Two teachers, one workbench, one class period. When the pair splits the work well, students see the concept and the receipts in the same forty-five minutes. That is the whole promise of co-teaching a UNI session.
Why two voices help
A UNI session at the workbench asks a class to hold two threads at once. One thread is conceptual: what a generative model is, why an agent updates beliefs against observations, how a prior meets evidence. The other thread is procedural: which panel to open, what a log line means, where the gate lives, what the evidence class tag says. One teacher trying to carry both threads usually ends up rushing the second one. Two teachers, working from a shared script, can keep both threads legible.
This mirrors the way active-inference literature separates the model from the inference process. Parr, Pezzulo, and Friston (2022) treat the generative model and the update rules as distinct objects a reader has to hold in mind together (Class E). The workbench respects that split, so the co-teaching structure can respect it too (Class C).
Role A: the framer
The framer stands at the board and owns the concept. Their job is the vocabulary and the picture. They introduce the working question. They name the model the class is about to inspect. They draw the picture of prior, likelihood, and posterior on the board and keep it visible for the whole session. When a student asks "what is this doing", the framer answers in plain English before anyone points at code.
The framer also owns the honesty line. When a claim from the workbench comes up, the framer is the one who says out loud which evidence class it belongs to and why. That habit is the safety rail. It keeps the class from sliding into "the computer said so."
Role B: the inspector
The inspector sits at the workbench and drives. They open the panels, run the step, show the log, and read the gate result out loud. They point at the exact line where the belief updated and at the exact line where the falsifier fired or did not fire. When a student asks "how do we know", the inspector shows the receipt.
The inspector does not lecture. They narrate what the machine did in short sentences and hand the meaning back to the framer. That handoff is the rhythm of the whole class: concept, then receipt, then concept again.
A simple script for the opening co-taught session
A workable opening script has five beats. The framer opens with the question and the picture. The inspector loads the model and shows its shape. The framer states what the class expects to see and why. The inspector runs the step and reads the log. The framer closes by tagging the claim with an evidence class and asking the class what would have made them change their minds.
Forty minutes, two voices, one receipt on the screen. Students leave with a concept they can name and a log line they can point to.
What the pair should agree on before class
Three things, written down. One, who owns which sentence in the opening two minutes, so the class does not hear the same idea twice. Two, the exact language for the honesty fence: this is a working hypothesis on the attainable path toward General Natural Intelligence, natural not artificial, and here is the evidence class for the claim on screen. Three, the falsifier for the day. If neither teacher can say out loud what would count as the model being wrong, the session is not ready to run.
When to swap roles
Swap roles across a unit, not inside a class. Students read the framer as the "concept teacher" and the inspector as the "workbench teacher" within a period, and switching mid-session muddies the split. Across a week, though, swapping is healthy. It keeps both teachers fluent in both halves and prevents the workbench from becoming one person's specialty.
Next
- The Teacher's Workbench Tour shows the panels the inspector will be driving.
- The Workshop: What Teachers Actually Do walks through how pairs are trained before they co-teach live.
- Office Hours: What Teachers Ask Most covers the questions that come up in the opening month of co-teaching.
- Ready to bring a co-teaching pair through together? Visit /workshop.