Follow-Up: The Four-Letter Word That Can Help New Teachers
By Kate Mulcahy on January 24, 2012 2:35 PM
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_ahead/2012/01/the_four-letter_word_that_can_prepare_new_teachers_for_success.html
It's a four-letter word, but it's what most teachers would say when asked to name the key factor in improving our profession: Time. We need more time to plan, learn, and collaborate, so that our time with students is more effective. And it shouldn't be surprising that (as my colleagues have stated in their responses below) preservice teachers need more guided time in classrooms.
Ideally, a new teacher should develop her own craft under the guidance of a mentor. As policy expert Dana Barlin states, "One of a mentor's chief jobs is to help a new teacher close the 'knowing-doing' gap by learning to apply knowledge of best practices to daily classroom routines."
A new teacher should see educational theory applied in real time by a skilled veteran and not have to guess what it's supposed to look like in her own classroom. The knowing-doing gap can be disheartening for a new teacher who is comparing her chaotic classroom to the ideal classrooms of her teacher-education textbooks, and she could easily settle on blaming herself for her classroom short comings, questioning whether she should be a teacher at all.
Skilled veterans can also benefit from mentoring experiences. My own mentor told me that having a new teacher in her classroom kept her teaching "fresh." In my own experience, I have seen the pendulum can swing to the other extreme: after several years of teaching, even the best teacher can lose his or her connections with new techniques or technologies. A new teacher will bring new ideas.
Finally, as Anna pointed out, if new teachers had the time to develop their skills under the leadership of a mentor, students might not suffer the growing pains. Right now, most new teachers (62 percent, by one estimate) feel underprepared. Consider this next to the fact that 50 percent of teachers leave the profession after only five years (nice—if sobering—stats, Linda!). By not taking the time to fully prepare our new teachers, it's clear that we are setting them up to fail.
Now, I'm no statistician, but I know that this situation adds up to trouble for our kids—who matter most, and would most benefit from new teachers having more quality time in a mentor's classroom. They would have confident, capable teachers who would be there—more than a year or two—to support their students. The only question is will our profession move itself out of the current broken teacher-educational model? Seems like only time will tell.
Kate Mulcahy, a Boettcher Teachers Program graduate, has taught for five years as an English & English-Language Learner teacher at Northglenn High School in Colorado.
Reflections
We all know teaching is complex. My own high schools teachers often stood in front of the class, lectured, and covered curriculum - some did not even learn students' names. To be effective, you needed to know your subject material and be able to manage the classroom so students sat quietly in rows. Fortunately, I had a forward-thinking mathematics education instructor when earning my BEd teaching degree along with an associate teacher who allowed me to try non-traditional teaching practices.
I know why I have been an effective educator - throughout my career, I have had experienced educators and mentors who have supported and invested in my professional growth and development. Take my first year of teaching, my math department head was assigned as my mentor at the all-girls independent school. The endless hours he spent listening and offering advice to me made all the difference from quitting. During my second to fifth years of teaching, my mentor was my math head in Belleville. Again, I had a mentor who sterring me in the right direction. When I transferred to the York Region DSB, I was given leadership positions as assistant math head, math head, and now vice-principal. I konw I would never had gotten to where I am without former principals and vice-principals who served as mentors and encouraged me. Teaching is a journey and life-long learning -- it is an art and science.
As I have grown so much through my mentors, I have given back to the profession by hosting 20 teacher candidates and volunteers. It's always welcoming to know the latest happenings in the faculty of education. Observing teacher candidates in the classroom allows me to reflect on my own practices.
New teachers bring enthusiasm and passion to the profession. Experienced teachers bring experience to the profession. We need each other! In Ontario, we have the New Teacher Induction Programme (NTIP) in which each new teacher is assigned an experienced teacher to serve as mentor. For NTIP to truly be beneficial, it would be great for the mentor to visit the new teacher's classroom (and vice-versa) and offer descriptive feedback on the lesson - non-evaluative. The professional dialogue would be growth to both mentor and mentee. Trust is so important to make this work.
As a vice-principal, I do my best to support new teachers. I will never forget those who supported and encouraged me. Teaching is difficult - especially if you are assigned to courses that the experienced teachers don't want (fortunately I didn't get that). When I was department head, I always believed the toughest courses should go to experienced teachers. New teachers are hired for potential - it's our responsibility to ensure they experience a successful year. Now in my 16th year in education, I still have the passion and enthusiasm for teaching as I did when I was a teacher candidate.
Showing posts with label new teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new teachers. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Value of Teachers
Great article from the NY Times, January 11, 2012. Once again, goes to show the impact of effective teachers - as Ken Leithwood has found is the #1 factor to improving student achievement. As administrators, we must focus our energies in supporting teachers with ensuring instruction is differentiated and driven by assessment for learning. Every student needs an important adult...
The Value of Teachers
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teacher decides to quit. What should you do?
The correct answer? Panic!
Well, not exactly. But a landmark new research paper underscores that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime — or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class — all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That’s right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year’s students, just in the extra income they will earn.
The study, by economists at Harvard and Columbia universities, finds that if a great teacher is leaving, parents should hold bake sales or pass the hat around in hopes of collectively offering the teacher as much as a $100,000 bonus to stay for an extra year. Sure, that’s implausible — but their children would gain a benefit that far exceeds even that sum.
Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing 40 percent of the school year. We don’t allow that kind of truancy, so it’s not clear why we should put up with such poor teaching. In fact, the study shows that parents should pay a bad teacher $100,000 to retire (assuming the replacement is of average quality) because a weak teacher holds children back so much.
