Sustaina bility: Creating A Teacher- Learner Climate through Mentoring TASSP SUMMER CONFERENCE – AUSTIN, TX Nathan R. Templeton, Ed.D. Josh Tremont, M.Ed.
Dec 12, 2015
Sustainability: Creating A
Teacher-Learner Climate
through Mentoring
TASSP SUMMER CONFERENCE – AUSTIN, TX
Nathan R. Templeton, Ed.D.
Josh Tremont, M.Ed.
Introduction
“NCTAF’s findings are a clear indication that America’s teacher dropout problem is spiraling out of control. Teacher attrition has grown by 50 percent over the past fifteen years. The national teacher turnover rate has risen to 16.8 percent” (Kain, 2011, p. 1).
Background of the Problem: Teacher Retention & Attrition
New Teachers (1-3 years) 8.5%; 4-9 years 6.5%
46% of all teachers leave within the first 5 years
“Teacher retention has become a national crisis,” meaning that inadequate retention (excessive turnover) has become a crisis (National Council on Teaching & America’s Future, 2007)
Setting it Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mlJ3RsDCgQ&feature=share&list=PLD7EAB5232598BA0B
Significance of the Study
The teaching profession has been characterized as a revolving door
Hanusek, Kain & Rivkin, 2004; Ingersoll, 2003
The shortage of teachers is due to exceptionally high demand created by an excessive rate of turnover, rather than insufficient supply (NCTAF 2007; Pudursky, 2006)
Calculating the Cost of Attrition
Teacher attrition costs billions annually
Calculating the Cost of Teacher Turnover
http://nctaf.org/teacher-turnover-cost-calculator/
Strategies to Correct the Attrition Trend
Kozleski et al & Billingsley (2005) suggest:
Effective Professional Development
Reasonable Work Assignments
Support from Administrators
Lessons From Business: Induction
First step towards gaining an employees' commitment, it is aimed at introducing the job and organization to the recruit and him or her to the organization. It involves orientation and training of the employee in the organizational culture, and showing how he or she is interconnected to (and interdependent on) everyone else in the organization.
Lessons From Business: Induction
“We live in a world in which mentoring, coaching, team building, and empowering have become standard practices for many successful corporations and corporate leaders” (p. 1)
Mentoring as Induction
Moving beyond a more traditional function of using mentoring to improve attrition rates for new teachers, Fibkins’ (2011) approach speaks of creating a learning environment for all teachers by framing discussions on teaching and learning and striving to develop each teacher into a competent master teacher.
Mentoring
“The mentor’s task is to find ways to help teachers reach their goal of improving. It is a worthy goal. When educators see fellow teachers and their students floundering, it is their professional responsibility to help them better their craft” (p. 23).
Mentoring for Veterans
Mentoring for the veteran teacher is a means to renew the commitment to improve classroom effectiveness, rejecting faulty assumptions that paint veteran teachers as either uninterested in perfecting their craft or simply cruising comfortably toward retirement.
Mentoring for Veterans
What Fibkins (2011) refers to as “new dreams, new roles, and new hopes, [addresses] the opportunity to engage veteran teachers in continuous learning activities that speak to their needs in the middle adult stage of their lives [while also providing the] support [structures] to address the personal needs and issues that are so much a part of midlife” (p. 179).
Mentoring As Human Capital
Schools are beginning to use terms synonymous with those who compete in a global economy; terms like human capital or partner relations.
Mentoring As Human Capital
As Smith (2009) describes, human capital is the set of skills that an employee acquires on the job, through training and experience, and which increase that employee’s value in the marketplace. Certainly, educators have resisted the intentionality of investing in employees through ongoing professional development.
Mentoring As Human Capital
Admittedly, education is the great equalizer in our competitive global economy; however, “ongoing mentoring for teachers - investing time and money into their professional development – has not caught on in the same way it has in the corporate life” (Fibkins, 1).
5 Reasons Administrators Fail to Embrace Mentoring
Time
Lack of Training & Skills
Few Role Models to Emulate
Change is Difficult: Redefining Your Role
Support & Resources
Practically Speaking
Time – there are many variables that consume the daily schedule
Skills & Training - Administrators are in positions of inherent power. As such, many distance themselves from employees in order to avoid the appearance of favoritism.
Conflict of Interest ?
The role of an administrator is a powerful role that involves quick reactions, decision-making, and politicking. Mentoring is different. It is a shared role that requires delicate and caring intervention and feedback. It is a slow process built on mutual trust and self-respect. It only works when both parties, the mentor and the protégé, clearly understand the areas that need improvement and how the mentor can be useful. (p. 2)
Strategies to Restructure Roles
Begin the process of collaboration with stakeholders. For example, the establishment of a mentoring team comprised of “competent educators who are known and respected by the school” (p. 4).
Other campus leaders, including department heads, lead teachers, and assistant principals are logical choices suggested by the author.
Creating A Culture of Sustainability
Shared Leadership or Transformational Leadership is necessary for creating a culture of sustainability.
Creating A Culture of Sustainability: Mentoring
The potential for professional growth involved in effective mentoring is not just for teachers. In developing a trusted mentoring role with teachers, administrators also create a teacher-learner climate in which they, too, become open to examining their own skills [and strengths]” (p. 9).
A Vision of the Competent Master Teacher
The competent teacher possesses a unique skill set. As Fibkins (2011) summarizes, “some teachers, through a process of self-analysis, awareness, understanding today’s children, and constant skill building and seeking new approaches, evolve into competent teachers” (p. 21).
The Competent Master Teacher
Having the skill and desire to engage teaching and learning everyday
Understanding change as a professional growth process
Having the discipline to circumvent distractions, and to avoid lusting in the “feel good moments” that bread complacency
Characteristics of An Effective Mentor“Teachers can overcome their lack of experience, skill, and self-awareness with caring interventions by mentors who can dignify their worth and at the same time help them learn new, effective approaches” (p. 30).
Effective Mentors
Have perspective from battle scars
Practitioners in the Field
Affirm the day-to-day demand of teaching: confrontation, care, deflection, encouragement, reprimand, and more
Wise. Understand that teaching is rewarding because of time invested in the process
Effective Mentors
Risk Takers
Build Trust
Know When to Disengage
Skilled Communicators
Practice Reflective Leadership
Implications for Administrators
The Individual Success Plan (ISP)
Planning for what’s next is a matter of bettering one’s craft and begins with establishing the ISP.
What do I need from my mentor to help me improve?
How will we determine skill mastery or pedagogical improvement?
How will I deal more effectively with challenges an dhow can I be supported in this endeavor?
Implications for Administrators
Modeling Through Collaborative Learning
Modeling is an effective tool that facilitates improved practice through dialogue
Mentors must be allowed release time to observe protégés and vice versa
Each week, frame a new Guiding Question
Implications for Administrators
Developing the ISP
Induction
Set goals, classroom routines, etc. during in-service
Reflection & Self -Discovery
Set Guiding Questions
Informal Study based on Emergent Research
More…
Formulate Line Items in ISP to address perceived needed improvements
Formulate Line Items in ISP to address needed improvements as documented by classroom visit
You, Me Us
Collaborative Reflection