How does the supporting program help
with the survival of first-year teachers?
In the movie Chalk, Lowrey, a first-year history teacher, found his passion in teaching and transferred from business to a history teacher. Although he was certified, which was mandatory to be a teacher, he still lacked strategies relating to teaching methodology. Most of the time he wrote with his chalk on the board and does not care about the students’ reaction to the teaching content. Apparently, the dull classes resulted in classroom management issues. He was so frustrated with teaching even though he tried to seek solutions from the educational journals. At the end of the school year, even with the renewed contract, he thought about quitting.
From the movie, we can get a glimpse of how first-year teachers struggle in a totally new profession and workplace. When a school has recruited new teachers who are without any real teaching experience, we hire them because of their potentials. Meantime, we cannot guarantee that their potentials could naturally turn out to be teaching expertise without any support or guidance. We cannot get the new teachers, put them in classrooms, evaluate them only in the middle and end of the school year, and say “we want you next year”, or “you are out”.
According to the study by Ingersoll and Merrill (2013), more than 42% of new teachers leave teaching within five years of entry. Besides that, there is a steady increase in beginning teacher attrition over the past two decades. DePaul (1998) also illustrates the challenges that first-year teachers are confronted with: a shortage of money, supplies and planning time, overcrowded classrooms and stack of paperwork, unsupportive colleagues and parents, and diversity of student achievement and ability levels. These challenges definitely overwhelm these new teachers if no positive intervention occurs.
On the other hand, research has shown that effective mentoring impacts decision making of these first-year teachers. The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics has concluded that 92 percent of teachers assigned a mentor their first year returned the next year, and 86 percent were on the job by the fifth year. Only 84 percent of teachers without mentors returned the second year, declining to 71 percent in the fifth year.
In the New Teacher Handbook by Wisconsin Education Association Council, the phases that new teachers process are generated from anticipation, to survival, to disillusionment, to rejuvenation, to reflection, and then back to anticipation again in an entire school year (as shown in the figure below). When discerning clearly the phases, mentors could put more efforts in the phases when the new teachers feel the most frustrated. For example, supporting should be specially reinforced during the first half of the school year, when the new teachers are going through their survival and disillusionment phases, in which they are intellectually and emotionally stressed out.
The University of California Santa Cruz New Teacher Project
According to Stansbury and Zimmerman (2000), there are basically three types of support which are helpful with the development of first-year teachers. They are personal and emotional support, task- or problem-focused support, and critical reflection on teaching practice. The three types serve as a continuum, and they support the new teachers on various purposes. Task- or problem-focused support and critical reflection on teaching practice help with the improvement of teaching methodologies and classroom management skills. Meantime, first-year teachers are often emotionally challenged when adapting to a new workplace and new colleagues. Therefore, emotional support such as showing sympathy and providing advice to reduce stress is critically important.
We sometimes see class observers come into the classroom, and then get out of the classroom after class without any useful comments on the teacher’s teaching performance. Apparently, first-year teachers do not need this kind of meaningless observation. Mulhern and Byrnett (2015) have summarized four core rubrics in class observation, which are student engagement, essential content, academic ownership, and demonstration of learning. These rubrics help monitor and support the effectiveness of the first-year teachers.
The systematic Wake County Beginning Teacher Supporting Program is one of the best examples to be adapted with. The basic procedures in the guideline provide suggestions for different parties, including the beginning teachers, mentor teachers, the program coordinators and also the school administrators. Besides that, the program has provided training to mentor teachers, who are experienced teachers but still need to learn how to efficiently provide help to their peer teachers.
Based on the above research, I would call for a first-year-teacher supporting program, through which I would like to work with the first-year-teacher support team to help first-year teachers to effectively customize themselves into the school setting, improve their teaching methodology as well as classroom management skills.
Action plan
PD goals:
1) to help first-year teachers effectively customize themselves in the workplace.
2) to help improve first-year teachers' teaching skills.
Steps:
1) Steps of processing the first-year teacher supporting program/ Estimated timeline
Step 1. Advocate for a first-year-teacher support team. It is always extremely busy at the beginning of a school year since there is so much to plan ahead. Oftentimes teachers come to school for preparation before students come to study. Therefore, the first-year-teacher supporting team should be established before the first day of class. The advocacy about this program should be included in the first faculty meeting; the preparation of the advocacy should be thoroughly finished even earlier. The preparation may include asking permission from the admin team, working with HR and admin team to check the new-teacher list, working out mentor training methods, and pre-selecting some of the experienced teachers as mentor candidates (just in case that the number of new teachers and that of the mentors who are willing to provide support do not match.)
Step 2. Create working plan with the team.
Step 3. Mentor training. Step 2 and Step 3 are better done before school starts.
Step 4. Take action based on the Working Plan The support is considered as an ongoing process throughout the school year. As mentioned above, more frequent support should be provided in the first half of the school year.
Step 5. Evaluate the year-round support work; make adjustments for the next year’s work. This step should be done before the school year ends. Evaluation will be based on the records of which mentors keep track, including paperwork, videos, and other means of documentation.
2) Estimated Working Plan, which needs to be discussed with the supporting team members to make possible adjustments.
a. Hold a welcome party for new teachers; introducing the support team/designated mentors to first-year teachers.
b. Organize class observations, collect feedback from support team members, and discuss with first-year teachers about how to improve.
c. Encourage cross-subject-first-year teachers to observe each other’s class.
d. Regularly gather support team members and first-year teachers to talk about their findings or struggles (short and casual meetings).
e. Have informal one-on-one talks with the first-year teachers so as to hear about what they might not be able to speak out in public.
f. Invite department chairs, subject chairs or the admin to have class observation; get feedback from them; work together with first-year teachers to make possible adjustments.
g. Encourage first-year teachers to reflect on their growth in either written form or else.
h. Hold the first-year-teacher-end-of-year celebration.
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