Our faltering education system may be the most important long-term threat to America’s economy and national well-being, so it’s frustrating that the presidential campaign is mostly ignoring the issue. Candidates are bloviating about all kinds of imaginary or exaggerated threats, while ignoring the most crucial one.
Mitt Romney, who after his victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday seems increasingly likely to be the Republican nominee, refers to education only in passing on his Web site. The topic receives no substantive discussion in his 160-page “Believe in America” economic plan.
This latest study should elevate the issue on the national agenda, because it not only underscores the importance of education but also illuminates how we might improve schools.
An essential answer: more good teachers. Or, to put it another way, fewer bad teachers. The obvious policy solution is more pay for good teachers, more dismissals for weak teachers.
One of the paradoxes of the school reform debate is that teachers’ unions have resisted a focus on teacher quality; instead, they emphasize that the home is the foremost influence and that teachers can only do so much.
That’s all true, and (as I’ve often written) we need an array of other antipoverty measures as well, especially early childhood programs. But the evidence is now overwhelming that even in a grim high-poverty school, some teachers have far more impact on their students than those in the classroom next door. Three consecutive years of data from student tests — the “value added” between student scores at the beginning and end of each year — reveal a great deal about whether a teacher is working out, the researchers found.
This study, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard University and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia University, was influential because it involved a huge database of one million students followed from fourth grade to adulthood.
The blog of the Albert Shanker Institute, endowed by the American Federation of Teachers, praised the study as “one of the most dense, important and interesting analyses on this topic in a very long time” — although it cautioned against policy conclusions (of the kind that I’m reaching).
What shone through the study was the variation among teachers. Great teachers not only raised test scores significantly — an effect that mostly faded within a few years — but also left their students with better life outcomes. A great teacher (defined as one better than 84 percent of peers) for a single year between fourth and eighth grades resulted in students earning almost 1 percent more at age 28.
Suppose that the bottom 5 percent of teachers could be replaced by teachers of average quality. The three economists found that each student in the classroom would have extra cumulative lifetime earnings of more than $52,000. That’s more than $1.4 million in gains for the classroom.
Some Republicans worry that a federal role in education smacks of socialism. On the contrary, schools represent a tough-minded business investment in our economic future. And, increasingly, we’re getting solid evidence of what reforms may help: teacher evaluations based on student performance, higher pay and prestige for good teachers, dismissals for weak teachers.
That, and not most of the fireworks that passes for politics these days, is the debate we should be having on a national stage.
The Value of Teachers
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teacher decides to quit. What should you do?
The correct answer? Panic!
Well, not exactly. But a landmark new research paper underscores that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime — or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class — all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That’s right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year’s students, just in the extra income they will earn.
The study, by economists at Harvard and Columbia universities, finds that if a great teacher is leaving, parents should hold bake sales or pass the hat around in hopes of collectively offering the teacher as much as a $100,000 bonus to stay for an extra year. Sure, that’s implausible — but their children would gain a benefit that far exceeds even that sum.
Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing 40 percent of the school year. We don’t allow that kind of truancy, so it’s not clear why we should put up with such poor teaching. In fact, the study shows that parents should pay a bad teacher $100,000 to retire (assuming the replacement is of average quality) because a weak teacher holds children back so much.
Our faltering education system may be the most important long-term threat to America’s economy and national well-being, so it’s frustrating that the presidential campaign is mostly ignoring the issue. Candidates are bloviating about all kinds of imaginary or exaggerated threats, while ignoring the most crucial one.
Mitt Romney, who after his victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday seems increasingly likely to be the Republican nominee, refers to education only in passing on his Web site. The topic receives no substantive discussion in his 160-page “Believe in America” economic plan.
This latest study should elevate the issue on the national agenda, because it not only underscores the importance of education but also illuminates how we might improve schools.
An essential answer: more good teachers. Or, to put it another way, fewer bad teachers. The obvious policy solution is more pay for good teachers, more dismissals for weak teachers.
One of the paradoxes of the school reform debate is that teachers’ unions have resisted a focus on teacher quality; instead, they emphasize that the home is the foremost influence and that teachers can only do so much.
That’s all true, and (as I’ve often written) we need an array of other antipoverty measures as well, especially early childhood programs. But the evidence is now overwhelming that even in a grim high-poverty school, some teachers have far more impact on their students than those in the classroom next door. Three consecutive years of data from student tests — the “value added” between student scores at the beginning and end of each year — reveal a great deal about whether a teacher is working out, the researchers found.
This study, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard University and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia University, was influential because it involved a huge database of one million students followed from fourth grade to adulthood.
The blog of the Albert Shanker Institute, endowed by the American Federation of Teachers, praised the study as “one of the most dense, important and interesting analyses on this topic in a very long time” — although it cautioned against policy conclusions (of the kind that I’m reaching).
What shone through the study was the variation among teachers. Great teachers not only raised test scores significantly — an effect that mostly faded within a few years — but also left their students with better life outcomes. A great teacher (defined as one better than 84 percent of peers) for a single year between fourth and eighth grades resulted in students earning almost 1 percent more at age 28.
Suppose that the bottom 5 percent of teachers could be replaced by teachers of average quality. The three economists found that each student in the classroom would have extra cumulative lifetime earnings of more than $52,000. That’s more than $1.4 million in gains for the classroom.
Some Republicans worry that a federal role in education smacks of socialism. On the contrary, schools represent a tough-minded business investment in our economic future. And, increasingly, we’re getting solid evidence of what reforms may help: teacher evaluations based on student performance, higher pay and prestige for good teachers, dismissals for weak teachers.
That, and not most of the fireworks that passes for politics these days, is the debate we should be having on a national stage.
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