KIC S4E3 ""The Power of Two: Building Success Through Co-Teaching" featuring Carlos Romo and Dave Barriere

Toby’s conversation with Carlos Romo and Dave Barriere centers on the power of collaboration, relationships, and adaptability in co-teaching. Carlos and Dave reflect on how professional development gave them the foundation to succeed as co-teachers, showing how strategies they once doubted could energize and engage high school students. They emphasize the importance of building trust, setting common goals, and modeling teamwork for students, which not only strengthens instruction but also provides positive role models. 

Featured resources:

Understanding Special Education Beyond the Jargon (Quick Reference Guide)

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Special-Education-Beyond-Reference/dp/1416633715 

#TobyKarten  #Karten’sInclusionConversations #KIC #Inclusion #CarlosRomo #DabeBarriere #CoTeaching #CollaborationInEducation #InclusionMatters #StudentSuccess #TeachingStrategies #ScaffoldingForAll #AlternativeEducation #APTeaching #EducatorCollaboration #PowerOfTwo #HistoryTeachers #TeacherGrowth #ProfessionalDevelopment #BuildingRelationships #TeachingAcrossTheSpectrum

For more information please visit https://inclusionworkshops.com/

Transcript

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Hi everybody, welcome to KIC Karten's Inclusion Conversations and I have the honor of being with two people that I met back in Chicago a couple of moons ago, actually a few years back. You'll fill in the exact times and dates then, but what's so nice is what we do and it's a big part of education is collaboration and we collaborated that time in Chicago and then guess what? Years later, we're still collaborating and spreading the word Humminbird about all the good things going on. So I have Carlos Romo and he is a dedicated and accomplished educator for over 13 years. He's currently an AP World History teacher at Muckawannaago, Wisconsin School District for Middle School Secondary Education. He also has a dual Master's in Educational Leadership and Curriculum and Instruction. And it's just the two of them together were, I met them, they were co-teachers, both he and Dave Barriere provided services to students in social studies and currently also working for the Wisconsin Council for Social Studies and working with the DPI, which is Department of Public Instruction in Wisconsin, because we have a lot of jargon here in education. So I always have to like, you know, do the initials, remind me the two of you, give me your land address. I'd love to send you a copy of Understanding Special Education Beyond the Jargon, one of my latest publications. So without seeing more as we talk, we're going to share more. Dave and Carlos, welcome. And would each of you like to maybe say something to our listening audience before we actually start? Just thank you for having us. Going into co-teaching as a special ed teacher was one of my drives to do and to work with you years ago on coming up with strategies to make it effective, it was pretty cool to see it come into fruition with Romo and I. So thanks for having us so we can share the word with everyone else. Dave, thank you for being a professional, going to professional development and trying to multiply the learning, not only for yourselves, but for your colleagues. And Carlos, welcome. Yes, thank you so much. Romo, is that your name for each other? We call each other, yeah, we call each other by our last name. I call him B, he calls me Romo. So you get to that relationship in co-teaching that, you know, you know what each other's are thinking. So you got names for each other too. I like that. I heard that, you know, relationships might be important in co-teaching. And I think the two of you could probably speak to that a bit, right? You bet. Amazing. Thank you both for being here. Sue, what did you find? Because when we were talking a little bit earlier, you were talking about how you learned a lot of things at the professional development and then you became like model teachers doing that and you weren't just happy having the success with your own students, but you did want that multiplied with other high school students who sometimes in this day and age or any day and age sometimes become disengaged in your subject of history, which is such an important subject and to have that enthusiasm that the two of you are showing for it. Yeah, one of the, I mean, we went to your PD in Chicago because Dave and I were put into the role of co-teaching together and, you know, there wasn't a lot of guidance that we were given on co-teaching and we really wanted to make this work and we really wanted this relationship to work for not only us, but also for our students. And so Dave was actually the one that sought out the professional development opportunities to figure out what is it that we can do, like what is it that we can start with and ultimately when we went to your training, that was literally what we needed. We needed something as a place to go off of and like we needed a place to start and ultimately, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about it more, but we were able to come back and really make things work for us and try things in our classrooms for ourselves and find that success right away. You know, we'll be honest, like some of the things that you were presenting to us, like that would never work for our kids, but then we tried it and we're like, oh gosh, it does work. Okay. So it did work. So yay, yay. So give me specifics here, Dave and Carlos, what work that you said, nah, they won't do it because they're high school adolescents, right? The one thing that we thought, especially for me too, at times, right, pigeon hole some of my