Supporting Teachers -- Early in Their Careers and Beyond
from NCTE INBOX 9-7-11
As the school year begins and students and teachers head back to school, the focus is largely on curriculum and building community. But there should also be a focus on educators -- those new to the classroom or not so new -- and supporting them throughout the school year. The following resources from NCTE provide examples of support for all educators.
The challenges new teachers face and how we can keep new teachers in the profession are among the results of a seven-year research study presented in NCTE's Tensions and Triumphs in the Early Years of Teaching: Real-World Findings and Advice for Supporting New Teachers (G).
“Supporting Beginning English Teachers: Induction, Mentoring, and Assistance” (G), an NCTE On Demand Web seminar, shares how to create strategies and systems that will support new teachers’ growth and retention. New teachers’ coping strategies, the contrast between new and veteran staff, and the critical episodes that typically confront all new teachers are all presented. Based on an NCTE book (M, S, C), this recording can help you create your plan for research-supported induction activities, improved mentoring approaches, and long-term professional growth.
The author of “Dreaming of Collaboration” (E) from Language Arts describes several university-school collaborations she has been involved with in terms of the tensions and the dialogue that has been associated with them. She believes we should have “cautious optimism” that more collaboration can be encouraged as part of the work of democracy that our schools do.
After realizing there was a conflict between what students perceived as their literacy needs and desires and what the author perceived to be important and valuable, she sought to address the conflict by listening closely to students’ talk, orchestrating activities to blend reading skills with responses to literature, and negotiating class conversations to produce knowledge as chronicled in the Voices from the Middle article, “Becoming a Good Teacher: Struggles from the Swampland” (M). Bonus: Listen to an interview with the author, Mary Beth Schaefer.
Bruce Penniman offers personal reflections, classroom anecdotes, teaching materials, and student work in Building the English Classroom: Foundations, Support, Success while presenting strategies for managing the demands of the secondary English classroom (S). Read more from Bruce about planning and organization in the classroom in "Helping English Teachers Thrive and Lead."
In “The Long and Winding Road: Supporting Teachers’ Learning across the Lifespan” (TE), the editors of English Education share how the articles in this issue demonstrate how new teachers might move from meaningful experiences in methods courses organized around service learning opportunities in a local high school, to significant reflection and learning during the early years of teaching, to collaborative inquiry and professional development with experienced colleagues in a “teachers helping teachers” conversation group.
A Maryland college supports scholarship that helps faculty maintain currency in their disciplines and explore effective pedagogy as shared in the Teaching English in the Two-Year College article “Support for Scholar-Teachers” (C).
Read more in the NCTE Policy Research Brief, “Preparing, Inducting and Retaining English Language Arts Teachers."
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