Transforming Teaching through Teacher Induction
By Ellen Moir
Imagine putting new hires alone in an office, isolated from co-workers, giving them a difficult job to do, and then expecting that they perform at the same level as the experience colleague next door. Hardly a formula for success, but that’s exactly what we do with many new teachers.
Our education system’s shocking indifference to the fate of its newest members is an embarrassment. As schools open each fall, thousands of beginning teachers receive little more than a student roster and a classroom key. Usually fresh out of college and in their first job, these novices are often subjected to a hazing ritual that involves placing them in the most difficult jobs in the hardest-to-staff schools. They work long hours, planning lessons and learning complex curriculum requirements in isolation. They struggle to manage 30 students, each with individual needs and abilities.
It’s a sink-or-swim experience. With little support, it’s no wonder that about 40 percent of new teachers leave the profession within four years.
There is no period as important to a teacher’s career as the first few years of teaching. For the first time, novice teachers are responsible for blending the insights learned from their own educational experiences and the pedagogical theory gleaned from teacher education programs with the reality of inspiring students and managing their learning on a day-to-day basis.
My first year of teaching came as a real shock. I had graduated at the top of my class with a master’s degree. I had prepared and studied and felt very ready, all the way up the second hour of my first teacher workday. The primary problem was lack of support. I had no idea where to start and I was teaching 50 miles from where I had my student teaching experience. I had read Harry Wong and thought I was ready but when it came down to it, I didn’t know where to begin. I needed someone to sit down with me and prioritize and organize. As a result, I spent a lot of time on less important aspects of starting a new classroom and less time on the elements that really mattered: creating a management plan, finding out about my students by reading their portfolios, and planning the lessons involved in establishing routines and procedures. I didn’t see my mentor until the end of the first week of school, and by that point I had already fallen flat on my face.
– Beginning Teacher, Durham Public Schools, North Carolina
Early experiences set the professional norms, attitudes, and standards that will guide practice throughout a career. We know that student achievement depends on the quality of a teacher’s instruction. Our challenge is to induct new colleagues in ways that promote high levels of classroom practice, building a teaching corps that can ensure the academic success of all students.
Many districts have induction programs for new teachers, but too often these deal only with logistics, or assign a new teacher a “buddy” to provide emotional support for life in the trenches. What new teachers really need is the guidance of successful, experienced teachers trained to mentor. And both mentors and new teachers need time off from other duties to work together to improve teaching.
The rest of the year was a series of struggles as I grappled with serious behavior issues that made me feel like I had no time to teach at all. I was spending countless hours trying to find solutions and I felt like I was by myself. My assigned mentor was an EC specialist, and a very good one. And she did help me as much as she could, but she had her own students and a very busy schedule like the rest of us. I always felt burdensome asking for help… and so I only asked for help when I really needed it. And that was always after I’d pretty much exhausted myself on my own.
– Beginning Teacher, Durham Public Schools, North Carolina
Supporting new teachers is complex and demanding work that involves learning skills most classroom teachers don’t possess. We need to think not only about what a new teacher needs to be successful but also what a mentor teacher needs to know and be able to do to support a new teacher. The pedagogy of mentoring includes an in-depth understanding of teacher development, professional teaching standards, performance assessment, and student content standards, along with strategies for classroom observation and a variety of coaching techniques. This learning occurs most successfully when mentors are given regular opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills and to problem-solve issues of practice.
The experiences I have gained in the short time I’ve been a mentor have been invaluable. I have a passion for teaching; it has been second nature to me. But mentoring has challenged me to analyze what I do, why and how I do it, in order to share with, guide and facilitate new teachers as they begin their professional journeys.
– Mentor, Memphis Tennessee
Effective mentoring requires mentors to work with new teachers in their classrooms and to base their support on the realities new teachers face. Experienced teachers serving as mentors can provide new teachers with options for solving student and curriculum challenges. They help novices make quicker and better decisions about lesson plans, teaching strategies, and assessment. When districts assign new teachers this kind of intensive instructional support from the start, new teachers focus less on day-to-day survival and more on ensuring that every student progresses. They become more confident, more skilled, and much more likely to survive their early years in the profession. Their students are the primary beneficiaries, receiving the education they need and deserve. We know this from our observations and from the teachers we serve.
My second year was very different from my first year. It was in the same school, so the issues were the same, but this time I had a full-time mentor, Mrs. Mentor. I must admit that at first I was skeptical, because most of the people coming around in a school are coming around to give you more work to do, which is not a good thing when you feel like you have more than you can handle to begin with. I wasn’t used to someone who just wanted to help and had the time to help. It didn’t take me long to realize that Mrs. Mentor was actually really there for me. So over time I started taking advantage of everything she had to offer, which was a lot. My mentor has many years of experience in different school settings, and she is always willing to provide wisdom, research, and resources. She is extremely intelligent and intuitive and I respect her professionalism and knowledge base a great deal. When I asked for help, I didn’t have to wait until I was exhausted or at my wits end. She saw me every week and so she was always there for me, through the difficulties and the triumphs, and I appreciated it.
