Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SuperFly]

The struggle for retention shows teachers need teachers
Mentors help with rules, lessons newcomers need
Pat Kossan


Teachers wedge their way into Misty Ritz's small office and sit in the worrying chair, the crying chair. The chair they declare they'll never leave to return to the classroom.

It's the chair where they voice their greatest fears: Their students aren't learning. They are terrible teachers. They should probably quit.

Most of these teachers are new. Many are in their first full-time job. But in her nine years of mentoring teachers for the Peoria Unified School District, Ritz has lost only two.





Her secret isn't what you'd expect: She doesn't hold hands. Instead, she helps teachers with two critical things they need to survive: clear classroom rules of behavior that are enforced every day, and a written, step-by-step, well-executed lesson plan.

"Without those, you're dead in the water," Ritz said.

As schools struggle to keep teachers and find new ones, more are realizing that many teachers need teachers. They need full-time mentors who are experienced in the classroom and up to date on state and district expectations. In the most effective programs, the mentors are well-trained and committed to assisting both experienced and new teachers.

The payoff can be a significant.

Research shows mentoring can increase the percentage of new teachers who stay in the classroom by 20 percent and raise student achievement as measured by test scores.

The need for mentoring is particularly critical in growing states like Arizona.

Between one-third and one-half of new teachers across the country end up quitting during the first three to five years on the job, research shows. Add retirements and buyouts, and the trend has left Arizona with a severe shortage of teachers and hundreds of students to suffer from foundering novices.

No one has tracked the number or quality of mentoring programs in Arizona districts since a Northern Arizona University study in 2000. About 30 percent of districts had no mentoring for new teachers. Half the districts reported their new teachers received some guidance or informal mentoring from colleagues. Less than 20 percent had high-quality, formal mentoring programs.

After years of talking, Arizona's policymakers initiated two mentoring programs for a few dozen districts within the past three years. Early results reflect national research: The more mentoring, the more likely first-year teachers hang on and students learn.


That first day alone
Ritz said no internship can prepare a teacher for the day he or she walks into the classroom alone for the first time.

"There are things experienced teachers do that you can't see," she said, adding that "99.9 percent of first-year teachers will be in here in tears."

On a Thursday in October Ritz was headed to monitored the classroom of Sun Valley Elementary second-year teacher Ellen Baughman, one of her 19 new teachers. Afterward, she was to meet one-on-one with Baughman to discuss the lesson she watched.

"I will be giving her refinements," Ritz said, "but hopefully she won't realize it."

It was around this time last year when Baughman's husband greeted her after work and asked her to go to Best Buy with him. She answered by crumpling onto the steps inside her new home and weeping.

She was hungry, exhausted and convinced she was doing her seventh-grade students more harm than good. Baughman and her husband had just moved 2,000 miles from Ohio and bought a house in time for her to start her first job as a teacher.

"You have 100 students that you love," Baughman said, "and their parents expect you to love them the same way parents love them."

Instead, she was convinced she was failing them. Baughman had the vision of what she wanted her kids to learn, but she couldn't get them to follow her.

"This was really frustrating me because I know what I'm capable of, and this was not the fruits of my labor."


Mapping way to goals
Ritz stepped in. She helped Baughman break down her teaching goals into small, logical and engaging steps. Together they mapped out a series of workable, practical daily lesson plans. Now, Baughman finds or creates her own lesson plans, teaching tools, demonstrations and props. Earlier this month, she was rummaging through scrap wood at Lowe's to build a demonstration of the Earth's tectonic plates. She has learned the value of a good lesson plan: Kids are too busy thinking and feeling smart to get into trouble.

"Half the time I'm up here, I'm scared to death," Baughman confessed after a particularly good lesson. The kids were eager, attentive, sharing laughs with their teacher. "When I'm nervous, I start making jokes. This is where I can be the weird person I want to be. And I think that's why I want to stay in seventh grade."

This year, Baughman hasn't cried, and much to her surprise, her kids love her and work to please her.

"I thought they would leave and never come back," she said.

Then again, Baughman thought she would leave and never come back.