students that they couldn't do it would be the A to Z strategy that you brought up in that conference of labeling or labeling your paper A to Z, and then coming up with words from the unit or the topic that we discussed. And it was actually like the kids knew it by the end of our second year together doing these strategies, they really knew that and we're like, it's A to Z, grab your papers and they did it. And then it was a competition of who could get all the letters filled in. It was cool. Yeah. We turned it into a gradual release of responsibility activity where we'd have them do it first by themselves. And then ultimately what I would do is I would sit up in the front of the room and David sit in the back of the room and we'd have our papers out in front of us and maybe said to the students, your goal is to try to beat us in terms of trying to beat us through the A to Z. And so the students would work individually and then we'd have them work at the table and then we'd come back together as a full group. And sometimes we would add more movement in there where we make them get out of their chair and actually compare and then ultimately have that conversation at the end of, okay, what letters do you need? And it's just a simple thing that we saw the students be able to do and the light bulbs started to come on right away with, oh yeah, I didn't think about that. Oh, that's a good one. You know, conversations between each other that took place. I do it every time we have a review session before we have a test, that's the first thing we start with is an A to Z. You know, something as simple as that we never thought would work for our students until we tried it the very next day. We literally went to your PD the next day we came to school, like let's just try and see what happens. And we both were giving faces to each other across the room like, oh my God, it's working. Thank you for sharing that. You know, sometimes it's the basics back to the alphabet and why does it work? Because a lot of the kids are disorganized. They have ways that accumulating information under categories and this is a friendly thing for them to do. But as she was talking, I pulled up from my website, my inclusion principles, and I heard so many of these enacted in that little brief classroom vignette that you were sharing from going from establishing prior knowledge you could do to an A to Z list and say everything that you know about, be it the Magna Carta or World War II or reconstructivism. So just looking at these things, you are providing accommodations step by step. You use sensory elements, getting them up and moving. I'm sure they cross pollinated with their A to Z list to get more words, you know, I mean, you're laughing, but also you created here, you could see modeling. The two of you may put yourself out there and you know, OK, could you top that? And I'm not saying every adolescent is competitive, but that might have been a little bit of that motivation. It was a cool moment. I was like, I couldn't get a letter and I would go and I have like 20 of the letters filled in that one letter another student had to see them see that they have a letter that word there. And I didn't. And I was like that I didn't even think of that. That's a great opportunity right there. So it was just showing that they have the knowledge as well. So Dave, when you just described this, what materials do they need? Right. Paper, pencil. And then I love when you also said that they would do it ahead of time, which they were so into it that they were doing things on time where they were slating for work when it was just not, quote unquote, having to do such a thing. So kudos to both of you for flying off and doing that. That's totally amazing. And you both work with kind of right now, you're not co-teaching together, but you are working with different populations of students. And you're also getting together with students on another continent. You too, even though you're not daily working together, you're complementing each other. And I think that relationship, because when you describe the co-teaching at first, you said you were put into the role, you were put into the role. You said that so well, because that's how many co-teachers feel that they don't want to do it, but they're kind of sometimes ill-prepared or thinking, oh, you know what to do. You know how to teach social studies, you teach special ed, the two of you do it together. But Dave, your knowledge in special ed is different than Carlos and Carlos, maybe your knowledge in history where the two of you complement each other. It was kind of like, I think initially, you tell me, what was it like in the beginning compared to now? And also, Dave also has a social studies license as well. And so I think the thought process behind that was, oh, Dave, go, go, you know, social studies, Dave, you got special ed, you can create this blend for you. You know, no fault to our leaders thinking that because anybody that's logical would think that'd be a good place to start, but it really wasn't for history. We had that. But what we wanted out of our students and what we wanted our classroom to look like, we didn't know. I mean, because yes, we're teachers. Yes, we teach a lot of the same things in the same field, but what our classrooms look like is different. And what I expect my classroom to look in my room is different than the teacher next door. And that's no different than after coming into the classroom, that's going to become our own, both of ours together. And so that's where we really desire to try to find that spot of where do we go, where do we start, and what foundation do we need to set for us to be successful. And to have that same understanding of what we want out of the students