Amy Ament is the Associate Director of JNTP, where she trains and supports new teachers and mentors, and an adjunct faculty member at Stern College for Women’s Education Department. She also co-authored a Bible curriculum for JOFA entitled Bereishit: A New Beginning – A Differentiated Approach to Teaching and Learning. Fayge Safran is Senior Program Director at JNTP. She was previously Assistant Principal at Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, served as the founding editor of Ten Da’at, was adjunct instructor at Yeshiva University’s Stern College, taught in day schools for over thirty years, and has lectured across North America on a variety of Judaic topics. Yael Adler Bailey is the Director of Communications at JNTP. Yael previously worked in marketing/communications at New York Life Insurance Company and internal communications at Ernst & Young. She has extensive freelance experience in the Jewish non-profit including providing communications support for schools, synagogues and organizations.

Inducting new teachers into a school involves many challenges. The authors describe how a nationwide mentoring program helps new teachers adjust to the profession and begins them on a path of life-long learning and reflection.

Over ten years ago, the AVI CHAI Foundation approached the New Teacher Center (NTC) in Santa Cruz, CA to bring its award-winning program of tailored support of novice teachers to Jewish day schools. Based on a needs-assessment conducted with day schools across the country, AVI CHAI found that new teachers often felt isolated, inadequate and unsupported and that administrators were looking for ways to support new teachers more fully during their first few years in the profession. Thus the Jewish New Teacher Project (JNTP) was born. Over the past decade, JNTP has impacted over 600 beginning teachers, 220 mentors and thousands of students. What the AVI CHAI Foundation did not expect, and JNTP could not anticipate, was its effect on the larger school culture.

Using the model developed through NTC research, new teacher induction begins with the strong one-on-one relationship between the mentor and new teacher and then broadens to impact the whole school in the following ways:

• New teachers are set early in their careers on a path of ongoing professional development
• Veteran teacher mentors are re-energized as teachers and are positioned as leaders in their school communities
• Administrators develop an understanding of the level of support necessary for new teachers to succeed and begin to create protocols for ensuring that success

Through these efforts, school culture begins to change such that teaching standards, collaboration and ongoing professional development become the language that is used, not just by mentor and new teacher, but also by the greater school community.

Over the past decade, JNTP has seen many examples of the impact of new teacher induction on the larger school community, including:

School A: One New Jersey school had a terrible teacher turnover rate in their middle school, with approximately half of their 24 teachers leaving each year. The school partnered with JNTP to train three veteran teachers to become “in-house” mentors. Each mentor worked intensively with newly hired first-time teachers over the course of two years and four years later, the school had a zero teacher turnover rate.

School B: One Brooklyn school promoted a JNTP-trained mentor to become Assistant Principal. That Assistant Principal instituted a policy that all beginning teachers hired receive JNTP mentoring. She also promoted another JNTP-trained mentor to become the Induction Leader in the school, whose responsibilities include facilitating Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for faculty around teaching and learning.

School C: One Manhattan school not only provides every beginning teacher who is hired with a JNTP mentor, it has made the NTC/ JNTP professional teaching standards the underlying professional development structure and culture of the school. All teachers new to the school – no matter what level of experience they bring – are supported and evaluated based on these professional teaching standards.

School D: In a suburban New York school, new teachers worked together with their mentors to lead several staff meetings throughout the year. The practice of reflecting with a coaching partner was so well received at the school that the faculty now begins every staff meeting by using one of JNTP’s protocols for reflective practice.

The JNTP model: Beginning teachers

In their 2009 book New Teacher Mentoring, New Teacher Center founders Ellen Moir and Janet Gless write that “teachers may learn new teaching methods, styles or strategies later in their careers, but the foundation – how they interact with students, what types of expectations they set, and whether their kids will be bored or inspired – is laid in the first couple of years on the job” (p. 30). Thus, JNTP’s model is built on the foundation of formative assessment, and relies heavily on teachers’ reflective practice as manifested in self-assessment and goal setting, data collection and analysis of the new teacher’s practice. NTC research has shown that “teachers improve most when their learning is self-directed, tailored to meet their own individual needs, based on real time data from their own instructional efforts” (p. 34). The mentors’ and teachers’ tools, logs and collaborative analysis of student work document the teacher’s growth over time, and help the teacher set next steps and develop professional goals.

