Constraint recipe
Team teaching assigns two or more teachers to one class in the same period. Every teacher on the lesson must be free at that time, along with the class and the room. Checking each calendar separately misses the real limit: one teacher may have 20 free periods and the other 15, while the overlap where both are free is 6. Part-time days shrink that window fastest.
Key takeaways
- Every required teacher must be free in the same period.
- The overlap window, not either calendar, is the real placement set.
- Count the shared lesson in every assigned teacher's workload.
- Place team-taught lessons before flexible single-teacher lessons.
The overlap window is the bottleneck
A team-taught lesson reserves several teachers at once, so its valid slots are the intersection of everyone's free time. Two comfortable individual calendars can intersect in almost nothing, and one part-time contract or a day on another campus cuts the window further.
Team teaching is also an accounting decision: for workload purposes, a shared class is commonly counted by dividing the class size across the teachers, and each teacher's weekly load should reflect the shared delivery. Model every co-teacher on the lesson record, not just the lead.
A worked example: where can Rinne and Aho teach together?
Ms. Rinne and Mr. Aho co-teach one workshop group twice a week. In this four-period view Rinne is free in 13 of the 20 slots and Aho in 11, with Wednesday his non-working day. They are free together in only four.
Combined view, P1 to P4
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Rinne busy | Both free | Aho off | Rinne busy | Rinne busy |
| P2 | Both free | Aho busy | Aho off | Aho busy | Rinne busy |
| P3 | Aho busy | Rinne busy | Aho off | Both free | Aho busy |
| P4 | Rinne busy | Both free | Aho off | Aho busy | Rinne busy |
- Both teachers free
- One teacher busy
- Non-working day
Four candidate slots for two weekly lessons is workable but fragile: one new commitment for either teacher can halve it. This is why team-taught lessons are placed before flexible single-teacher lessons, and why the fix for an empty overlap is staffing or load, not a generator setting. The team teaching guide covers the load-accounting patterns.
Check the team, not the individuals
- List every lesson with more than one required teacher, and confirm each co-teacher is on the lesson record.
- Draw the overlap of available periods for the full team, as in the grid above.
- Confirm the class and the room are free in the overlap slots that remain.
- Count the lesson in every assigned teacher's workload using your local accounting rules.
- If the overlap is empty, change the staffing or the load. No placement setting can create shared free time.
Team-teaching mistakes
- Checking each teacher's calendar separately and missing the empty overlap
- Forgetting a co-teacher's part-time non-working day
- Listing only the lead teacher on the lesson record
In Smootables
A lesson can carry several teachers: the placement form notes that you can select multiple teachers, for example for workshop lessons. The generator then requires every listed teacher to be free for the whole period, keeps each of them clash-free (the Teacher no-conflict check in the analysis summary), and counts the lesson against each teacher's Weekly max hours.
That means the overlap-window arithmetic from this recipe happens automatically at generation time: if the team has no common free slot, the failure report points at the teachers involved rather than silently dropping one of them.
- Add every co-teacher to the placement, not just the lead; an unlisted teacher is unprotected.
- Check both teachers' Weekly max hours, since the shared lesson counts fully for each.
Quick answers
Is team teaching a mandatory rule?
If the lesson must have every listed teacher, yes. The lesson is invalid if any required teacher is missing or double-booked.
Why does team teaching cause double-booking errors?
One lesson reserves several teachers. If any one of them is already assigned elsewhere at that time, the lesson clashes.