One of the challenges facing many foreign language programs today is maintaining high quality instruction despite increased enrollments and teacher shortages. One strategy for meeting this challenge is collaborative teaching.
Collaborative teaching can occur in various settings and for different purposes.
These studies focus on situations in which an experienced college teacher works with a graduate assistant or a parttime instructor in a 4 or 5day schedule. Teaching with graduate students is only one way of teaching collaboratively. Other types of collaboration can be considered, depending on the particular needs of the program. This digest discusses the major issues in collaborative teaching and describes a successful collaborative program that paired college faculty with area high school teachers to teamteach introductory French and Spanish courses at the Plattsburgh State University of New York. The process of working with other teachers is itself intellectually stimulating and promotes professional growth.