We’ve all seen the headlines — our schools are understaffed, and enrollment in teacher prep programs is down. Public perceptions about our education system and the narrative about teachers and teaching can only be described as depressing. In short, the teaching profession is in trouble.

While what to do about it is being debated in state houses, think tanks, and prep programs across the country, at New Teacher Center, we believe the future of teaching depends on a reinvigorated vision for teacher mentoring. In the short term, mentoring is a critical bridge for teachers entering the profession right now through diverse and non-traditional pathways. It also needs to be integral to the design of longer-term efforts to reshape what teacher preparation, induction, and professional learning and collaboration look like.

Twenty-five years ago, NTC came into being because Ellen Moir and her colleagues said, and the field agreed: We can’t accept the teacher turnover problem — the loss of all that talent, the harm it does to teachers and the kids they serve. Instead of feeling isolated and ill-prepared, we need to ensure that every new teacher has the opportunity to collaborate with a quality mentor. To improve retention and teacher effectiveness, induction should be normalized, formalized, and grounded in the best research on how new teachers learn to teach.

In defining what this could and should look like, we spelled out three things:

• the nature of the relationship between mentor and mentee (highly personalized, trusting, power-neutral, teacher-led)
• the focus of mentoring interactions (a job-embedded teaching and coaching cycle to guide instructional conversations)
• the concrete details of the induction infrastructure (trained mentors, a prescription for the frequency and duration of support, meaningful school leader engagement)

These fundamentals are still foundational as we consider a new vision for mentoring based on the talents and needs of our potential new teachers. While the next generation of educators is still driven by the same sense of purpose, they come from widely varied preparation experiences. They also have different expectations for their careers. They want a job where they have opportunities for advancement. They are not interested in entering a profession that people talk about in terms of survival idioms — make or break, sink or swim — and where it feels difficult to make a difference. They have other options.

Our job, then, is to help think about what we can do differently to make our schools places where teachers (and their students) want to be and where they can flourish. It is within our sphere of influence.

NTC is looking at the future of mentoring as the key to a revitalized teaching profession built for the long haul. We are talking to all our partners, conducting empathy interviews with new teachers and teacher advocates, looking at the research, and watching with deep interest the exciting movement in talent development strategies — in apprenticeships, for example, and school staffing and team teaching models. In all of this work, we know that mentors will serve in lynchpin positions in support of new teachers coming through myriad pathways to serve a wide range of school communities.

As we face whatever the future is going to bring to the field of education, if we are going to invest in one sure thing, we believe it should be a quality mentoring experience for every new teacher. In the coming months, NTC will be convening educators, organizations, and researchers to talk about the role mentors can and should play in the transitional spaces within and between teacher preparation and in-service induction. If we want to expand the pipeline, we also have to ensure that the pathways to the classroom offer the quality of support that aspiring teachers and their future students deserve. We need everyone’s best thinking as we talk about how mentoring can make the difference for the generations to come. It’s critical for the profession and for the future of our schools. Join us.

We spoke with Principal Brooke Will about how her experience as an NTC-supported mentor informed her role as a school leader.

The research on teacher retention and working conditions is pretty clear about the importance of having a mentor or coach. We also know that a thoughtful and comprehensive induction experience is a key factor in teacher retention and a stepping stone to continued professional growth for new teachers. This critical transition period into the classroom can’t be left to chance. Beginning teachers need support not only to manage the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day but also to accelerate the development of the skills and confidence they need as professionals.

And the impact of mentoring goes well beyond new teacher support. For many mentors, it’s a pathway to teacher and school leadership. Brooke Will, former principal of Madelia Elementary in Madelia, Minnesota, is just one example. After receiving intensive training in NTC’s comprehensive, relationship-based, instructionally focused induction model, she subsequently served as a mentor for new teachers then as an instructional coach for veteran teachers, a university supervisor for pre-service teachers, and a professional learning designer, before moving into administration.

Brooke said that mentors are key to helping new teachers focus on the foundational mindsets they need to become the educators their students need them to be — knowing who their learners are and building a practice of reflecting and analyzing what happens in the classrooms that helps them grow. She also observed that quality mentoring can have a ripple effect throughout the whole school, serving as the cornerstone of the kind of deeply relational instructional culture teachers deserve and that helps them do their jobs and do them well.