and how, as I was the co-teacher entering his room, it's just like human nature. I don't want to step on anyone's shoes or toes or change, like if he has certain rules that I didn't know, and then I would say yes to a student, then we turn it into parents. It's the mom and dad kind of move. So coming up with those norms together, so we can tackle those, because at times when we were co-teaching, we had some more behaviors in the classroom, because there's two bodies. So basically two teachers, then they would put more tougher students in there. So we had to get that understanding of how our classroom should roll, how we structure it throughout the day, how we keep them motivated, interacted, all that jazz. One of the things that helped us a lot was we used our co-teaching survey planner, where there was the list of questions, where it was like, definitely, at times, not really. Like one of the first questions was to create a comfortable and accepting environment. Definitely at times, not really. So we started there, and we utilized that list, and we compared it. We literally, when we were in Chicago, we did this while you were presenting, and we were comparing what we had. And then ultimately, once we went through that list and we saw what was the same, which is we had the same goal for our students, and what we did was we created our own philosophy, which was that we are going to be committed to working as a team for all of our students to be successful. That was our philosophy, that was our backbone, and that's what we always came back to. And so everything that we did moving forward is we had that conversation, we had that foundation set. We always knew what we were going to come back to, and then the activities that we came up with and that we went forward with, we were planned out ahead of time. And David and I got to a point where he'd walk by in the hallway, and he'd say, hey, we're going to do an MDY today. He knew right away that was main ideas, details in you, activity, or what you're going to do. We really are using these things. Oh, no. No, no, why? We really did. Yeah. So we figured that out. We built that foundation at the start, and then by the point to last year, when it was our last year competing together, we had it down. We were able to say, we're going to do this, and turned into coming into our, we call them CLTs, which is our PLC, because all of our course-alikes are coming together, or we're meeting together. And Dave was not just co-teaching in my classroom, he was also co-teaching in another world history class, but we ended up all doing the same thing across all of our classes, that it was just an easy, seamless transition. So when Dave would go to one class, he'd come to me. That sounds wonderful, and the thing is that now, Carlos, you're working with an AP population and Dave is working with alternative education, and they're both, I guess you could say also types of exceptionalities and students who have different academic, emotional, social, behavioral needs. One of you want to, or both of you want to speak for those populations and see any similarities, differences that you think might be helpful for others to realize on how high school students learn, those who need more, those who need less, those who maybe experience trauma or things they can't control sometimes. With me being in my first year as an alternative ed teacher, the skills that I developed working with Romo for so many years co-teaching allowed me to, I still use the same things that we've taught years, I still teach the same curriculum, but those strategies of like a we fam, like a family feel. When my other teachers need help, I assist and I come, and it could be, we turn into like parallel teaching or station teaching because we're very flexible in our scheduling. So those are those, the philosophy. So we come together as a team in our little tiny school and come up with a philosophy as well. Like, what are we all here for? What do we stand for? If there's a hard day and you need a break, we know you just tap in, tap out kind of thing. And those strategies that we learned, the professional development really helps me understand the students with trauma, like they need accommodation this way, even if they're not special ed. Now I'm all that special ed, but to have the understanding that kids learn differently, kids need to get up, they need to move around. I do station things where I post pictures everywhere throughout my school and they have to go around and do the history that way. When you get them up moving, they actually remember the things. I find that works with adults as well in professional development. Hey, Dave, I'm Carlos. I'm doing a session at the end of this month in June that is, that's when we're recording this. I'm leveraging collaboration. But I think you might be in London. Who wants to talk about that, about COVID? What is it? We're going to be heading to Europe. We're going to be going to, we're taking 41 students to London, Paris and Amsterdam. So we're making our history in our classroom come alive. So we leave the 17th and we come back the 26th of June. My thing is the 30th in San Antonio. Come on down. No. So seriously. The thing is that even though you're not working together, your relationship hasn't ended in terms of the knowledge you gained individually, the knowledge you gained collectively, and now the knowledge that you are transferring to your students just by modeling how two of you are doing things, which is wonderful. Now, Carlos, you're also working with an AP population, right, in history. In a way, like they're the other side of the special ed curve, exceptional. And a lot of the kids, I don't know if you've experienced too, something our listeners might have heard