School Personnel -Orientation

School Personnel: Teacher Orientation
Instructor: Charley Kenty
By: Lynn Mendiola, Fatima Manaloto, Anthony Pascoe, Beverly Surla & Catherine Acera-Caberera
June 14, 2012

The single most important aspect of a child’s education is the teacher. Søren Kierkegaard (1976) said, “What the teacher is, is more important than what he [or she] teaches” (pp. 236). By working with new teachers we can help remedy the growing difficulty of recruiting and retaining teachers in the education field. New teacher induction programs become a vital piece of the puzzle for improving education standards across the board. When defining orientation or induction (used in this paper synonymously) it is found that the definition has differed little since Veenman’s (1984) conceptualization of induction as the “entry and the planned support the new teachers receive as it occurs” (pp. 165).
New teacher inductions take on many roles in a school and district but there a few generalizable roles that are more specific than just recruitment and retention for these programs that most research agrees on. During the process of new teacher induction it is generally hoped that the program will provide the structure for the acquisition of pertinent knowledge, skills, values, and norms of both the teaching profession and the local school community (Alhija & Fresko, 2010). That is, becoming a teacher involved organizational acclimatization as well as professional development on relevant educational topics (Brunton, 2007). Successful integration of teachers into the schools and local communities will facilitate more competent teachers who are committed to remaining in the field Hudson & Beutel, 2005). Alhija & Fresko (2010) note that, “research findings indicate that many new teachers leave the profession after only a few years, many of them because they failed to become sufficiently assimilated (as cited in Dewert, Babinski, & Jones, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Wong, 2004, pp. 1592). There are many varied but widely accepted approaches to teacher orientation programs, but research shows that a comprehensive, multi-faceted program results in overwhelming positive perceptions and results (Bickmore & Bickmore 2010). Although by no means an exhaustive list, research has shown that the following aspects are regarded as integral parts of a multifaceted teacher induction program: * Individual mentoring by a more experiences or veteran teacher * Ongoing workshops or professional development * Evaluation of the effectiveness and perceptions of the programs * Orientation seminars * Administrative support * Interdisciplinary teams
(Bickmore & Bickmore 2010; Alhija & Fresko, 2010)
Learning new curricula, dealing with classroom management and discipline, integrating students with special needs, using technology, individualizing student programs, coordinating extracurricular activities, and being accountable to the various stakeholders of education are just a few jobs teachers do. The CNMI Public School System seeing a need to nurture the new generation of teachers have put in place the Project Teacher Mentor and Teacher Tea are mentoring ship program and orientation for new teachers.
The Project Teacher Mentor program is a nurturing process, in which a skilled person serving as a role model, teachers, sponsors, encourages, counsels, and befriends a less skilled or less experienced person for the purpose of promoting professional development. In addition it helps new teachers learn about the school they are at, improved professional practices, and develop a collaborative community of learners. Individual mentoring by a more experiences or veteran teacher should include mentors that have been trained for the task at hand. The teacher mentors should meet with their novice teacher frequently and on a defined schedule (e.g. once a week) to provide one-on-one support and feedback to new teachers. Often it is useful to keep logs or minutes of meetings to refer back to during evaluations or future meetings.
Ongoing workshops or professional development refers to both regular whole staff professional development but also an additional component that is for novices and goes beyond the normal staff. Again this should be frequent enough to be useful but not interfere with other duties and provide needed skills that the mentees desire. The orientation seminars can be included in this section because they will be an additional component regular staff will not participate in. The seminars should occur before the school year preferable during the summer to allow some time to acclimate and possibly another seminar during the beginning of the year to address the majority of the housekeeping issues that exist during the beginning of the school year.
Interdisciplinary teams become a vital part of induction programs because they provide beginning teachers with a multitude of staff members with varying skills and experience levels. These groups of teachers helped with the day-to-day activities and strategies that a novice may require insight on. This team can provide for the holes in a mentors schedule or knowledge base, or can just approach an issue from a different point of view that is beneficial for the mentee. When discussing levels of support it is important to point out the value of administrators in this process. Administrators can be involved at any level and should be involved in varied capacities to help facilitate an overall feeling of support for new teachers (Cherian & Daniel, 2008).
Evaluation of the effectiveness and perceptions of the programs is significant in induction programs because it helps us to collect and analyze data so as to improve the induction process and increase the recruitment and retention rates as well as teacher satisfaction for novice teachers. For instance, Alhija and Fresko (2010) found that a key part that was missing from the teacher inductions they studied was an ecological component. They describe the ecological component as “pertaining to adjustment to the school culture and assistance with non-instructional school tasks” (pp. 1594). If effective evaluation is done on the effectiveness and perceptions of the induction programs they can be continually improved. Deciding when a new teacher induction should take place is context specific to each school or district. Timing depends on when the school hires new teachers, the school’s schedule for academic instruction, funding, and many other variable factors. The key to this is to consider how the timing will affect other parts of the program. The program’s main components need to infuse with the normal school year and processes to work effectively. For example, an entire program being started and finished in the first three months leaves teachers unsupported for the rest of the year. A final key component to consider for new teacher induction programs is who must participate. For example, in one study by Su (1992) it was found that student teaching, cooperating teachers, school pupils, and school teachers were more influential in shaping the educational beliefs and values of new teachers as compared to the teacher training curriculum, college faculty, family, and significant others (as cited in Alhija & Fresko, 2010, pp. 1593). As noted earlier the administrative staff is also vital to successful teacher orientation programs, especially when “principals employ the notion of “communities of practice” to instill a culture of support for new teacher induction” (pp. 1). Research has shown the value of teacher induction or orientation programs and the many offshoot benefits they can have on a school or district. As Bickmore and Bickmore (2010) noted in their study, the most important finding of their analysis was that each area of the induction process played a different role in the positive perception and effectiveness of the program and no one area could act alone and make the same achievement. Additionally, this multi-faceted approach to new teacher induction programs helps schools to move from structured collaboration to the much more desirable “spontaneous collaboration” that positively impacts all faculty in a school (Williams, Prestage, & Bedward,, 2001). A key point is to remember that no one program fits all schools and that only through careful evaluation and improvement can a program effectively fit a schools staff and have a lasting impact.

References

Alhija, F., Fresko, B. (2010). Socialization of new teachers: Does induction matter? Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 1592-1597.

Bickmore, D., & Bickmore, S. (2010). A multifaceted approach to teacher induction Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 1006-1014.

Brunton, K. (2007, July). Beginning teachers and their reality of teaching: negotiating the micro-political world. Paper presented at the bi-annual conference of the Inter national Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), Brock University, St. Catherines, Canada.

Cherian, F. & Daniel, Y. (2008) Principal leadership in new teacher induction: becoming agents of change. International Journal of Educational Policy & Leadership. 3(2), 1-11.

Hudson, S., & Beutel, D. (2007, July). Teacher induction: what is really happening? Paper presented at the Australian Teacher Education Association conference, Wollongong, Australia.

Kierkegaard, S., Hong, H. V., Hong, E., & Malantschuk, G. (1976). Soren Kierkegaard's journals and papers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Su, J. Z. X. (1992). Sources of influence in pre-service teacher socialization. Journal of Education for Teaching, 18(3), 239e258.

Veenman, S. (1984). Perceiving problems of beginning teachers. Review of Educational Research, 54(2), 143-178.

Williams, A., Prestage, S., & Bedward, J. (2001). Individualism to collaboration: the significance of teacher culture to the induction of newly qualified teachers. Journal of Education for Teaching, 27(3), 253-267.