“As a former mentor myself, I’ve seen firsthand the impact quality mentoring can have. You see new teachers growing more confident, learning to succeed, becoming professionals, and moving into leadership roles. As a principal, it’s an understanding and a responsibility I brought to my position. Mentoring influences the entire school community, building an ethos of collaborative professional learning and a peer culture that embraces improvement.”

Bringing a mentoring mindset to a leadership role

According to Brooke, her experience as a mentor bolstered her effectiveness as an administrator and instructional leader. “I gained considerable knowledge about keeping new teachers in the classroom and coaching educators at different career stages to continue their development. As a mentor and coach, I worked collaboratively alongside teachers to encourage them to do the thinking rather than being the giver of knowledge. As a professional learning practice, mentoring taught me the skill set of how to sit with a teacher, ask the right questions, and guide conversations so that teachers analyze their own practice and come up with their own answers and solutions.”

Brooke said that after becoming a school leader she continued to use her “mentor muscles” in her principal evaluator role, a practice she’s proud of. “I think my teachers would say my leadership style is one of respect and trust. I truly believe it’s the key to affecting change in teachers. When you come down harsh on a teacher — you’re doing this wrong and this wrong and this wrong — they get defeated. With my instructional coaching background, I always start with, ‘Hey, here are some great things I saw you doing. Here are some areas of growth. How can we work on this?’ Then I create the space for them to develop those ideas, providing support and resources as needed. Yes, I do have to evaluate them on a rubric, but we use it as a form of co-assessment to talk through where they are and how to get where they want to be. Nine times out of 10, they take the feedback and actually apply it. They know I’m not there to judge them. I’m there to help them get better.”

With my instructional coaching background, I always start with, ‘Hey, here are some great things I saw you doing. Here are some areas of growth. How can we work on this?’ Then I create the space for them to develop those ideas, providing support and resources as needed.

Mentoring to center students and build reflective practice

One of the hallmarks of NTC’s mentoring model is its emphasis on knowing students, guiding and encouraging teachers to learn who their students are in order to design better instruction. Another emphasis is on developing a habit or mindset of reflection, not just moving on, but circling back and asking what worked well in a lesson, what didn’t, and building that practice as part of a teacher’s instructional toolset.

Brooke said the focus on knowing students was particularly important in her former elementary school, which served 300 students, a third of whom were multilingual learners. “For the most part, my teachers didn’t speak their home languages. So that knowing students piece was huge. Building an academic learner profile is like an iceberg. There is the little bit we see, but a lot we have to work harder, dive deeper, to understand. For our multilingual learner teachers, understanding this holistic view of students not only improves lesson planning but deepens trust and relationships — it’s ground zero for establishing the conditions every student needs to engage in rigorous instruction.”

This knowledge of students also supports teachers to more effectively reflect on their practice in alignment with their students’ needs. They can dig into what happened during a lesson and look for instructional impact or alternative strategies to try. Or, as one of Brooke’s new teachers put it: “I know what to ask myself questions about.”

No one develops these practices overnight, Brooke shared. “A mentor is a powerful partner in supporting teachers to cultivate the habits of mind to return to these processes to design and improve instruction until it becomes second nature to their teaching practice.”

Mentoring to support a strong instructional culture

Brooke was adamant that each new teacher deserves a formalized induction process, expressing gratitude for the opportunity to participate in Minnesota’s pilot induction and mentoring program, which provided NTC training for mentors in her building. She said that it was critical that mentors and other staff supporting new teachers have a shared language and approach. She also observed that mentors were eager to learn and practice with their colleagues. “We’re all mentoring each other, building solutions together, learning how to be reflective practitioners, how to use data and professional knowledge to continuously develop our instructional practices to meet the needs of our kids.”

She continued: “Teacher induction should be so much more than a couple days of orientation. It should be an embedded, multi-year plan integrated with all teacher development initiatives and professional learning. Induction is the first several steps of a lifelong process for professional teachers, and it all starts with good mentoring that has a ripple effect over the course of their careers and across the school.”

