A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

JAVIER GONZALEZ: I was calling home, sending my children off to school earlier, because we're three hours behind in California. So I walked in a little late and by power of appointment I was appointed. Because the Governor had other business to take care of. And this happened halfway through the presentation, so I don't have any notes yet. So here I am, I'm going to try and do my best. And whatever I have missed somebody will fill in at the question and answer session.

Well, now we have the 200,000 teachers, we've hired them, we found them, we've recruited them, now how do we keep them, how do we make them successful? That's the task of our group that dealt with induction. And basically there are three parts to it, to our agenda here.

[See Slide 1] The first one is the mentor teachers. Number one, is to create a program to fund and evaluate context-based induction programs. Yes, we all took a straw vote, and we said, yes, we have to create this program. A recommendation was made to look at the California 12 mentor program standards, and which is already in effect; it is very successful. There was also a recommendation that we add a 13th to that, such that the mentors who are mentoring the new teachers are mentoring content-based, so that as a math teacher I would be helping and assisting -- if it was the need, I would be assisting other math teachers within the schools.

Number two, to encourage the state to fund and require induction programs. Again, another straw vote, federal funding for induction activities. Definitely. This needs to be at the federal level. The Governor was very pushy as far as coming from the Governor, because he said he had friends in high places. One comment was made to make sure that we separated the mentoring from the evaluation process, something that several of us reported that, as mentor teachers, our job is to support new teachers and make them successful, not necessarily to evaluate them. Part of the working relation with a new teacher is a trust level in the confidentiality in assisting them, so that they can confide in you and tell you what their real problems are. And that seems to have worked for myself as a seven-year mentor teacher. And there are certain programs, especially in my state, where the evaluation process is becoming more of a peer review evaluation process that several of us were concerned with.

Number three, to encourage states and districts to fund and provide effective training to mentor teachers. The funding doesn't necessarily have to come just from the federal level, it must be from the state, and, as the previous group mentioned, it must also come from the local districts. Among the points there was to reduce the teacher load of mentor teachers. Again, as a mentor teacher, I'm in charge of 13 teachers. That means that I have to be out of the classroom. That means that my teachers -- my students are suffering because I have to be assisting 13 other teachers. We need to lighten the workload of the mentor teachers, so that he or she can be working with all of his or her mentees.

Create a forum to share ideas. This goes back to the idea yesterday of creating team groups, or practice groups. It is important for teachers to have the opportunity, and this does not mean 3:00 meetings when they are very tired and they want to go home. This means time during the school day, during some time perhaps even on weekends, or retreats, where they are able to discuss lesson plans, discuss strategies, look at what their needs are, and talk about their expertise level, what their weaknesses are, what their strengths are, and how to strengthen their weaknesses.

We did talk about a ladder for teachers. Once you're a teacher you're basically a teacher for life, and there is no promotions there. We looked into a teacher, and then the second step would be a mentor teacher. This mentor teacher is in charge, perhaps, of the site and working with a smaller workload, as I mentioned earlier, but also having a master teacher, and several of our members said that they liked the word exemplary teacher. Perhaps all school districts, or schools need to have an exemplary teacher who is not teaching, whose sole job is to go around and assist mentors and mentees. Now, granted this is probably the exemplary teacher who should be in the classroom, but perhaps it can be done. Find two exemplary teachers, one does it for a semester, then the second one does it the second semester, so that you can get that person back into the classroom. These exemplary teachers, again, would work with all of the mentors, assisting them and all of the mentees. By not taking this exemplary teacher out of the classroom, the students, again, do not suffer because of that.

[See Slide 2] The second one, reduce the teaching load of new teachers and replace with induction activities. First of all, encourage federal and state investment to reduce teaching loads of new teachers. This was talked about several times earlier today, 80 percent of the workload, or two-thirds, whatever it might be. We know that right now when teachers are coming into the classrooms for the first time, they are probably and usually given a full load. Not only is it a full load; it is probably the classes that nobody else in the department wants to teach, the kids that they don't want to teach, and given perhaps the least support, the least amount of supplies, the worst classroom, anything that you can think of, it's actually happening out there.

So our idea was perhaps to have them teach, maybe instead of teaching five classes or six classes a day they should be teaching four classes. What do they do in the other time? Mostly observation. A whole lot of the time should be spent in creating their personal portfolios where they are able to look at themselves and say, this is my strength, this is my weakness. What do I need to do to become stronger in my weaknesses? That means that you are looking in your portfolios for personal growth, and also along the way look at the research that's out there and put it in your portfolio.

