What new teachers need.

When teachers are involved in induction programs like BTSA, the principal's role does not diminish. Here's what principals can do to support new teachers.

California principals are likely to find themselves working with an induction program, if not now then in the future. An induction program aims at supporting beginning teachers who have completed their professional preparation, using assessment strategies to inform support.

Most California induction programs participate in the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program. You may have participated in their site administrator training through the local project. In BTSA projects, each beginning teacher is assigned a more experienced teacher, called by various names in different projects (support provider, coach, advisor).

A support provider works with beginning teachers to help them identify their strengths and improve their teaching practice. They also guide beginning teachers in improving their ability to analyze their teaching practice so that beginners can continue to improve their practice once the support is withdrawn.

The California Legislature has committed itself to partial funding of an induction program for every beginning teacher in the state. SB 2042 made successful completion of an induction program a requirement for a continuing license. This requirement will become effective in a few years. Every district hiring newly prepared teachers will need to provide access to an induction program, either alone or in collaboration with others, so beginners can earn the second-level license.

When principals are no longer the main source of support for beginners, they may believe they play no role in an induction program. Nothing could be further from the truth. Research on induction programs, including BTSA, has shown that there are several key tasks that principals can do to enable beginning teacher success.

Adjust working conditions

Beginning teachers often wind up with the most challenging teaching assignments. Principals can try to avoid assigning beginners the most challenging students, combination classes in elementary schools, or the schedule requiring many separate preparations in secondary schools. They can also make sure that beginners aren't overloaded with extracurricular activities and committee assignments.

In some schools, this will require taking a leadership role in helping veteran teachers agree to shoulder additional responsibilities to free up beginners to concentrate on learning their craft. Sometimes beginners must be protected from their own enthusiasm in volunteering for additional responsibilities.

In schools with large numbers of beginning teachers, intern teachers and pre-intern teachers, this may mean carefully thinking about strategic use of resource teachers to assist beginners in managing challenging teaching assignments and recruiting community volunteers to organize the school's extracurricular activities.

It is also tempting to encourage beginning teachers to participate in every available professional opportunity. However, this can easily lead to cognitive overload. Beginners are already engaged in extensive professional development through the induction program.

It is important that connections be made between additional professional development and induction support activities, which are often flexible in focus. For example, a workshop on the new mathematics textbook adoption might feed into a focus in support on either lesson planning or assessment. In a school with extensive reform activities, beginners might be assigned minimal involvement in strategically selected meetings.

Principals also need to understand that although support providers are good teachers, the support provider role requires different skills and a shift in perspective from working with children to working with an adult peer. Induction programs provide training to help support providers develop their skills in this role. They, too, need time to think and grow in their new responsibilities. While their needs will be more moderate than those of beginners, their teaching and extracurricular assignments should be carefully considered to allow them to support their new teacher(s) without burning out.

Investment in good teachers to become support providers pays off. Both research and anecdotal data consistently shows that veteran teachers who work closely with beginners report that they think more deeply about their own teaching practice.

Providing more time for teachers

Time is one of the most precious resources in a school today. There are many competing demands on teachers' time. Principals have control over some of these demands. They also can provide access to resources (substitutes, scheduling) that can judiciously carve out time for teachers during the school day.

Beginners are planning lessons, often with few resources, as they are trying to learn how to apply what they learned in preparation and fill in the most important gaps in their learning. Often they are left with little time to actually think about what they are doing.

One feature of induction programs is the provision of a veteran teacher to help guide the new teachers' learning of their craft. Yet most of these support providers are working full-time in their own classrooms. They do little good if they cannot see their beginners teach and meet with beginners to analyze their teaching and solve problems.

In addition, beginners benefit from observing veteran teachers with particular expertise in an area in which they are working. Although support providers and beginners can be very creative at finding ways to get together, they can benefit from principal support to arrange observations.

Principals can facilitate both meeting and observation time. Some principals have helped the pair take advantage of opportunities, such as meeting during assemblies or helping both classes schedule time together in the library with a library/media specialist. In schools with more than one beginning teacher, rotating substitutes can free up several teachers for an hour or two during the day to meet or observe another teacher. In secondary schools, common preparation periods provide time for beginners to consult with their support providers.

In schools where substitutes are scarce, principals can facilitate access to videotaping equipment to capture teaching that can be viewed later. Beginners will usually be comfortable with being videotaped. Veterans may need reassurance that lessons need not be perfect to be shared. They should also view the videotape prior to showing it to the beginner, and have an opportunity to retape, if needed.

Connections between evaluation and formative assessment for support

Induction programs differ in the extent to which they structure evaluation for retention and formative assessment for support. It is important for principals to understand their role with respect to the formative assessment engaged in by the support provider and beginning teacher.

Most districts continue to give responsibility for retention decisions to a site administrator. Policies vary between programs. In most cases, the formative assessment of teaching practice, including judgments made about strengths and areas of concerns, is confidential between the support provider and beginning teacher. Some projects suggest that the principal be kept informed of areas, such as lesson planning or classroom management, in which the pair is working.

Similarly, unless the beginning teacher gives permission for information from the site administrator's evaluation for retention to be shared with the support provider, the principal cannot disclose it. Unless the guidelines for confidentiality of formative assessment and evaluation information are clearly understood by both support providers and site administrators, awkward situations where one person is actively seeking information the other cannot provide can develop.