Rachel Baker wasn’t always going to be a teacher. At one point, she was on her way to pharmacy school, but life got in the way. Fast forward 16 years, and she’s now a mentor teacher specialist in Calvert County Public Schools.

Rachel became a mentor through a Maryland Leads-funded project to establish a formal induction program in her district, which, like many small and rural school systems, is challenged to recruit and retain new teachers. New Teacher Center provided intensive professional learning and in-field coaching for three new district full-release mentor positions. Working closely with Rachel and TJ Hill, supervisor of instructional technology and teacher induction, NTC supported training and forums with additional staff to build a mentoring mindset across other instructional roles and initiatives in the district. Calvert County was a featured partner in our spring 2024 webinar on teacher retention in smaller districts.

Earlier this year, Rachel shared insights from her mentoring journey.

Tell us how you came to be a teacher and a mentor.

I didn’t actually go to school to be a teacher. I have a degree in chemistry, and I thought that I was going to be a pharmacist, … but I needed to take a year off so I decided I’d try being a substitute teacher. I went to the training, and two weeks later got the call that a chemistry teacher had just quit unexpectedly, and they needed a long-term sub. After I was there for a few months, they offered me the full-time position, and I haven’t looked back since. I think part of the reason why I was successful was because I was assigned a mentor who was amazing. I still send her Christmas cards; we email back and forth. I really cannot imagine what I would’ve done without her. I probably wouldn’t have stayed.

I taught high school chemistry and physical chemistry at the middle school level. Then I got my master’s in educational leadership, and when I moved to Calvert County Public Schools, I became a dean of students at a middle school, and a few years later, a high school assistant principal. The reason I wanted to go into administration was to be an instructional leader, but sometimes that’s really difficult when you’re dealing with the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities of an administrator. I feel like this job allows me to actually tap into what I genuinely care about. I also truly understand the impact a mentor can have on the success of a teacher. So here we are.

As a mentor, what have you learned is important about working with new teachers?

Validating their commitment and experience to give them space to grow. I think it’s important to acknowledge and recognize what they are doing is a hard job. I think it is also important to help them understand there is no expectation that they are going to know everything or be perfect and that we are there to provide support in order for them to grow their practice. They might need help understanding that you can have a very wonderful lesson plan, but when it comes down to actually implementing it, sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. That’s okay. You just go back and reflect and make some modifications. Every day is going to be different; every period is going to be different. We’re humans, and we’re interacting with humans, so you can only predict so many things.

Recognizing their knowledge and expertise is important too. Even if they don’t have advanced expertise in terms of instruction, they do have expertise about themselves, and they have expertise about the students they are teaching. As a mentor, I’m not with those students, so I don’t know them. So it’s crucial to have conversations with teachers and ask for their input instead of telling them what to do. A mentoring conversation is about truly including them in a dialogue so that it’s a partnership, a collaboration.

What are some common challenges new teachers have creating optimal learning environments for students?

When we ask teachers to pick their focus area for a mentoring session or a lesson, for many, it starts with a need to improve classroom management. I would say on the new teacher’s part, there is a huge concern around managing classroom behaviors because when their classroom isn’t functioning the way it should, it’s impacting the learning. Usually, it’s either a lack of knowledge or maybe inconsistency with creating routines and procedures, or with communicating consistently and then following through.

Recognizing and supporting students’ needs is a big part of it. My role is trying to reframe questions so teachers reflect on what assumptions they are making about a student (or students) and what they actually know about them. I have had many conversations with teachers to address how they see specific students, or even a class, in a negative light rather than their behaviors. I truly believe that every student, every person, wants to do well. And if they are not doing well, it is because there is something getting in their way, and their behavior is communicating that.

So, many of the optimal learning environment conversations I have with teachers are focused on making it safe to have those conversations with kids and encouraging them to reflect on the kind of opportunities for learning they are providing. Do their learners feel connected? Are they interested? Do they find the instruction relevant to their lives and who they are?

What are some features of high-quality mentoring?