Number two, to encourage districts to work with local unions to restructure new teacher contracts. That means that equity in the workload of the teachers, that's just exactly what I was talking about earlier. And the unions are going to have a say about that. The other thing was that, why should all the new teachers be going into the worst schools? There has to be something done so that as soon as a teacher is able to move to a better school he or she doesn't. It's not that easy for them to move, such that the new schools end up with -- or the poorer schools end up with all the newer teachers. It shouldn't be that way.

Enter the work environment where success is probable. That means that we look at the teachers that are coming in and we put them in the best possible scenario for them to be successful. This might mean expertise level. This might mean in an area or a school where they will be successful, not necessarily put them in an environment where they will not succeed, therefore removing themselves from the classroom within that first or second school year.

Exemplary teachers exchange. That was a thought that came that perhaps this is done at the -- by the professors at the university level, where you have a professor going from one state to another university to another university, and doing lectures. The thought was that perhaps there are exemplary teachers within the state that can go to other states, pay them more, and they can go in there. And the plus about that would be that obviously they're moving to other states. The plus would be that this teacher who is coming in has no political reasons attached to the school that he or she is going to, but rather his or her sole job is to go in there and look at instruction as a teacher, as a peer, and perhaps make the recommendations for improvement, especially of the new teachers.

The local decisions as to which is the better program for their schools, again, that goes to the new teacher. Look to see what the local -- in other words, don't take away the local decisions from the school districts. The schools know who fits where and what the school needs are. And we shouldn't say, okay, all new teachers should go to the better schools. We should leave some of that power up to the local schools.

And the last point there is the importance of the portfolio, again, for growth and research, something that needs to be documented as this teacher is going through the first year induction.

[See Slide 3] A third agenda item here is to provide teachers with summer opportunities to improve their teaching. Some of the discussion went on into professional development, but this was geared mostly at professional development for the new inductee, the new teacher. That is to create federal and state and district level summer programs. We heard earlier this morning the governor talk about North Carolina and the summer program that they are doing there. There was also other model programs that were talked about. In specific, there was one from UC-Santa Cruz out in California that I have observed and have seen it to be very, very effective.

Add professional days to the school year. They need to be there. Again, I can't tell you as a teacher how important those six extra days last year were to us. Now we're only up to 180 without any school improvement days. We need to add those days so that teachers can come together and develop their skills.

There was talk about a model called the Chautauqua Model, which somebody else can add to that. The Governor's program for preservice dealt with summer program, but we also feel that this has to continue throughout the school year. And throughout the school year that would be -- actually, during the summer program, that would probably be more teacher empowerment basics, dealing with discipline, how to deal with parents, how to work with the textbook, work with grades, work with assessments, work with the paperwork, and the classroom climate and culture, and classroom management, of course.

But the ongoing one during the school year would turn into more inter-curricular lesson plans, assessments and then just teaching this new teacher how to survive and do very well that first year and looking forward to that second year. Also, to promote partnership programs with business, that was very important to us. I, as a math teacher, even after teaching all these years, would benefit from the business, somebody who is actually using mathematics to create a mentor with perhaps myself or the new mentees that would be able to come into the classroom and speak not only to my mentee, but also to the students as to application of mathematics to the 21st Century. Some mathematicians learned their mathematics 20, 30 years ago, and they're still teaching it the same way where there are new applications nowadays. So we must outreach and create mentorships with the business world where they can tell us what the new mathematics that's being applied is all about out there.

[See Slide 4] One very important discussion, the last one, was teacher needs. That meant supplies. This again deals with basic supplies of the new teacher once he gets into the classroom, which means textbooks. The lack of calculators or supplies that you need to teach, like computers. The lack of rooms perhaps that they get. Some new teachers end up teaching in five or six different classes a day. They're running around all over the place. The lack of furniture because all of the teachers who have been there, the veterans, have probably taken all of these. So as a mentor teacher, your job is to make sure that this new teacher has all of these supplies. And I'm not talking horror stories; these are actually true stories.

This support needs to be continuous, something that happens all along with the guidance of this mentor person that you trust, that you confide, that you can call at 10:00 or 11:00 PM at night and say "I need some assistance here," and that I can give or that mentor can provide some assistance back.