Mentors become a must
In recent years, education graduates have been asking principals a new question: Do you have a full-time mentor at this school?

Baughman said she accepted the job at Sun Valley Elementary without asking if there was a mentor available.

"I expected a mentor but, out of my naivet�, would have taken the job without a mentor," Baughman said. "But I would have been very, very unhappy."

A growing number of districts are struggling to find money for mentors in their operating budgets or to seek private and government grants. If mentors help improve teacher retention, the district saves money. When a new teacher walks away after three years, a district has already invested $7,000 to $10,000 in his or her training, districts report.

A 2007 benefit-cost study from the University of California-Santa Cruz showed $1 invested in a good, full-time mentoring program can save a district at least 66 cents. It increases the number of teachers staying on the job for six years by 20 percent.

Maintaining a mentor corps isn't easy. In Peoria Unified, half the teachers - about 1,100 - are in their first five years, and 700 of them are in their first three. Yet budget constraints forced the district to reduce the number of schools with full-time mentors.

It's not just novices who need mentors. Fast-moving brain research and demands of the global economy are changing how and what kids learn. Accountability requires a growing and ever-changing amount of data and paperwork.

Even veterans are running to keep up, and many turn to mentors for help.


Back to the classroom
Mary Ellen Hawks' fourth-grade class at Sun Valley Elementary is noisy one recent morning. Hawks seems unperturbed as she walks among what appears to be chaos, visiting each table of chatting children. Then she says her rather surprising magic word: "Transition." Silence falls over the room and all eyes are on her. She tells the kids they have done a "spanking good job" in their new teams. Mentor Misty Ritz is monitoring Hawks' classroom, but doesn't stay long, handing her a short complimentary note before she closes the door. After 29 years of teaching, Hawks, 60, loves manipulating kids into learning - so much that after a year of retirement, she missed it and needed to get back.

She likes having Ritz around. The mentor helps her find good resource material for fourth-grade lesson plans. She has taught many elementary grades, but never fourth grade. And she needs a mentor to learn the policy, procedures, paperwork and expectations of her new school.

"I felt more secure in the way they wanted things done because I was mentored," Hawks said.

Now, teachers are required to cover more material and specific topics because each grade has state learning goals teachers are expected to instill in their children. Even with 29 years in the business, Hawks was "a bit overwhelmed" starting anew.

"I told my husband, Jim, 'Look at me. I was an outstanding teacher and look at how I feel. Can you imagine these new teachers and what they must feel like?'"

[Easter Clark]

Interesting read. It's no secret that many, many teachers quit the profession within the first three years due to all of the demands placed on them by undereducated parents who think they know more than their kids' teachers, and unsympathetic administrators who are given impossible benchmarks.

I think that those of us working in public schools should do our best to utilize our coteachers, who are, in effect, our mentors. I realize that many Korean English teachers lack the ability to speak fluently, but we can (and should) put their experience to work for us (assuming they're not FOB teachers!).

Professional development is sparse in this profession, and as EFL teachers, it is sometimes up to us to seek out these opportunities. Otherwise, we may remain stagnant and become jaded. There is always something new to learn, and people there to teach you new things, which is one of the great things about life! We just have to be open to new possibilities.

[ddeubel]

Superfly,

That's some pretty powerful fly paper! Thanks.

A big question and at this time of evening, I haven't the will power to properly reply. Only want to say thanks and it is always a pleasant surprise to find such stimulating stuff for reflection and action......

My own "research" shows that teachers, new teachers, need routine. Repeatable, workable frameworks for lesson giving. Also, as well as prof. development (which they get in Korea) , most important is the follow up and support/reflection. So many teachers who I teach, inspire, stir up......only return to the same old, same old. Why? Because they don't receive ongoing encouragement and support.

Thanks again,

DD

[mindmetoo]

Yeah, you come to teaching with really high aspirations. I said it before and I'll say it again: "You come wondering how best to open their minds to a big beautiful amazing world and after about the first five minutes you spend the next year wondering how to get them to all just shut up for 30 seconds."