of, and you've heard of as well with your special ed backgrounds as well, twice exceptional, different things going on. And a lot of our kids also have comorbidity, which doesn't mean that a child who's, let's say, gifted in reading can have some difficulties with social relationship. I mean, it doesn't mean because you have the academics that you have all the skills, nor if you don't have the academics, you can't have social skills. People think it's one or the other. And even people who physically can't look like everybody else, people are astonished when brilliant things come from their mind. And I don't mean to put things down, but sometimes we sometimes pigeonhole as like, oh, advanced placement, you must have a breeze teaching those kids. But maybe Carlos, you want to clarify that myth, perhaps? I mean, I've coached holiday for a number of years, so we've been teaching together for years. And when you have a lot of success in co-teaching and with your students, typically the population of the students that you're teaching who struggle typically go up. And I've also been teaching AP for about eight years as well, so I would literally start my day with my AP students and then I'd finish my day with Mr. B and our most struggling learners. So I guess I'd like to say I have a wide range of teaching skills because I've seen one side of the perspective, which is obviously the inclusion in our co-teaching class, but I also see the AP side of things too. It's not a cakewalk. It is definitely not a cakewalk in teaching in that AP realm because a lot of times you see a lot of the same students or see a lot of the same behaviors that you see in a co-taught classroom just in a little bit different way. Whether that be mental health issues, whether that be just struggling to learn in different ways, struggling with reading, struggling with writing, there's a lot of pieces that go into that. And the hard part is that you don't have your best co-teacher, your best buddy with you along your side to help with those types of things, but you have the skills to fall back upon. I have the skills that I have honed in on, especially with Dave and I over the course of the years. What works in my co-taught classes, that's what are also going to work in my AP classes. And so I see a lot of the same strategies and I use a lot of the same strategies and there's a lot of scaffolding that goes on in my AP class. My AP class that I teach is AP World History and in AP World History at our school, we typically offer it to sophomores and we do teach it as a three-level AP course. So it's generally the first AP course that students will take and ultimately we definitely take our time going through a lot of the different strategies that they're going to carry over into the other classes. And ultimately in the skills that I have and using those skills and those lenses are going to allow for them to be successful in other classes because a lot of those skills will carry over. And the best part, it's really no different than what we were doing with co-teaching. It's just going to be a little bit different. It's all it is. And then you base the learning and you base it upon the skills every single year. Learning Elements is a five-paragraph essay and I don't think I've taught it the same every single year. You know, there's elements that are similar but I have to tailor my lessons to who my clientele are in my classroom and you know, and some struggle more than others and it's my job to meet those needs of those students. I love your dedication and your passion. I hear it in both of you for what you do and that's contagious and thank you for what you do. Dave, what Carlos was just talking about, that scaffolding, that's a common theme. Whether it's advanced placement, alternative education with the scaffold. And just to have that understanding, like what Romo said is you have to meet the students where they are. You can't be stuck in this is my content. This is how I teach it. Every year is different. That's why I love being a teacher is every year is different because the kids are different and you just develop different ways of still delivering the same content, but in a different way, which is awesome. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I couldn't agree with you enough. And that's the whole thing behind that word, I individuals, we're all individuals, we're not clones of each other. Life would be quite boring if that was the case, but also there is no pecking order. So even though you might teach advanced placement, you might teach alternative ed, you co-taught where in an inclusion class, hopefully when they all reach that post-secondary choice, maybe college or training or other other professions and more schooling, if that's their choice, they become what you're teaching them, reflective, independent learners who feel good about themselves. And the two of you as co-teachers, people don't realize that the kids are watching you. They watch how you interact and you're also such big role models. I like what you said. The two of you said this in different ways, kind of like the fact that you learn from them. Right. Right. I mean, we have lots of books, we have lots of research, evidence-based practices, but they don't mean anything until you attach them and then maybe tweak it and change gear for that kid. Dave, what you did too, and Carlos, you kept changing your audience of students that you work with every, what are your periods, are you block scheduling, is it 15 minutes, an hour? What do you have? Well, rotational block is on an A-day, B-day, C-day, D-day. So we rotate every four days and then we have six blocks in a day and they're about 60-ish minutes per class. Right. So you're going in and out with different