When One Teacher Isn’t Enough

Photo by Gavin Barnett on Unsplash

Eleanor*, Ahmed*, and the Power of One Small Shift

Eleanor was a student in my silo classroom who I was struggling to reach as a writer. At the time, I was working in a school that was not yet exploring a learning community model. After months of trying to improve my writing instruction and her skills, I leaned heavily on one of my colleagues.

Ms. Rony* was, and still is, an incredible writing teacher, the kind of teacher I would have wanted for myself. So I asked her if I could learn alongside her. At the start of our next writing unit, I brought my writers to her classroom and we co-taught. She led the mini-lesson, and during independent writing, I conferred with my students while she worked with hers.

Within two days, everything shifted. My conferring improved just by observing her. My structure became clearer, my language more precise, and student writing improved. It was the most valuable professional learning I had experienced up to that point.

After a week of lessons, we thanked Ms. Rony and her students and returned back to our silo classroom.

On Monday, I was ready. I carried everything I had learned back with me, confident that my students would begin to see themselves as authors. Even Eleanor.

For most of them, it worked.

But not for Eleanor.

She was back to being reluctant, her EAL nerves getting in the way of what I knew she was capable of. During a conference, I used one of Ms. Rony’s strategies. I sketched the story Eleanor was telling, adding key words to support her spelling, and we made a simple plan for her next fifteen minutes of writing.

Then I moved on to another student.

From across the room, I could see Eleanor. Shoulders hunched, pencil clenched, frustration rising.

Tuesday looked the same.

So did Wednesday.

I was confused. So I asked Ms. Rony for help again. “Could I send Eleanor to your class during writing for a few weeks? I think there’s a block, and I think it might be me.”

We made a simple plan, and Eleanor began writing in Ms. Rony’s space.

Within a short time, Eleanor wrote her first story. The following week, she shared it proudly back in our homeroom.

Eleanor began to see herself as an author.

Who was I to stand in her way?

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Ahmed struggled in our homebase classroom each morning. He had been placed with a group of students he hadn’t connected with since Grade 1, and they had quickly labeled him “Mr. Bossy Pants.” That label stuck, and it widened the gap between him and his peers.

No matter how I structured our Morning Meetings, what we discussed, or the games we played, Ahmed remained on the outskirts. No one chose to sit with him. No one sought him out. He was often my partner, which I used as an opportunity to model inclusion and kindness. But it never quite landed.

About a month later, I noticed something different on the playground. Ahmed had formed a friendship with Luca, a new student. They shared similar interests, a quirky sense of humor, and an ease with one another that I had not seen before.

The only problem was that Luca was in a different home base classroom.

So I asked Luca’s home base teacher if we could try something. For a few weeks, Ahmed would join her class for Morning Meeting, and she would send me a student who had a strong connection with a student in my room.

The shift was immediate. Ahmed began to relax. He connected. He belonged. He even told me at closing circle one day, “I didn’t know Morning Meetings could be so fun!”

Then other students noticed.

“Why don’t I get to be with my best friend?”

That question led to a larger conversation across the team. What if we allowed students to move between home bases for short periods of time? What if we gave them the opportunity to build connections in different spaces, and gave ourselves the opportunity to see them differently, too…not just academically, but to observe their social-emotional relationships?

We tried it.

The results were powerful enough that we built it into our second-semester routines.

Ahmed did not need a behavior plan. He needed belonging. And when we changed his context, the behavior changed with it.

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In both cases, the smallest move I made was to ask for help. I leaned on colleagues, and together, as collaborators, we found simple, manageable ways to adjust the experience for each student. Sometimes it was a temporary switch. Other times, it was simply sharing responsibility differently for a short period of time.

None of these changes required a formal restructure or a complete redesign of the school day. They required trust, flexibility, and a shared belief that we could respond differently when something was not working.

Eleanor did not need more time. She needed a different instructional relationship in that moment. Ahmed did not need correction. He needed connection.

What I have come to understand is that collaboration is not just about improving teaching practice. It is about increasing our ability to meet student needs more precisely and more quickly. When we work collectively, students are not left waiting for things to improve. We can act sooner.

That shift matters.

When we open our classrooms to another way of being, to one another, to new opportunities, we give ourselves a better chance of making each day the best for each student.

*names changed to protect anonymity

Note: This post was edited with AI as an assistant to refine structure and readability. My ideas, voice, and words remain intact.