Mentors Matter
"Teachers For A New Era" Induction Program Helps Educators Tackle The First Year With Support
By Elizabeth Wharton

The anxiety has stayed with her, and she does not sugarcoat when she remembers.

“It was terrible,” said Dawn VanZee of her first year teaching. “My beginning years were very much alone. I even had one of my colleagues actually tell me it was ‘sink or swim, baby—make it on your own.’”

Now, in her 14th year with the Lansing School District, VanZee is making sure no other beginning teachers suffer as she did, by being a mentor with the Launch Into Teaching (LIT) Through Comprehensive Induction program.

“I wouldn’t have somebody else who was new to the classroom be told to ‘sink or swim,’” said VanZee, a talent development teacher at Lansing’s Gardner Middle School. “I just didn’t want that to happen to other people.”

The LIT program, funded by the $5 million Teachers for a New Era (TNE) grant awarded to Michigan State University in 2002, is a partnership between the College of Education and the 16,000-student Lansing School District. TNE is funded by the Carnegie Corp. and the Annenberg, Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and helps exemplary teacher preparation institutions expand and become models for other institutions. LIT is designed to provide comprehensive resources for beginning teachers, as an induction model for urban school districts.

VanZee listens to the concerns of mentee Beth Schulz-Jones, a fifth-grade teacher at Cavanaugh Elementary.

There are currently 33 beginning teachers and 11 mentors participating in the project, with three teachers per mentor. In addition to its induction component, there are study groups, conferences and online resources available for new teachers.

“Teachers for a New Era—a new way of thinking about teacher preparation,” said Randi Stanulis, an associate professor at MSU and director of LIT, as she described the program. “A fundamental component of the Teachers for a New Era grant award is the creation and design of an induction component, which means providing different ways to provide support for beginning teachers . . . so if someone wants support, they can get it in a variety of ways.”

A typical induction program for a new teacher, Stanulis said, would only involve assigning a mentor. “They think an induction program means, ‘We meet with the beginning teachers before school begins, we give them the faculty handbook, and I assign them a specific teacher as their mentor.’ But that teacher might be across the building or a different grade level or doesn’t know anything about mentoring.”

LIT focuses not only on preparing beginning teachers, but also on preparing their mentors and principals, she said.

Preparation is key in creating a strong induction model, Stanulis said. “MSU provides six hours of mentoring preparation every month,” she said. “The mentors are in study groups, and for six hours a month they read about mentoring, they talk about mentoring as a practice, they role-play . . . We’re developing tools for them to work with the beginning teachers.”

The LIT project also prepares principals, she said.

“This is a huge component that can’t be ignored,” Stanulis said. “The principals are in study groups where they are learning about what it means to support a new teacher and what it means to support a mentor.”

The preparation of mentors and principals are two vital components of the beginning teacher’s preparation. “I think it’s essential, because teaching impacts so many lives that it’s not something that should be entered into lightly, and it is a very complex profession,” VanZee said. “You need someone you can trust to go to with problems, and you can’t be prepared to teach in a classroom until you’ve taught.”

5 Things New Teachers Should Do to Stay Motivated

Motivate students to learn, not just behave.

Analyze student learning successes and frustrations to help you plan.

Remember the reasons you love the content you teach and share these with you students.

Have regular discussions with your students and ask good questions.

Select a few routines and procedures and be consistent in implementation.

 Stanulis adds: “When the university doesn’t play a role in a teacher’s development after they leave the university, I think it sends a message that their learning is finished . . . they’re really at the beginning of learning to teach. MSU is deeply engaged, because we lead these people in their preparation to support beginning teachers.”

Angela Gerber, a science teacher at Sexton High School, is now in her second year with the LIT program, and said she is very satisfied with it. “As a first-year teacher,” Gerber said, “I was nervous about the year.” After attending an informational meeting on LIT, Gerber decided she wanted to participate in the program. “I just wanted to get acclimated into the profession quicker. It sounded like a good way to meet other first-year teachers, too.” Gerber meets with her mentor once a week.

She said the best meetings are the monthly beginning teacher study groups, when she and two other beginning teachers meet with their mentor.
“Every time we meet, our mentor has an agenda,” Gerber said. “They’ll concentrate on a certain classroom management strategy or inquiry-based learning (because we’re all science teachers), so it always has to do with science education.”

Gerber said that during study group meetings, each beginning teacher has a chance to discuss whatever problems they are facing. “I learn so much,” she said. “We learn about strategies and things I’ve never heard of before, and people I’ve never heard of before.”

