How to Work With Your Cooperating Teacher: A Student Teacher’s Guide
Your cooperating teacher is the single most influential person in your student teaching experience — which is why Road to Teaching: The Ultimate Guide devotes three full chapters to this one relationship: reaching out before day one, working through an imperfect fit, and hearing what a veteran cooperating teacher wishes every student teacher knew. This guide draws directly from those chapters.
The stakes are real. Your cooperating teacher shapes your daily teaching load, models the craft you are there to learn, writes the evaluation your university reads, and often becomes the reference that hiring committees call first. This is not a relationship to leave to luck.
Start Before Day One
In Road to Teaching, I write: "There is no reason to wait until your first day of student teaching to begin building relationships with your cooperating teacher and students." As soon as you receive your placement, get your cooperating teacher's contact information and set up an informal meeting and observation. Depending on your program, you will spend three to nine months in that classroom — and building quality rapport takes time.
The book walks through that first visit in detail: dress professionally (it is usually better to be a little overdressed than underdressed), and come ready for introductions — prepare a 20–30 second introduction of yourself, because the teacher will likely put you in front of the class. Observe closely and take notes, and talk with students while they work individually or in groups so you are not, as I put it in the book, "the proverbial fly on the wall." Before you leave, ask for the pacing guide or curriculum map, agree on the best way to communicate, and compliment your cooperating teacher on something specific you observed — "Everybody loves a little praise, so show you genuinely care."
If you are completing the edTPA, this early conversation matters even more. Your cooperating teacher may not know the edTPA's requirements, and as I explain in the book, they can become "a really useful ally" in navigating it — they know the students, their strengths, and their learning needs better than anyone. Come with a brief outline of the timeline, the videotaping requirements, and how they might support the process.
"Initiate contact with your cooperating teacher well before student teaching begins, approach the relationship professionally, and express genuine enthusiasm for learning from their expertise. This early investment in the relationship often determines the quality of your entire student teaching experience." — Road to Teaching, Chapter 20
When the Fit Isn't Perfect
The book is honest about placements: "You may be partnered with a teacher that is supportive and open to new ideas and approaches or, on the other side of the spectrum, you may be paired with a teacher that is inflexible and unsupportive." Chapter 21 describes both extremes — the controlling cooperating teacher who seems to be "trying to create carbon copies of themselves," and the unstructured one who "seems to create lesson plans while driving to work." Your choice of cooperating teacher is often completely out of your control. What you do next is not.
The first move is attitude. As I write in the book: "Keep in mind the real reason you are there is to teach. Your students deserve a teacher who is happy and excited to see them, and who is fully invested in their continued growth." Learning to leave frustration at the door is a skill you will use for your entire career.
The second is what the book calls the buy-in approach. Keep sharing the ideas you would like to try — and if your cooperating teacher does not take to them, "solicit their advice on what modifications can be made in order for it to work in their classroom. A majority of the time this buy-in approach will work as it shows the cooperating teacher that you respect their teaching style and learning environment."
Beyond that, Chapter 21 offers a practical toolkit for a hard placement: treat style differences as material — ask yourself, "What can I learn from this approach that I hadn't considered before?" Document specific behaviors and conversations rather than general complaints. Bring in your university supervisor early; mediating difficult placements is their job. And ask permission to observe other teachers in the building — it widens your learning while easing the pressure on one strained relationship.
Above all, keep perspective. As the book reminds you, "you only have to work with this teacher for a short and finite amount of time... In a short time, you will have your own classroom where you can freely implement your pedagogical and curriculum ideas."
What Your Cooperating Teacher Is Thinking
Chapter 22 of Road to Teaching hands the microphone to Leah Krippner, a veteran cooperating teacher, and her advice reframes the whole experience: "Consider the entire student teaching experience as an extended job interview." Dress the part, arrive on time, stay late enough to matter, and "be the ideal employee the school is looking to hire."
Her hardest-hitting advice is also her simplest: "Listen more than you speak." New teachers, she writes, tend to arrive believing classrooms barely functioned before they set foot in one — "It is great to think this; just keep it to yourself." Match your cooperating teacher's grading style rather than inventing your own, because "your cooperating teacher will have to seamlessly take over again." Eat lunch with colleagues every day no matter how busy you are, keep the main office happy, and visit other classrooms to collect ideas for the day you need them.
Notice what runs through all three chapters: proactivity. The student teachers who struggle most are the ones who wait — to reach out, to ask for feedback, to raise a problem. If a serious conflict develops, raise it directly and privately first, and loop in your university supervisor early. Research summarized by the New Teacher Center finds that mentoring quality is one of the strongest predictors of new-teacher effectiveness and retention — which is exactly why this relationship deserves deliberate effort.
Your student teaching semester also feeds directly into what comes next. The stories you build here become your answers to tell me about yourself and why should we hire you, and the classroom evidence you gather becomes the backbone of your edTPA writing. Invest in the relationship and you are investing in all three.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I first contact my cooperating teacher?
Before student teaching begins — not on day one. As soon as you have your placement, request an informal meeting and observation. Come dressed professionally, with a 20–30 second self-introduction ready, and leave with the pacing guide and an agreed way to communicate.
What if my cooperating teacher and I disagree about teaching style?
Use the book's buy-in approach: keep sharing your ideas, and when one is turned down, ask what modifications would make it work in their classroom. It shows respect for their teaching style — and most of the time, it earns you the chance to try.
How do I handle a genuinely difficult placement?
Leave frustration at the door, document specifics rather than complaints, involve your university supervisor early, and ask to observe other teachers. And keep perspective: the placement is finite, and your own classroom is coming.
Can my cooperating teacher help me get a teaching job?
Yes — treat the whole semester as an extended job interview, because that is how your school sees it. Your cooperating teacher can write your strongest reference, alert you to openings, and introduce you to administrators, and principals routinely call them off the record.
Go Deeper
Want the full chapters this guide draws from — communicating early with your cooperating teacher, navigating a difficult placement, and a cooperating teacher's own advice — plus every stage from teacher preparation through landing the job? Get Road to Teaching: The Ultimate Guide on Amazon.
Dr. Eric Hougan