Recommendation is to provide small grants with certain criteria. That means that the state would be able to say, you're a brand new teacher. When you get into the classroom I'm going to give you $1,000 for you to use on any supplies that you need. We know that some of the older teachers, again, have hid away all the staples, and so this new teacher has to spend a whole lot of his money or her money going out to buy the essentials, the basic paper goods and paper and scissors, where this particular grant from the state would come down and say here's your money; you can spend it however you wish. However, there does need to be some guidance, and your mentor needs to be signing off so that you don't go off and buy all kinds of other stuff that you may not need, or that might already be available to the school that this new teacher is not aware of.

NSF has recommendations already for these supplies. So a thought came that we should look at the process and look at the needs, and if this process is something that we need to work with, then why should we reinvent the wheel if this process has already been created?

Finally, that there should be a district-wide distribution center with inservice for supplies. And this was more in the area of the science labs. All of this stuff should be ready and available so that a new teacher who is coming in doesn't have to go shopping around for all of the equipment, but can go to a certain site and find these labs, and then get some inservice from another mentor science teacher, so that he or she can go into the classroom and do an adequate job of teaching. Along the lines, there should also be a site, centralized place for these school supplies that sometimes these new teachers cannot find.

Did I miss anything?

MEMBER: Let me just clarify two points here. When we talk about the Chautaugua model, we discussed the fact that the National Science Foundation currently has a Chautaugua program, which is geared primarily to new and beginning college and university teachers, whereby they attend courses all over the country, sometimes abroad, in terms of increasing their knowledge of science and math. That is similar to a format that existed in the late '50s and the early '60s where the NSF had summer institutes primarily for high school teachers. That virtually no longer exists. But the Chautaugua model would be a good one to look at, in terms of summer programs geared for elementary, middle and high school teachers.

The other point that we made, which also dealt with the NSF as sponsors of Chautaugua, is that during the same period of time, there were numerous programs developed under the sponsorship of the NSF, like the science curriculum improvement study at Berkeley, Minnesota Math and Science, the ESS, the so-called Alphabet program, which were followed up with implementation, particularly for teachers that were new and beginning in those programs. So these are things that have been out there that may be worth replicating and bringing back to help new and beginning teachers.

MR. GONZALEZ: Points of clarification?

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: Well, this is awkward, so pardon me if I don't turn, I want to make sure folks can hear.

MR. GONZALEZ: That's okay.

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: You have a lot of different strategies here. Did you all have a -- can you give us a sense of what your top priorities would be in terms of making the biggest changes in the induction component?

MR. GONZALEZ: If anybody wants to add anything. But I'll just say, number one, is this one key word that I kept saying, and that was support. The job of the mentor teacher is to support, support, and support and make this person as successful as possible so that he or she ends up staying with a career in teaching.

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: I would add to that that as we talked about this -- this mentorship program, we did talk about someone, somewhere setting criteria, for example, for the selection of mentors. And we raised the question about whether some of the content should be at least generally specified. And we didn't answer that yes or no. So that we're looking at it not as a, "Well, we're just going to assign the teacher down the hall to kind of be your friend or buddy," but that it should have real substance to it and direction.

And one of the other points that I wanted to make, or clarify, was that although classroom climate and management and discipline appear under the summer listings, those are indeed survival skills for most teachers that really have to be included in that beginning mentorship. Otherwise, they'll never get to teach the lessons they plan for. And that's one of the things that I think every one of our papers on induction mentioned as the greatest need of beginning teachers.

MR. GONZALEZ: Aye-aye. Thank you, Alice.

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: The only mention I saw of institutes of higher education were, again, in your summer programs for teachers and partnerships with business and other entities. Do you see any role for institutes of higher education in this induction process that might continue during the academic year?

MR. GONZALEZ: Although there was no discussion there, the model programs that were talked about, whether it was North Carolina or UC-Santa Cruz, do include the universities. Professors come in and making sure that the teachers are teaching the content and are able to teach it well. So it is included. It just wasn't specifically said today.

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: Also, I think while research was mentioned in the context of what's the most effective teaching, somebody else, though, mentioned research in the larger context of trying to understand what's the most effective approach to induction, including mentoring and other areas. And also it was stressed that what it seems to be most difficult, but also, I think, people would agree is important, is research partnerships where it doesn't do any good if the university researcher comes down on that -- comes in the school and says "Here I am to study you." And that's really not the idea. And if the teachers don't have any time to put up with him or her any way, then it isn't really a partnership.

And so partnership and research on induction and other approaches, in addition to effectiveness of teaching.

MR. GONZALEZ: The concept of mentorship is all partnership. So partnership within teachers, partnership with business, partnership with the higher ed. That's what mentoring is all about. Correct.

This page last modified April 26, 2000 (gkp)