies that will immediately improve my instruction.”
CEI and CSS will be offering an additional professional development workshop March 9 and 10: “Co-Teaching in Secondary Schools” by Lisa Dieker. For additional details and to register, please visit http://the-cei-css.nprinc.com/.