Over the course of two years of weekly meetings and observations, mentors use professional teaching standards to guide new teachers in developing practical skills in classroom management, lesson planning and pedagogy, with the goal of producing interdependent, problem-solving, reflective practitioners. Through this process, new teachers learn to reflect on their own professional development asthey examine evidence, set goals and discuss their practice withtheir mentors. In the NTC/JNTP Spring 2013 participant survey, 99% of new teachers mentored felt strongly that work with their mentor had influenced their practice positively. Additionally, 96% of new teachers and 98% of mentors reported that their work had positive impact on students’ learning and achievement.

The JNTP model: Mentors

Twenty years of experience led NTC to base its approach to the professional development of mentors on three principles:

• Supporting new teachers is a complicated and demanding endeavor, and rarely comes naturally
• Excellent classroom educators do not necessarily become excellent mentors
• Veteran teachers need time, training and ongoing support to develop the new skills and understanding necessary to be effective mentors

Just as beginning teachers benefit from ongoing support, so, too, do veteran teachers training to become beginning mentors, and up-front professional development is just the first step in JNTP mentor training. Mentors participate in six two-day Academies on topics including Introduction to Instructional Mentoring, Coaching and Observation Strategies for Working with Beginning Teachers, Analyzing Student Work to Guide Instruction, and Coaching in Complex Situations. They also attend monthly small group regional forums, where they discuss mentoring topics that support and expand on Academy themes. This intensive training, plus the support of JNTP Lead Coaches, helps mentors learn and apply the language and skills of listening, questioning, collaborating and facilitating.

As Moir and Gless (2009) write,

Many programs mandate a series of training sessions for mentors early in or prior to the school year and then presume that this initial training fully equips mentors to take on the work. Although foundational training is essential, it should not constitute the only, or even the bulk of, mentor learning. If mentors are to develop into highly skilled teacher educators who can serve as vanguard change agents, then their professional development needs to be chunked, carefully sequenced, and delivered over time. Like their new teachers, mentors need just-in-time learning that systematically develops their skills. (p. 52-53)

Whole school impact

As mentors bring their learning into their buildings, they also develop leadership capacity within their schools and share expertise in a number of ways, including staff presentations, facilitating meetings, coordinating professional development opportunities and assuming administrative roles. In the recent JNTP 10-year participant study, over 40% of mentor respondents indicated that they have assumed official leadership roles, including curriculum coordinators, department chairs and principals.

Mentors have helped create learning communities within their schools as they support instructional practices in their buildings. They promote differentiation, collaboration, lesson planning, standards, analysis of student work, peer coaching, inter-class visits, parent communication and goal setting. Principals report that mentors and their new teachers are using the same vocabulary and are thinking about teaching and learning through the prism of professional teaching standards.

Over the past decade, 90 Jewish day schools across the United States have supported their new teachers through JNTP and have seen how new teacher induction can become a key first step in developing a culture of ongoing professional growth. With more and more teachers in the system using standards of professional practice and the language of reflection and collaboration – especially as they become teacher leaders in their schools – the culture of the school becomes one of ongoing professional development.

Impact on the field

Over the course of 10 years, JNTP has seen significant impact on retention of teachers in Jewish day schools. While the national public school new teacher attrition rate is up to 50% within the first five years of teaching (Ingersoll, 2012), JNTP’s 2013 10- year study shows that 87% of JNTP-mentored new teachers who responded are still teaching in Jewish day schools at the five-year mark and 84% are still in the field after 10 years. This means more teachers – and better, more effective teachers – are remaining committed to the field of Jewish day school education.

This increase in retention rates not only benefits schools who have invested in JNTP (by cutting costs on frequent hiring and by the stated impacts on teacher quality, student achievement and culture) but as JNTP-trained teachers and mentors change schools, they bring their knowledge and skills with them to their new schools, impacting their new environments. In some of these cases, the teacher or mentor – or administrator, who is an advocate of new teacher induction – will help bring JNTP into the new school.

A surprising impact on the field is that as JNTP’s impact becomes known field-wide, new teachers ask during the hiring process about ongoing mentoring. Moreover, some schools are seeing an impact on the quality of teaching candidates who are applying. According to one principal, “I see JNTP as raising the standard of education at [my] high school. The word is out there that we support our new teachers and, therefore, we are attracting higher caliber applicants for our teaching positions.”

