District Administration - September 2007 - (Page 49)

New Teachers Are induction programs worth the cost? BY JENNIFER MACIEJEWSKI ALTHOUGH MANY FIRST AND second-year teachers will put on a brave face for their colleagues and administrators, a glimpse of professional woes can be found by browsing beginning teachers’ online message boards. “I had so little support,” says one ﬁrstyear teacher on teachers.net’s Beginning Teachers chat board. Despite repeated requests for a lesson demonstration to help her understand the district’s complex reading program, the professional development reading coach did not come into her classroom until nearly a month after she failed her ﬁrst formal reading evaluation. “By January, I was burnt out and stopped handing back homework, stopped asking for any help and stopped caring.” “This was my ﬁrst job, and I was not receiving any support at all,” echoes another ﬁrst-year teacher, whose contract has not been renewed for the 2007-2008 school year, on the Beginning Teachers chat board. “I struggled with the curriculum. Now that it’s starting to make sense, I’m not getting the chance to prove that I can do the job.” Chances are, your district has heard similar complaints during exit interviews for years. The Need for Induction Programs When faced with the traditional sinkor-swim induction program, nearly 30 percent of new teachers will sink, leaving the profession within the ﬁrst three years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Those who swim often follow a similar pattern of development: “Your ﬁrst year will be rough,” asserts one third-year teacher on the Beginning Teachers chat board. “The second year will be better. By your third year, you should begin to feel like you can make it. My school has no ‘new teacher’ program. . . . I would like to see more support for new teachers. I think it would make a huge diﬀerence.” Education experts agree. Nationwide, teacher induction programs, for the most part, remain “underconceptualized, underfunded and underresourced activities,” says Barnett Berry, founder and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, a research-based advocacy organization. Less than half of the states fund any new teacher induction program, and those that do rarely have all the components necessary for ensuring high quality. “If there’s anything that we probably could do and should do to improve the quality of teaching and ensure the stability of the workforce, it is to provide better, more substantive support for our newest teachers,” Berry says. Studies demonstrate the positive eﬀects that strong new teacher induction programs have on attrition rates and student performance. For instance, in Chicago Public Schools, novice elementary school teachers who received strong mentoring were 25 percent more likely to plan to remain in the same school, according to a 2007 report by the Consortium of September 2007 49 www.DistrictAdministration.com Photo By Jon Silver http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2007

Cover Contents Editor’s Letter Letters News Update Curriculum Update Inside the Law District Profile Administrator Profile District Buying Power 2007 X-Factor Student Achievement Awards 2007 We've Got Mail Supporting New Teachers How Well Does This Web Site Work? New Products Problem Solution Computer Literature Research Corner Online Edge Supervisor’s Opinion Speaking Out Calendar of Events Understanding the Times

District Administration - September 2007

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