Division of Labor: Making the Invisible Work Visible

In my first group co-teaching partnerships, we didn’t sit down and do the division of labor. We waited and flew by the seat of our pants rather than sitting down and looking at what we ultimately needed to do. Over time, in future partnerships, I started really writing that down, along with the central agreements we came to, and that made our partnership dynamic much more impactful and effective. But it wasn’t easy, and it took several iterations to figure that out.

Here is what writing it down looks like. Take one unit you and your co-teacher are about to teach. List every job that has to happen before, during, and after the lessons: who builds the slides, who adapts the reading, who grades the exit tickets, who calls home. Then put a name next to each one.

Use the Division of Labor tool

You don’t have to build the list from scratch. The free Division of Labor and Responsibilities tool (Chapter 5) sorts the work into five domains: lesson planning, content, feedback, strategy selection, and family communication. The tool page describes the result as a role-and-responsibility chart that prevents invisible or uneven work.

For each domain, write Teacher A, Teacher B, or Shared.

Domain	Teacher A	Teacher B	Shared
Lesson planning
Content
Feedback
Strategy selection
Family communication

Keep the PDF open while you plan and change a cell when the work changes. Then bring the filled table to your next common planning block and read it out loud once. If either of you is surprised by an owner, fix that cell before you plan the next lesson. A surprise means that job was still invisible.

Some tasks won’t seem to fit anywhere. Put each one in the domain it really belongs to, even if the answer is Shared for now. Shared is an honest answer. A job with no name on it is the one that wears people down.

The For Teachers page includes a plain question in the before-lesson work: what will each teacher do before, during, and after the lesson? When nobody answers it out loud, one partner picks up the after-hours load while the other can look “less invested” in front of students.

Co-Teaching Evolved, by Matthew Rhoads and Dr. Belinda Dunnick Karge, lists clear roles, shared expectations, and essential agreements among the first things teams learn (The Book).

Try it this week

1. Pick one upcoming unit and list every recurring before, during, and after task.
2. Sort each task into one of the five domains and mark it Teacher A, Teacher B, or Shared.
3. Put both names next to any job that used to sit with one person by default.
4. At Friday’s planning meeting, move one item if the week felt uneven.

All 30 reproducibles are free in the resource library, no email gate. The full framework is in Co-Teaching Evolved by Matthew Rhoads and Dr. Belinda Dunnick Karge (Solution Tree).

Bring the framework to your school or district. Professional learning connects the book, the tools, and your team’s real implementation priorities. Explore Consulting.