In many ways my second year of teaching was like my first year in terms of difficulties. The students at my school have many special needs in the areas of behavior issues, issues of poverty, and over-regimentation over many years. I felt like I had a lot working against me. I developed a routine that seemed to work so that I could try to take on these other issues. However, teaching was not what I wanted it to be. It was not empowering children and it was not joyful for the students or for me. I went to the depths of despair in my career again and had decided that I wasn’t going to teach past Christmas. I was broken-hearted that I didn’t find joy in my profession. I had decided that I had given it another fair shake and it wasn’t working. I was disappointed that I had spent many years in a program preparing for this profession and then was going to walk away from it. I felt like I just couldn’t bear the relentless march over mountain after mountain and obstacle after obstacle.
But this time I had a partner in Mrs. Mentor. She was a partner in the true sense of the word because she worked hard to find strategies through research and to bring new ideas to try. She opened me up to the possibility that I could make positive changes and she gave me the tools to do it. This is so different from my first year, when my mentor would meet with me and help me with certain children. My full-time mentor put in a lot of work and suggested changes in philosophy and methods that were sometimes small but sometimes sweeping. She impacted me profoundly, as opposed to trying to help through small doses of quick advice. She got in the trenches with me.
There were still setbacks. My students didn’t seem to be achieving like I knew they could on standardized benchmarks. Also, I was still up against issues of all kinds. But my mentor always lifted me up. She always listened, she always sincerely praised what I was doing and who I am as a professional, and she saw me through it. Her presence was of indescribable value to me. I feel I have made a real connection with her that I will cherish for a long time.
My students did an excellent job on the EOG test, and like my first year, at the end of this year I feel good that they are prepared for the next grade. However, a fundamental difference between the two years has been my experience having a full-time mentor. My students benefited from having her involved because all the help I got was passed on to them. They were happier and they learned more because of it.
I’m moving to a new state at the end of the school year due to a new employment opportunity for my husband. I am taking everything I learned from my mentor with me–all the strategies and research-based methods I learned, the spirit of experimentation and exploration of new ideas, all the encouragement and support my mentor gave me–I’m taking it all to my new fifth grade teaching position. Students will continue to benefit and I will continue to grow every year, because now I know what I believe my mentor knew all along, that I am in the right profession.
– Beginning Teacher, Durham Public Schools, North Carolina
The New Teacher Center’s induction program, the Santa Cruz New Teacher Project (SCNTP), is one of California’s Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Programs. The SCNTP works with 1,000 new K-12 teachers in 31 school districts in our region. We release veteran teachers full time from the classroom to mentor cohorts of 15 new teachers using a comprehensive formative assessment system that we developed. Whenever possible, we match mentors and beginning teachers by grade level and subject area. Mentors and beginning teachers collaboratively set teaching goals linked to professional teaching standards and content standards. We emphasize effective assessment techniques and collection of student data to guide instruction. Preparing our new teachers to work with diverse learners is key. We also help principals to understand and meet new teachers’ needs. Two studies have shown that the retention rate for our new teachers is 88% after six years.
The benefits of intensive induction programs aren’t restricted to new teachers. Our induction provides intensive training for mentors through a two-year series of Mentor Academy sessions. Mentors also meet weekly at Mentor Forums where they examine their practice and receive ongoing training. The additional expertise and new leadership skills mentors acquire enhance their contribution to their schools and districts when they return to the classroom or assume other professional roles. Mentors are reinvigorated when their knowledge and skills contribute to the successful entry of a new generation of teachers – an important professional legacy.
It’s how to talk, how to work with other teachers at grade level meetings or at staff meetings. And how to listen. All those coaching strategies of paraphrasing and making sure that other people’s voices are in the room. Being so aware of that, which is probably not something I recognized as much before the New Teacher Project…. These are the things that help me to teach to others.
– Former Mentor, Santa Cruz New Teacher Project
I feel it every single day–how hard it is to meet the needs of 37 children in my classroom. And they’re all different…. I don’t know how you can do everything there is to do… Formative assessment, that’s what you have to use to meet the needs of the kids.
– Former Mentor, Santa Cruz New Teacher Project
The New Teacher Center opened in 1998 with a mission to develop, research, and advocate for intensive teacher induction programs. Thanks to the generosity of funders who share our vision, we are now able to support school districts and state departments of education in 40 states to launch teacher induction programs. Because the nation’s poor and minority students are most likely to be taught by new and inexperienced teachers, we target hard-to-staff large urban school districts, including District of Columbia, Chicago, Miami-Dade, New York City, and Boston Public Schools. We are piloting ways to link our new teacher development model to preservice programs and to veteran teacher professional development. Our hope is that all new teachers will one day enter a profession that acknowledges their need for specialized support in their critical early years.
The time has come for universities and schools, administrators, teachers, unions, and teacher educators to break set by coming together to build a comprehensive model of new teacher development that begins in pre-service and continues throughout the early years of a teacher’s career. Intensive induction accelerates learning in the classrooms of new teachers by offering the instructional and emotional support that builds teacher practice and helps to retain teachers during their formative years. We owe it to our new teachers and their students to make intensive induction the norm in U.S. schools.
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