Getting Comfortable With the Uncomfortable in ICT

A Follow-Up to “The Hidden Toll of ICT”

Let’s be honest.

If you work in an Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) classroom, you have either had that conversation, been thinking about it—or you have been actively avoiding it. The one about planning time. The one about schedules. The one about compliance that suddenly makes everyone uncomfortable.

Not the loud kind of uncomfortable.
The quiet kind.
The let me tread lightly kind.

The kind where teachers whisper concerns to one another in hallways and after meetings—while administrators respond with policy language, calendar screenshots, and reminders to “be flexible.”

Here is the part of ICT no one likes to say out loud: collaboration is expected, but the conditions to do it well are often missing. And when teachers finally speak up—when they ask where and when co-planning is actually supposed to happen—the response is almost always the same:

“They have several prep periods during the week. They can figure out a time to plan together that works for them both.”

Let’s pause right there.

On paper, that sounds reasonable. In practice, it is often where ICT begins to fall apart.

Because several prep periods does not mean shared prep.
It does not mean protected time.
And it certainly does not mean intentional collaboration.

What it really means is this: figure it out on your own.

Plan during lunch.
Plan before students arrive.
Plan after dismissal.
Plan between meetings—while answering emails, grading papers, and preparing for your next observation.

Meanwhile, coaching meetings stay fixed. Data meetings and professional development remain protected. Calendars fill quickly. But co-planning—the backbone of ICT—is treated like a suggestion.

And this is where the uncomfortable conversation actually lives.

When leadership frames planning as something teachers can “figure out,” responsibility shifts without structure. This is a familiar explanation in many schools—often framed as flexibility and autonomy—but it frequently creates friction and signals deeper dysfunction instead.

The burden lands on co-teachers, while accountability still lives with them. No one says it directly, but the message is clear: collaboration is required; time is not always guaranteed.

That contradiction does not just strain partnerships; it fractures them—especially when improvised lessons or misaligned roles later appear in formal or informal observation feedback and are used as evidence of a “lack of planning” (Danielson, 2013).

When the Real Conversation Happens

I have been in this room more times than I can count.

An assistant principal asks me to sit in on a co-teaching meeting to “support coaching.” In the moment, it looks solid—data everywhere. Benchmarks. Pass rates. End-of-unit projections. The AP is talking, typing, naming next steps at lightning speed.

The meeting is dense.
Heavy.
Technical.

The co-teachers sit side by side doing what good teachers do—listening carefully, nodding, trying to keep up in real time.

And when the meeting ends, the real conversation begins.

Not during the coaching.
Not in front of leadership.
After.

Each teacher pulls me aside—separately—and asks the same question:

“Doc… how are we supposed to plan together? We don’t have any periods off together. There’s literally no time.”

Let me be clear: these were not teachers avoiding accountability. This was not a lack of intellectual preparation, professional skill, or willingness to engage with data or expectations. They were asking a logistical question the system had never considered—let alone answered.

No matter how many times the question is raised, the response from leadership tends to follow the same line of reasoning:

“They need to figure it out. Planning time exists in the schedule.”                                    “They have several prep periods during the week.”

Except there was no common planning time anywhere in the schedule. No shared prep. No protected space.

What was built in? More professional development sessions. More coaching meetings—mostly separate, occasionally together, almost never with time to actually do the work being discussed.

That is when the contradiction becomes clear.

Coaching was happening around planning, not in service of it. Feedback was flowing freely. Time was not. And no amount of full-day PDs or coaching—no matter how well intentioned—can replace time you were never given.

Why This Conversation Is So Hard—and So Necessary

Friend and Cook (2016) emphasize that strong ICT partnerships rely on trust, parity, shared decision-making, and open communication. In practice, co-teaching functions less like a staffing model and more like a professional partnership—one that requires commitment, negotiation, and honest dialogue to survive (Murawski, 2010).

But here is the disconnect.
Healthy co-teaching relationships depend on honest conversations, yet guidance for how to have those conversations is often nonexistent—making even necessary questions about schedules, decision-making, or compliance feel difficult to raise.

Teachers learn quickly which questions are “safe” and which ones feel risky. Over time, many stop asking—not because the issue disappears, but because the path to clarity feels undefined. This is especially true for newer teachers and career changers who may lack tenure, institutional power, or psychological safety.

This is where ICT quietly crumbles—not because teachers do not care, but because systems reward silence over clarity. And silence has a cost: misaligned instruction, blurred roles, and students receiving support that depends more on teacher stamina than intentional design.

Start With Each Other: The Co-Teacher Conversation

This is where the work actually begins. And before it ever reaches leadership, it begins with learning how to have it with your co-teacher.

That requires locking in—first with yourself and your intentions, and inward reflection on what is not working. I had to do that work myself. Because navigating these conversations is not about assigning fault; it is about naming reality.

Clarity has to exist between the two people sharing the classroom before it can exist anywhere else.

If the relationship is already uneasy, the conversation must be grounded in shared purpose, not frustration. That means shifting the language away from accusation and toward impact.

Instead of:

• “You never make time to plan.”
• “I’m doing all the work.”
• “This isn’t fair.”

Consider:

• “I’m noticing we’re making decisions in real time instead of together.”
• “I want us aligned before lessons—not scrambling during them.”
• “I’m worried that without planning time, our students aren’t getting the consistency they deserve.”

As Scruggs et al. (2007) note, open communication is a defining feature of effective co-teaching partnerships, while avoidance is one of the fastest ways those partnerships fail.

What This Means for Teachers

If you are an ICT teacher reading this, here is what this means:

If you are struggling to plan, it is not because you are disorganized or uncommitted.
If you are improvising in real time, that is not a personal failure—it is a structural one.
If your co-teaching relationship feels strained, that strain may be rooted in missing conditions, not missing effort.

