Text 1 What is the blended partnership that is the foundation of the Co-Teaching/Blended Program?

Our NCVPS Co-Teaching/Blended Program was developed under the direction of NCDPI, and the foundation of the program was designed to be a partnership between the classroom and online teachers. The f2f teacher provides the Exceptional Children expertise, and the NCVPS teacher provides the content expertise to the partnership. Together, these two teachers work as a team to meet the academic needs of each student in the course. NCDPI has mandated the following communication in the partnership.

Communication between partner teachers: daily communication via the CTDL and a welcome call.

This communication is described below:

The first is asynchronous daily written communication, housed in a secure Google Doc online and referred to as the Co-Teacher Documentation Log (CTDL). The doc is shared by the partner teachers, as well as others within NCVPS, NCDPI, and the local school district, as needed. The link to the CTDL is shared by the online teacher at the beginning of the course and also housed in the course so that the f2f teacher will have handy access to this document each school day. The CTDL located within the Canvas course can be found in the Modules section as a stand-alone unpublished module. The f2f should update the doc before the end of the school day.

The second is the Welcome Call. This is a phone call that takes place before the start of the semester or, at the latest, during the first week of school. One of the goals of this first phone call is to establish a plan for communication during the semester. This might be weekly phone chats, biweekly chats, texts/emails, or whatever combination will best suit the partnership. The CTDL daily posts are still mandatory. In the phone chat option moving beyond the mandatory Welcome Call, the partners chat so that they can discuss planning for the next week, special needs of the students, accommodations for IEPs, etc. Although the weekly chat is NOT required, many partners may still want to chat weekly in order to plan together and discuss student needs in a synchronous environment. These chats also cover other topics that cannot be easily covered in the daily Google Doc entries, such as student behavior concerns, etc. In emails, the partners might share resources and discuss broader (non-sensitive) student needs with initials (similar to the CTDL). In texts, the partners are able to discuss student needs, check in for the day, reschedule phone chats, etc.

View this presentation describing more details of these two types of communication.

View this video describing more details of these two types of communication.

Below are some tips to make sure this communication is easy on BOTH of you:

Please use only student initials in the Google Doc and emails to ensure that we all abide by FERPA rules.
Please complete your entry into the Google Doc BEFORE the end of each school day.
Use the Google Doc to notify your partner of upcoming events in your schedule and/or your students' schedules. For example, you might include workshops where you will be out (and might need some offline activities for the students in your absence), field trips, shortened class periods, etc.
After the initial call, if you decide to continue with the periodic phone chats, schedule them at a mutually-agreeable time, but preferably early in the week. Then, if either of you has to reschedule the chat, there is plenty of time that week to still get it in.
Realize that your partner teacher MIGHT also work f2f and may NOT be available to chat during the school day. Please be considerate when scheduling your chats.

This partnership has proven to be one of the greatest strengths of the Co-Teaching/Blended Program. Students will have the benefit of two teachers guiding and instructing them through the content. This partnership makes creating an individualized learning path for each student more manageable and effective. You will work with your NCVPS teacher to define the necessary components of individualized learning for each student and to deliver these to the student.