populations of students, different topics in history, and also, Dave too, I know when I did co-teaching as a special ed teacher, you were a bit of a chameleon, you know, you had your forms, what you needed to do, but you want to make sure, like you stated, Dave, that you give respect because, you know, it's supposed to be both of your classes, but when that person's there, maybe for 85% of the day and you're there for 15%, you want to make sure that you are being respectful and you are empowering each other and your student at the same time. And making that team, because there's days where Roma was out sick, there didn't need to be a sub because I was the teacher and the kids just, we just kept following along with the lesson and the best part of it too is, you know, you have a good team and it's working well is when I get called out, like, hey, Mr. B in the hallway, not from a special ed student, just from a regular ed student, and then they know, like, it teaches history. And when they ask questions in the class, they would ask either one of us, it didn't really matter. I mean, they used to always try to play the, we'll just, because we're both men, we'll just say the dad card on either one of us, they'll ask us one thing and then I'll say no, and then they'll go to Dave. What did Roma say? I'll ask my other dad, I'll ask that dad. And kids from preschool to high school, to graduate level, they're good doing that trick. They've learned. They tried so hard. They learned really quick, you know, and there's no saying that, I mean, that we definitely worked really hard for our students because we didn't work together at the last hour of the day. And there could be days that we would just sit at one of the tables in the classroom and just sit in silence and like, okay, you're ready. We worked really hard for our students. And, you know, when you said that, you know, we want them to be successful when they leave this building, I cross my fingers because that's our goal. You know, content's one thing, but we want them to find that success once they leave our building. Right. And you both teach social studies and to be citizens of the world and to be citizens of each other, to show kindness and to have the smarts, whether or not you have a label of exceptionality, because that doesn't define you. And I think you've both kind of defined with your passion. So I can't believe our time is kind of up now, but Carlos or Dave, do you have any closing statements that you'd like to say to the people listening to the podcast? I would just say, as you enter co-teaching, the biggest thing is to make that bond with your co-teacher. Be open, be honest with each other, because after a year and a year, you will bond closer and opening up that collaboration, joining the content that you're co-teaching if you're special ed joining the content. So like the social studies, being part of the curriculum conversation, mapping out the semester, makes you feel more involved, more part of the team. And that grows also your relationship as a co-teacher makes it successful. Thank you, Dave. And Carlos, any closing statements that you'd like to say? Well, number one, thank you to you, because we wouldn't be here if we didn't have that foundation. If Dave didn't find that PD that you were presenting at in Chicago on a whim, and you know, thank you, truly, because honestly, you have given us so much and really helped us with that foundational piece that we really needed, that we were desiring and gave us the place to go off of that, and opened the door for us to share with others, you know, and share with others and say, like, you know, these are great strategies, we need to provide them. You know, we felt like you and said, that's never going to work. And it did work. Just take a risk. That's a big piece is that go ahead and try it. What's the worst that's going to happen? Okay, you had a lesson that didn't work, have something back up ready to go, and just become a team with your with your co teacher. I mean, I mean, David, I have been working together for so long. And even I mean, when we found out we were going to be co teaching last year, it broke our hearts. But didn't mean that we wouldn't, you know, that we lose touch with each other, we're still sharing, collaborating, and these things. So that relationship you're going to form with your co teachers, it is going to last a lifetime. And both of you have demonstrated such professionalism, and you made me smile to hear how you are applying things. I've said this before to other people, but you're putting sprinkles and cherries, and lots of toppings on all of the co teaching strategies, and you're putting your own collaborative stamp on it. And that respect that you have for each other, I think that the students feel that and send me a postcard from Amsterdam or London. Yes, we definitely want to see and find out more. So will you to come on again, and maybe just tell everybody what you learned from that experience as well, of course, 100% Absolutely. We have students that are in our co teaching class when we go to who are on the trip with us. And I like to always give the example like we talked about earlier, we have a student who goes to go on the trip over getting a car for her 16th birthday. So to make her fall in love with history and to like history to go on a trip like this. I mean, job well done, Dave. I need to know your itinerary because it does sound like it's going to be amazing. It is going to be amazing. All right. Thank you both so much. Have an excellent close and we will be in touch. No, they never really knew the kid with a different point of view. Copyright 2025, Karten's Inclusion Conversations. Thank you for listening. Check out other episodes on all major platforms.