And in real time, this also means you have concrete ways to respond:

• Naming planning challenges without apologizing for them
• Shifting conversations away from effort and toward conditions
• Documenting when planning is happening reactively instead of proactively
• Using shared language with your co-teacher before concerns ever reach leadership

It can also mean stepping back and looking beyond your individual classroom.

Reviewing the master schedule, identifying where colleagues in your department have overlapping availability, and advocating together for shared planning time shifts the conversation away from individual need and toward collective instructional practice.

It also means advocating for protected time to write, develop, and review IEPs, service logs, and teacher reports collaboratively—not in isolation. This work is instructional. When it happens collaboratively, teams are able to share best practices, learn from one another, and improve consistency across classrooms.

You are not asking for special treatment when you ask for protected co-planning time. You are asking for the minimum conditions required to do the job you are being evaluated on—and to do it well.

When the Conversation Expands

Once you and your co-teacher are aligned, advocacy shifts.

This is where many educators freeze—not because they do not know what to say, but because they have seen what happens to teachers who say it the wrong way. So let’s be clear: advocating for protected co-planning time is not complaining, resistance, or insubordination. It is naming a structural need.

When approaching administration, the goal is not to debate whether planning matters—everyone agrees it does. The goal is to surface the gap between expectations and conditions.

That can sound like:

• “We’re being coached on alignment, but we don’t have scheduled time to plan with intention in ways that support our students and our co-teaching partnership.”
• “We’re noticing that planning is happening reactively, and we want to be proactive so instruction is consistent and equitable for students.”
• “We’re asking for co-planning to be treated as essential—and for protected time to be built into the schedule to support intentional, collaborative practice.”

As Kraft and Papay (2014) suggest, when advocacy is framed around student impact, instructional quality, and equity—rather than personal workload—leadership responses are more productive and sustainable.

What This Can Look Like for Leaders

For school leaders, getting comfortable with this conversation does not mean promising more time than the schedule allows. It means making planning visible, protected, and intentional.

In real time, this means looking at systems—not just individuals.

It means reviewing the master schedule through an instructional lens to identify opportunities for shared planning across ICT pairs and within departments, rather than expecting collaboration to happen informally.

It means asking not only what teachers are being coached on, but when they are expected to act on that feedback together.

It also means recognizing that compliance-related work—IEP development, service documentation, progress monitoring, and teacher reports—is instructional work. When time for this work is built into collaborative structures, teams are better positioned to align services, share effective practices, and reduce variability in implementation.

That can look like:

• Scheduling at least one shared co-planning period per week for ICT pairs
• Protecting co-planning time the same way coaching and data meetings are protected
• Creating opportunities for special education teams to collaborate beyond a single co-teaching pair
• Aligning coaching structures so feedback happens during planning, not only after instruction
• Naming co-planning and collaborative compliance work as non-negotiable conditions of effective ICT—not informal expectations

When co-planning is treated as essential, teachers stop scrambling. Roles clarify. Instruction stabilizes—and students experience consistency.

Why the Civil Rights Frame Matters

This is not about convenience.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004), students with disabilities have a civil right to specially designed instruction delivered with fidelity. That instruction does not happen through brief check-ins, rushed emails, or “we’ll catch up later.” It requires joint planning, shared ownership, and deliberate alignment between professionals.

When co-planning time is missing, this is not a scheduling inconvenience. It is a systems issue with real equity implications.

Getting Comfortable With the Uncomfortable—On Purpose

Avoiding this conversation does not keep the peace; it delays the fallout.

When co-teachers do not have time to plan together, instruction fragments, roles blur, and students—especially those who rely on consistency—feel the disconnect first.

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable means refusing to normalize systems that quietly undermine the work educators are being asked to do well. It means naming gaps clearly, standing firm without being combative, and recognizing that inclusive education is sustained not by flexibility alone, but by structures that match expectations with support.

A Call to Action

Bottom line: for ICT to work, expectations must align with the conditions educators are given to meet them.

If collaboration is required, time must be protected.
If alignment is evaluated, planning must be scheduled.
If inclusive education is the goal, systems must support it.

Sometimes, the most responsible thing educators and leaders can do—for themselves and for students—is say the quiet part out loud—and then build structures that respond.

It is time for all of us—teachers, leaders, and systems—to get comfortable with the uncomfortable conversations in ICT and in education more broadly, and to build structures that allow those conversations to lead to change.

This work is not only about supporting educators—it is about honoring our responsibility to students and their families, particularly our most compromised learners, who experience the consequences of our systems every day and grow into the future agents of change those systems help shape. 

References

Danielson, C. (2013). The framework for teaching evaluation instrument. The Danielson Group.

Friend, M., & Cook, L. (2016). Interactions: Collaboration skills for school professionals (8th ed.). Pearson.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (2004).

Murawski, W. W. (2010). Collaborative teaching in elementary schools: Making the co-teaching marriage work! Corwin.

Scruggs, T. E., Mastropieri, M. A., & McDuffie, K. A. (2007). Co-teaching in inclusive classrooms. Exceptional Children, 73(4), 392–416.

Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can professional environments in schools promote teacher development? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 476–500.

Image                                                                                               Co-teaching requires more than shared space—it requires protected time, trust, and intentional collaboration. Without structured opportunities to plan together, even the strongest partnerships are placed under strain.

Image 2

Difficult conversations in ICT settings often happen quietly—between meetings, after coaching sessions, or behind closed doors. Addressing them directly is a necessary step toward sustainable, equitable instruction.