In order to avoid sending different messages to beginning teachers, it is important that the criteria site administrators use to evaluate beginners be consistent with the criteria that support providers and beginning teachers use in formative assessments to guide growth.

Principals need to be familiar with the particular standards and criteria used by the local induction program. BTSA programs use the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, which were jointly adopted by the State Board of Education and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Most programs will also use Descriptions of Practice from the California Formative Assessment and Support System for Teachers (CFASST) to examine evidence of teaching. The Descriptions of Practice show several levels of increasing expertise in a particular element of teaching. Beginners can use evidence to examine their teaching using the Descriptions of Practice. Looking at the description for the level above the one corresponding to the evidence suggests realistic targets for growth.

The principal, support provider and beginner need to be clear about any differences in emphasis between the standards and criteria for retention and those used in support. This is especially important if the support provider does not work at the same school as the beginning teacher.

Another issue in consistency between the two sets of criteria is the level of expectations of beginning teachers for retention. Only exceptional beginners are able to meet expectations reflecting mature teaching practice. While no one wants to see incompetent beginners retained in the classroom, it is equally important to not hold such high expectations that they result in a teaching position held over years by a succession of beginners. If beginners are showing consistent growth and at least minimal abilities to help students learn, they are likely to continue to improve their practice over time.

Support collaborative structures in the school

Principals can encourage good teachers with the temperament to work with beginners to consider becoming support providers and promise site-level support. Be sure to not overlook teachers with a modest amount of experience. BTSA projects are finding that "graduates" of their induction program with four or five years of experience are making excellent support providers. What they may lack in terms of depth of understanding of teaching compared to veterans they make up for in their increased understanding of the challenges that beginners face.

Principals can also help distribute the workload of supporting a beginning teacher by encouraging and facilitating the strategic support of teachers other than the support provider. If the support provider is not from the same school, it is important to assign a beginner a "buddy" teacher who can orient the beginner to school culture and field mundane questions such as "How do I get one more science textbook?" or "Where is the copy machine?"

Support providers are not equally expert in all areas, and they may find it helpful to refer the beginning teacher to another veteran with more expertise in a specific issue. Observing teachers with different approaches to teaching also helps a beginner both better understand a common element of teaching implemented in dramatically different ways and identify effective teaching practices that are more congruent with their personality and philosophy of teaching.

Some collegial activities may help the beginning teacher both accomplish teaching-related work and learn more about teaching. Grade-level planning meetings model how to think about units and lessons within units while supporting beginning teachers in planning curriculum.

Study groups on focused topics (such as teaching phonological awareness to speakers with different accents or of different dialects of English) can both offer instructional practices to try and model how to reflect on practice. This assumes some linkage between the topic and the element(s) of teaching on which the beginning teacher is focusing with the support provider. Since most elements of teaching are interconnected, such links are often easy to create. For example, a teacher working on classroom management might focus on what is needed to organize the classroom to provide differentiated instruction to students who need to work on different areas of phonological awareness.

Finally, lest I leave the impression that beginning teachers bring only problems to be solved, beginning teachers also often bring strengths that a school can tap. Some of their limited involvement on committees might be used to bring new energy to solving a persistent problem. Beginners often bring recent exposure to the newest teaching techniques. Induction activities may focus on a teaching technique new to the support provider, with the veteran learning about the technique and the beginner working on identifying and improving the different elements of teaching needed to successfully implement it.

A new role

With the creation of induction programs, the role of the principal in supporting beginning teachers has changed from direct to indirect support. By concentrating on the supportive strategies described above, principals can increase the effectiveness of, induction support for newly prepared teachers in their schools.

(The work upon which this article is based was supported by federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, contract number RJ96006901. The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Education.)

QUALITY TEACHING

Studies that explore how to improve teacher quality often focus on non-classroom strategies, such as improved pay and raising the bar through more stringent licensing requirements.

"How Teaching Matters: Bringing the Classroom Back Into Discussions of Teacher Quality," a report from Educational Testing Service, takes a look at classroom strategies linked to improved student academic performance.

ETS analyzed data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which contains standardized tests as well as data from questionnaires sent to students, teachers and principals. From the NAEP data, ETS was able to relate various aspects of teacher classroom practices to student test scores. It found that:

* Students whose teachers majored or minored in the subject they are teaching outperform their peers by about 40 percent of a grade level in math and science.

* In math, students whose teachers have received professional development in higher-order thinking skills outperform their peers by 40 percent of a grade level.

* Math students whose teachers emphasize higher-order thinking skills outperform their peers by 40 percent of a grade level.

* In science, students whose teachers have received professional development in laboratory skills outperform their peers by about 40 percent of a grade level.

* Students whose teachers conduct hands-on learning activities outperform their peers by more than 70 percent of a grade level in math and 40 percent of a grade level in science.

* Students who frequently take point-in-time tests outperform those frequently using ongoing forms of assessment, such as portfolios, by 46 percent of a grade level in math and 92 percent of a grade level in science.

The report is available online at www.ets.org/research/pic.

Kendyll Stansbury is senior research associate for WestEd.