Pilot program trains new teachers in Phila.
A group of Philadelphia's newest teachers finished yesterday a new training program aimed at helping them succeed and easing their first-day jitters.
Brittney Stone, a recent graduate from Temple University, said she had wanted to be a teacher since she was a teenager. Her first day on the job is fast approaching.
"I'm very nervous. You don't know what to expect," Stone said at the end of a seven-day program in the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush on Knights Road in the Far Northeast.
Sandra Garner, a new teacher who is making the switch from the insurance industry, said the theory she learned in college was not the same as the skills she learned in the program.
"A lot of it was new," said Garner, who earned a master's degree in education.
She fits the profile of the kind of new teacher the Philadelphia School District hopes will want to stick around. But research says new teachers like her are the ones most in danger of quitting.
According to a 2006 study by the National Education Association, a teachers' union, nationwide, almost half of all teachers quit within their first five years on the job.
The numbers don't look too pretty for Philadelphia, either. Of the 831 teachers hired for the 2005-06 school year, almost 42 percent quit after three years, according to data supplied by the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.
"The system is literally bleeding teachers," said Jack Steinberg, who directs the union's health and welfare fund.
That loss inspired the union to develop the seven-day program in conjunction with the school district. The key is that newly hired teachers get the training before they step inside the classroom. Additional sessions will be held next week and in early August. The union expects to train from 400 to 500 new teachers.
In the past, state-mandated new-teacher training did not start until October, and teachers had up to six years to complete it, said Rosalind Jones-Johnson, director of education for the union's health and welfare fund.
"We want to make sure they have strong discipline strategies when they enter the classroom," she said.
Though Valda Woodson has been teaching for more than 30 years, she said the refresher course before the school year was helpful.
"By training early, you have time to go back into your binder, look through it, kind of swallow it all," she said.
The seven-day course, "Strong Beginnings," focuses on giving the teachers practical skills for the classroom, such as how to build an effective lesson plan, make and enforce rules, work with parents, form relationships with challenging students, and how to arrange a classroom. Jones-Johnson said the strategies are based on tested research.
Course material is taught through class discussion, PowerPoint presentations, and videos. The new teachers are required to sign a pledge saying they will implement the techniques in the classroom. They also have to submit reflection letters about how they are using the techniques. At schools with more than five new teachers, all new teachers will be assigned a teacher coach to check in on them and assist them in their first year on the job.
Jones-Johnson said any new teacher who was not assigned a teacher coach would work with her.
In Classroom 202, a dozen new teachers listened closely to trainers on how to deal with a "noncompliant" student.
"Teachers never win when they argue with their students," said Peggy Outing, a workshop leader.
Instead, she said, it's best to give them choices like this:
"John, you can stay after class and finish the assignment, or finish it now and not have to stay after class. It's your choice," Outing said.
Stone said the program "put her at ease." Garner agreed.
"I'm excited. I think it's going to be a good year," she said. "And now I have strategies."
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