Mentor teacher Dawn VanZee, who works with the MSU induction program, meets with mentee Louie Robinson. Robinson, who is a fourth-grade teacher at Grand River Elementary in the Lansing School District, is one of the three mentees supervised by VanZee.

Another mentor, Patti Seidl, a library media specialist at Dwight Rich Middle School, said that the beginning teacher study groups she leads often focus on classroom management, students’ behavior and establishing rules and norms in the classroom. Then, when she meets with her beginning teachers one-on-one, she works with them on making sure they are enforcing rules and norms in their classrooms, as well as lesson planning and setting goals. VanZee added that they often discuss teaching in an urban setting, and teaching children of different cultures.

She said that the program greatly benefits those who mentor the new teachers, too. “It’s more than helping the new teacher, because I get a lot out of it,” VanZee said. “It keeps me fresh and enthused, and it keeps me connected to new ideas. This is an opportunity for me to think deeply about my profession, as well as renew and refresh myself.”

Gerber said that having a mentor was especially important in the beginning of her first year. ”I had so many questions in those first five months,” she said, “and it was just so nice to know where and when I could go to find answers. I know they say that one out of every five teachers leaves their career, and I can totally see where that would happen if you felt really alone or didn’t know where to get help,” Gerber said.

Stanulis said the College of Education is especially committed to preparing teachers for urban school settings. “That’s where the highest turnover rate of new teachers is: 30 to 50 percent leave within their first three to five years of teaching. If we can prepare high-quality beginning teachers who stay there, then they can become our mentor teachers who will mentor the MSU students, and we’ll have this whole cycle of great mentoring and teaching,” Stanulis said.

“It’s an investment in the beginning teachers who are going to stay,” she said.
Gerber said that the Advocating Strong Standards-Based Induction Support for Teachers (assist) Web site created by the program was helpful and convenient. She said it was a resource she could access whenever she wanted to, and that it contained useful information.

The Web site is integral to the TNE project’s purpose, Stanulis said. "The idea is that we can provide support for anyone who wants support, regardless of where they live so that’s why we have online components.”

All undergraduate education students should know about the assist Web site ( http://assist.educ.msu.edu/ASSIST/ ). “It was developed by MSU faculty and k–12 teachers, and is a very comprehensive resource,” Stanulis said. The site provides information for new teachers, mentors and principals, and offers tools and examples for classroom management, lesson planning, different learning styles and different students’ cultures.

Stanulis said that she hopes the LIT program will inspire similar induction programs in other school districts nationwide, and that beginning teachers will expect such programs in the districts where they teach. “I would hope by five years from now,” she said, “our graduates will be saying, ‘What kind of induction program do you have?’ ‘How are your mentors prepared?’ and ‘How is your principal going to help me?’”

Seidl said that, as a mentor, it was important to her to be professional. “We definitely are candid and friendly with each other, but I feel as though I’m more of a supportive role,” she said. “I have to have a certain degree of strength or I’m afraid that, if I get to a buddy role, I might take on a demeanor that would not be to their benefit.”

VanZee described her relationship with her “mentees” as a “cohort family.” “They care very much about what happens to each other,” she said, “and we’ve formed social as well as professional bonds.” She said that the LIT project is of vast importance to the future of teaching. “It’s a profession that impacts the future of our culture, and we should be passing the torch in a way that is more focused and purposeful,” Vanzee said. “When I work with my mentees, it is purposeful support and framework for future teachers.”

The Facts: Teachers & Turnover
 

• The national cost of replacing public school teachers is $4.9 billion a year. (2000, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics)

• The rate of teacher turnover is about 50 percent higher in high-poverty schools than in low-poverty ones. (2003, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future)

• Of teachers who were mentored by another teacher, 66 percent said that it “improved their classroom teaching a lot.” (2002, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education)

• Teacher turnover cost Michigan about $180 million in 2000. (2001, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey)

• Twenty-six percent of teachers who quit in 2000 claimed they left a school due to “dissatisfaction.” (2001, Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, Teacher Turnover)

• One-third of new teachers will leave the profession within their first three years, and another 50 percent will leave within five years. (2001, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Teacher Follow-up Survey)

• Less than 1 percent of beginning teachers had a comprehensive induction program in 2000. (2004, American Educational Research Journal, “What Are the Effects of Induction and Mentoring on Beginning Teacher Turnover?” by Thomas M. Smith and Richard M. Ingersoll)

• “Induction cuts attrition rates in half.” (2004, Alliance for Excellent Education, “Tapping the Potential: Retaining and Developing High-Quality New Teachers”)