A Vision for the future

There exists a general consensus among educators that great teachers have an “it” factor. But what is “it” and can “it” be taught? A recent article by Crystal Monteiro (2013), a Rhode Island public school Induction Coach trained by the New Teacher Center, delved into the issue of whether effective teachers are born or made. Through her experience mentoring new public school teachers,Monteiro determined that a major component of “it” is continuous, intentional reflection. She writes: “Most likely, the effective teachers that we know and admire are those who learned how to be extremely reflective somewhere along the way. The cycle of planning, teaching and reflecting runs continuously through their veins, grounding their practice.” If continuous self-reflection over time is the basis of “it,” then we can conclude that “it” can be developed.

According to a JNTP funding partner in Florida: “The potential impact of JNTP on teacher effectiveness, performance, retention and morale is unlimited. We are already beginning to observe the significant impact of this program on teachers and their respective schools. It is a true replicable model.” What would the landscape of Jewish day school education look like if every beginning Jewish day school teacher across the country received a JNTP-trained mentor for two years of intensive, one-on-one mentoring?

• There would be a large pool of teachers who remain committed long-term to their schools and to the field of Jewish day school education, because they feel effective and competent from the beginning of their careers. As one principal observed: “Beginner teachers appreciate the support and the investment we are making in their success; therefore, their level of commitment to the school and the profession grows.”
• Our children would have highly effective teachers who know how to plan lessons, create safe and effective learning environments in their classrooms and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of each child. NTC/JNTP’s Spring 2013 survey shows that 92% of Administrators, 96% of new teachers and 98% of mentors feel that the new teacher’s work with their mentor impacts student learning and achievement. And 100% of administrators think that “the mentor is/would be more able to positively impact student learning in his/her own classroom as a result of the experience of being a mentor.”
• We would have a cadre of veteran teachers with valuable mentoring skills who are poised to become leaders from within the schools. In the NTC/JNTP Spring 2013 survey, over 95% of mentors administrators felt that “if the mentor were to choose to become a school administrator or instructional leader in the future, s/he would be more able to positively impact teacher growth and effectiveness as a result of the experience of being a mentor.” According to one principal: “Our mentors have a chance to grow professionally as well. Our mentor is taking new leadership roles at the school, roles she is fully prepared to take based partly on her experience with JNTP and mentoring.” And, as a former JNTP mentor who is now Head of School wrote to JNTP: “The skills and tools that I acquired through being a part of the JNTP program are an essential part of my growth as an educational leader. They allow me to reflect on my own work as an educator and to guide others to a place of self-reflection, professional growth and best practices in the classroom.”
• The shared language and values of professional teaching standards, collaboration, data analysis and formative assessment would be part of our schools’ cultures, elevating the level of discourse and teaching in each building and throughout the field of Jewish day school education. One administrator wrote in the NTC/JNTP Spring 2012 survey, “Everything our mentors have taught each mentee has been passed on to other teachers. The program has had a ‘ripple effect’ within the school.” According to another administrator: “In general, JNTP helps create a culture of reflection and growth among our younger teachers that percolates to all teachers as time goes by.” And, finally: “The mentoring program creates and reinforces a culture of reflection at the school. Having more and more teachers who are or have been mentored and more internal mentors positively impacts the culture exponentially. The shared language between mentors and mentees is spreading.”

Certainly, the landscape of Jewish day school education would thrive in a culture of ongoing professional growth based on standards of practice and language that are universal; on reflective practice that is built on data analysis and goal setting; on analyzing, understanding and meeting the needs of all learners. It would thrive in a culture of shared practice where all teachers feel supported and challenged as part of a community of learners. And when all of that happens, standing in front of every classroom will be a reflective, effective teacher – a teacher with “it” – who can ensure that our children succeed.

References

Ingersoll, R. (2012). Beginning teacher induction: What the data tell us. Education Week, May, 16, 2012. Retrieved from www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersoll.h31.html

Moir, E., Gless, J., et al (2009). New teacher mentoring: Hopes and promise for improving teacher effectiveness. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

Monteiro, C. (2013, July 31). The Making of an effective teacher: Born or made? (blog post). Retrieved from New Teacher Center at www.newteachercenter.org/blog/making-effective-teacher-born-or-made