 Re: Do you support ESL co-teaching? What type?
A certain degree of humility and self-doubt is always advisable, and hedging language avoids absolute statements and overly broad generalizations. Calling upon our personal experiences and consulting the relevant literature is often a powerful technique, but I would encourage English teachers to share their experiences.
ESL co-teaching does have its success stories, even if my experience is not necessarily one of them. Students often benefit from a lower teacher-student ration, have more opportunities to speak with an English-language authority figure, and receive more feedback from their instructors. Even if the the two ESL teachers disagree on a particular point, their civil and polite disagreement can demonstrate the diversity of professional opinions and how to disagree without being disagreeable. Sometimes these social lessons in teaching tolerance and respecting other perspectives are even more illuminating than a particular grammar point or the meaning of an idiom.
Or so it seems to me. |