Thirty kids versus sixty, one teacher versus two. They say teamwork makes the dream work, and with Mr. Prince and Mr. Zinselmeier, that could be true. Blaine High School is one innovative place, and they wanted to try out something new. Team teaching is going on all around the building, and most students can say they have a co-taught class. 

Mr. Prince and Mr. Zinselmeier have been team teaching for the past 2 years. When asked about the benefits of team teaching Mr. Prince said “we have more ideas together, we can just bounce ideas off of each other, and there’s so much cool stuff we can come up with.” Mr. Zinselmeier agreed and added that when two teachers are in the room there are two different ways to model things. If one person is more of an expert than the other, they can hand off the discussion to them. 

Of course, with pros, there always come cons, but as said by Mr. Prince “there aren’t any because I love my team teachers.” After saying this he went on to explain that he loves talking, “and if they’re talking, I can’t be talking.”

Mr. Zinselmeier said that “you don’t want to step on each other’s toes, one person might be overpowering.” To make team teaching work, you definitely need a lot of communication with each other. 

Besides the teachers doubling, so does the number of students in the classroom. When asked if they would rather have 30 kids in a room or 60, Mr. Prince said “I would rather have all my 400 students for the entire year, in a big lecture hall, so I just teach at once and my summer is like 7 months.” While of course, that can’t happen they both agreed that it is nice to teach more kids, but bonds with singular students might not be as strong. 

There are perks to both normal teaching and team teaching. “It’s like apples and oranges, I like that it kind of mixes up my day,” said Mr. Prince. He wouldn’t want all singular taught classes, or all co-taught, he likes the variety.

Mr. Zinselmeier explained he “prefers team teaching, just because you can build off the strength of other teachers, get more input from students, and do more group activities.” 

Mr. Prince and Mr. Zinselmeier are a great pair, and definitely make their team teaching as fun as it can be. BHS decided to try out something new, and by the looks of it, team teaching seems like a success.