The perspective of a mentor teacher taught a new teacher to include time for her students to reflect on their learning, a critical part of teaching, they said.
“It’s very important, and it is part of the lesson, to have the kids reflect and review and digest what they’ve learned instead of adding another activity,” said Jaime Cavitt, a sixthgrade reading teacher in Springdale who is a mentor to a teacher now entering her second year in the profession.
Teachers feel pressure to keep students busy from “bell to bell,” and it took years for Cavitt, who teaches at Tyson Middle School, to learn that avoiding wasted time does not mean completing activity after activity, she said. As a mentor to sixth-grade language arts teacher Jessie Elledge, Cavitt could share that wisdom early in Elledge’s career.
“It’s fun to share with her and see her grow,” Cavitt said.
The start of the school year means the beginningof a teaching career for hundreds of first- and second-year teachers across the state. Arkansas requires each new teacher to work under a mentor as part of the final step in the new teacher acquiring a standard teaching license. Last year, nearly 1,600 teachers new to the field took the last of three exams after spending a year or two with a mentor, according to state records.
The focus is on how to teach, rather than the subject, Gibson said. Teachers should be prepared for their students, create a conducive environment for learning and think critically about their lessons. They should have an answer for why a lesson succeeded or not, for the activities and materials used to teach the lesson and how to respond when children don’t understand, Gibson said.
Last year, the Friday before spring break was not Elledge’s best day in the classroom, she said. She felt pressure because Cavitt, a school principal and a researcher from a university were scheduled to observe her teaching. Elledge planned a group activity that ended up frustrating her students. Toward the end of class, Elledge came up with a different activity to salvage the lesson.
On that discouraging day, though, Elledge received immediate feedback from her mentor that was critical in Elledge’s growth as a teacher, she said.
“It didn’t fall to pieces as much as you think it did,” Elledge remembered Cavitt telling her. “Instead of tacking something at the end, go deeper in what you’ve already taught them.”
Since then, reviewing has become a critical piece of each day’s lesson for her classes of 11- and 12-yearolds, Elledge said. She now plans time in each lesson to discuss with her students the day’s learning goals.
“You get really concerned with just the curriculum instead of the child,” Elledge said. “At the end of the day, it’s about what the studenthas learned.”
Mentors must have taught full time for at least three years, and they must attend an initial three-day training session on the program and another one-day training workshop every other year, said Maureen “Mo” Harness, teacher induction program adviser for the Arkansas Department of Education. The state requires mentors to meet with their novice teachers for two hours in person every two weeks and spend an additional 25 hours a semester working on behalf of the new teacher, including searching for materials or helping the new teacher schedule library time. Mentors also conduct a formal observation of the novice teacher twice in the first semester and once in the second semester. The mentors receive a stipend of $600 per semester.
The mentoring and assessment components of teacher licensure exist today because of laws passed in the late 1990s, said Becky Gibson, program adviser for teacher performance assessment in the Education Department’s Office of Teacher Quality. The mentoring program was piloted in 2001 when nearly one in five first-year teachers did not return the following year.
“We knew that we were losing teachers that were coming into the classroom at an unbelievable rate,” she said.
By 2004-05, the rate of first-year teachers who left reached a low of 6.26 percent, according to the department’s Arkansas’ Equity Plan of 2010. The percentage increased slightly the following two years but jumped to 13.64 percent and then 14.17 percent in 2007-08 and 2008-09. A multitude of factors could have contributed to the decline and subsequent increase, said Gary Ritter in the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. State laws passed in that same time period increased funding for schools and boosted minimum teacher salaries. Economic downturns in the private sector make teaching jobs more appealing, he said.
Nationally, mentoring programs contribute to more positive feelings about the job for first-year teachers, said Misty Newcomb, a research associate in the office. Still, one-third of teachers will leave the profession by the third year, she said.
Teaching candidates in Arkansas must take a series of three exams developed by Educational Testing Service in New Jersey for a standard teaching license.
Candidates take Praxis I, which covers basic skills in reading, writing and mathematics, at the beginning of a teacher preparation program. Toward the end of the program, candidates take the Praxis II exam, advanced tests on teaching skills and subject area content knowledge, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
Novice teachers receive provisional licenses and are required to be mentored to take the final exam, the Praxis III Performance Assessment, according to the department.
They must pass the exam to receive a standard teaching license. The third exam includes a classroom observation by a state-certified teacher performance assessor.
“It’s not that a teacher is perfect when we go in. They’re a beginning teacher,” Gibson said. “We know they’re aware of what needs to go on.”
In college, student-teachers have experiences in classrooms, but they rarely are alone, said Britt Humphries, a specialized literacy teacher at Tilles Elementary in Fort Smith, who is a mentor. The classroom teacher already has set routines so that students know what to do whenthey need pencil, paper or a tissue; when they have to go to the bathroom; and when they finish an assignment early.
“Mostly in college, you look at content or theory and how kids learn,” Humphries said. “You don’t think about all the teacher did before the student-teacher arrives.”
The first two concerns of a new teacher often are classroom management and lesson planning, Humphriessaid. When the classroom runs smoothly and most students are grasping the instruction, teachers then focus on fine-tuning lessons to meet individual needs of students, including those of students with disabilities and those who are learning English, Humphries said.
“That’s your job, to get them to learn,” Humphries said. “That’s something good teachers ask their whole career.”
Stephanie Wood, a kindergarten teacher at Leverett Elementary School in Fayetteville, knew the new teacher she mentored last year would succeed on her performance assessment, but there’s some suspense for both the new teacher and her veteran mentor until that final documentation arrives.
“She expects a lot out of me to help her,” Wood said. “It’s a big job, a big role to play, but very rewarding in the end.”
The relationship the two built last year continues this year - but now as colleagues on the same gradelevel team at Leverett.
Wood’s former protege, Janae Neal, moved from the second floor to the first floor of Leverett Elementary, where she will spend her second year of teaching. Neal called on her former mentor for help arranging the classroom.
Wood advised Neal to separate the computer center from the reading center and to ensure she could see the entire classroom no matter where she stood, little tricks Wood has picked up in her 22-year career.
“That’s a part of it,” Wood said. “I have a great team. She needs help. We spent a good hour rearranging furniture.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 08/07/2011