What makes a successful job share in primary?

[rainbowfudgee]

I'm starting a new job in September in a lovely school. I'm sharing a year 4 class, teaching 2 days plus half a day shared ppa.
I've done a job share before with no crossover time and it was hard. Any tips for making this work?

Sitting down at the start of the year, agreeing on a plan and sticking to it.

Communication is the big one- decide if you are going to phone each other, write notes or email.

The best partner I had was when I did M, T, W and she did T, F. I did numeracy and reading, she did writing and other strands of maths (e.g. data handling, money etc). That way we could teach at our own pace without worrying too much about running over/ not getting something done.

Tidiness and respect for the classroom is a big one too. Nothing worse than coming into a messy room.

I did this exact job share last year in Year 4. It worked great.

IMO you need to know who the 'lead' teacher is and it's not necessarily the person teaching more. Planning together is key and then you need a way to communicate where you are up to when you handover during the week. Plan very carefully to ensure that one person doesn't end up with the lion's share of the marking.

That half day shared PPA will be your saving grace.

I have done job share with and without shared PPA, and that time together 'in the building' is SO helpful.

If you can divide up subjects, to minimise handovers 'mid flight', then that is also really helpful - so 'I do RE, you do ICT, I do Science, you do History'. It isn't always possible to divide up e.g. reading / writing / arithmetic / reasoning, especially if it is a multi-class year group, as you may be expected to keep in line with the rest of the year group, but if you can, then that is even more helpful.

Having an expectation that all handed over books are marked should be a given, but probably worth spelling out!

Being open to spending your own time communicating - a long telephone call, or an e-mail with a follow up call if needed - is great. This is particularly important if you do the beginning of the week + ppa - remember that you could hand over during ppa, but your partner can't, so being prepared to give up your time at the weekend or end of Friday for their handover to you is vital.

Things like displays, assessments, reports etc need a bit of negotiation to make sure everything is shared fairly. You may find that a routine of both giving a bit of 'your own' time during each half termly break to get all displays set up minimises resentment, and e.g. being sensitive to whether all longer pieces of writing with lots of marking happen in the second part of the week so you may need to jiggle plans every now and again.

If it works, it's brilliant. If one person is always 'giving' and one always 'sticking to their own rigid boundaries' it's a nightmare.

Thank you, lots of useful tips here!

Consistency to follow things up. I had the Y4 class from hell who would exploit ruthlessly any loophole going, and the previous year they'd had a job share. Layout of the school was such that they basically came out of their classroom through my teaching area (I had an open plan "bit") on their way out of the building.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday they would leave relatively fine (bickering as they went but like I say, nightmare class and for them this was good)... Wednesday and Friday they'd fight, swear, insult each other disgracefully and there were always at least 5 or 6 went back into the classroom (with or without parents) to complain about something someone else had done. The reason they were so utterly foul to each other and out of line on those days was that they were the last days in the week that each teacher worked so they knew that anything they got up to on the way out of school then in terms of walloping the kid who'd been getting on their wick was never going to be followed up and they'd get a free pass basically. I saw the pattern going on as basically all of this went on in the periphery of my teaching area.

They also extended this to being vile to each other and me for the 15 minutes or so of the school day on a Friday after golden time had finished before hometime - so it was any and all behaviour loopholes they'd really use to full benefit.

Like I say a very very very difficult class - any of the handful of challenging kids on their own would be tough, but they were concentrated together along with a generally rough combination of personalities (perfectly nice kids on their own but one of those cases where in combination it became an utter flipping nightmare) - the class drove me to a nervous breakdown in the end... but I just mention the change-over-day loophole as they were taking the piss and running with it absolutely. Meant I had real reservations when one of my kids was being taught in a jobshare this year - but actually they've worked it superbly well really (my eldest would be another child who'd use any possible loophole as far as she could too).

All I can say is, you're lucky you've got a conventional job-share. This year I work the first three days and the rest of the week is cobbled together with no named person in charge. Total joke.

I get on very well with my jobshare partner - she does M, T and I do the rest of the week. We stick to our own areas of the curriculum and plan for those. For example we both teach maths but work out from the year plan which areas each of us is going to cover. We keep our own resources and jotters and workbooks etc.

Conversely I once worked in a school where the jobsharers tried to vie with each other as to who could be more popular with the kids or push them on so they did more work on their days etc etc - a complete nightmare!!

Here they have set reading groups 1 per day so MT teacher A WTF teacher B

They they shuffle the groups line the following half term so all read to each teacher

One Does art and PE and ICT the other does science

Different strands for maths

Writing is based on topic work which is started and then continued

I've done a job share before which was very hard going- no crossover time, difficult class who hated each other, I'd just returned from mat leave with a non sleeper and school had a temporary head and RI inspection the term before. I'm hoping this will be better!

My partner currently works in the school in a job share, in y3 so will know the children coming up to y4. That's all positive.

Also my children will both be at school from September so my aim is to do work during the day and not in the evenings where possible.

Being a job share without shared PPA is really hard. I send a long, chatty-email to update on what today's been like, and rarely get more than two lines back. I'd love to know what's been going on and who's behaved well etc, and what she's been doing. I'm starting to feel like I'm an annoyance. We simply have no time together, and even though I get to school really early, to plan, print and cut stuff, she's also busy rushing around.
I'm not enjoying being a job share.