It’s important in the beginning to definitely spend a lot of time building trusting relationships and trying to remove any barriers or biases … finding that grace and understanding throughout our interactions. Then, if we focus on coaching language and stances, it helps us approach conversations with teachers with the right entry points depending on where the person is. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of knowing teachers and then helping teachers know the students in their classrooms so they are actually planning instruction for those specific students and not just a generalized plan.

What do you cherish about being a mentor?

I just had a session last week with someone, and he made a comment that was pretty interesting. He said: “Wow. This lesson is so much better now that I have talked it through with you. Even though this is something extra that I have to do, it is a burden that I am happy to carry.” It happens all the time. A new teacher says they can see the benefit of having conversations about how things can be modified or improved to truly meet student needs. It is so worthwhile seeing their confidence increase throughout the year.

What are some concerns you have that might require a reset from existing mindsets about induction and new teacher support?

When we did a needs assessment at the beginning of last school year, we saw a real disconnect in perceptions about student-centered support. Something like 70+% of school leaders said they were providing support to help teachers be student-centered, but only 20% of teachers said they’re receiving that kind of feedback. A majority of school leaders also said they lacked training in ways to support new teachers. As someone who has been an administrator, I know that’s true. The training I received about observing and evaluating teachers was literally a one-hour session watching a mock lesson. We didn’t role-play post-observation conversations with the teacher, or even have boxes on the template for notes or feedback, no guidance on that at all. I truly see the value in having an opportunity to receive feedback and have a conversation about your practice, so we all need to be on the same page. We need to all have consistent language and understanding and also consistent expectations.

We also have a lot of teachers coming in on provisional licenses — definitely more than half the teachers I’m working with this year are — who don’t have a background in education. I was one of those teachers myself. We have teachers coming to teach in our Career and Technology Academy with 20+ years of industry expertise in their field, also with no instructional background. It’s challenging because there are so many foundational things that we need to work on before working through a coaching cycle.

It’s especially hard in career and technical content areas that don’t have state standards. A lot of these new teachers are writing the curriculum themselves — a first-year teacher having to write their own curriculum and create their own lessons. When you have no background in education, that’s overwhelming and stressful. We have to do everything we can to meet them where they are and allow them to gain confidence so they can be successful and stay in the profession.

Sometimes a relationship doesn’t vibe.

Other times, challenging relationships can provide the most fertile ground for growth.

As the lead mentor for new teacher induction in Miami-Dade Public Schools, Cheryl Pickney has seen relationships that run the gamut – from best friends to friction that feels like it hangs in the air. But one particular relationship stands out.

“We had a music teacher mentoring an art teacher,” said Cheryl. At first, the art teacher was very withdrawn. “It was like pulling teeth to get him to come to mentoring sessions,” she said. He didn’t seem to see the value in mentoring, and just wanted to be left alone. Then the relationship with his mentor went from cool to icy.

“At one point during an observation with his support mentor, he literally got up and headed to the door saying ‘I don’t trust this, I’m out of here,’” said Cheryl. Luckily, Cheryl was also there and able to work side-by-side with the mentor to deconstruct the barriers to building trust in their relationship. They talked about what made him uncomfortable. But he was reluctant to continue mentoring, and just didn’t think it was a good fit.

Teacher in Miami-Dade working with students during COVID-19 pandemic

Something had to be done.

Cheryl sat down with the mentor and looked at the script from the conversation. It became very clear what the art teacher was experiencing in sessions. “I realized [the mentor] was just rolling through the questions without really listening,” said Cheryl.

Cheryl worked with the mentor to focus on intentional listening as a way to repair and rebuild the relationship. “I told her, ‘Next time, do away with the script and really listen to what he says.’”

Successful coaching and mentoring isn’t ticking off a checklist. Attending to the needs of teachers and following paths — even when deviating from the topic at hand — deepens a sense of partnership.

And it transitions power from a place of imbalance where one dictates to the other, to a collaborative and co-creative space that allows for autonomy and strength of voice. “If you’re intentional in your listening, you can reach him,” said Cheryl. “We started making a plan.”

The practice of coaching hinges on the fact that feedback is critical for growth. But being open to feedback requires tremendous groundwork – groundwork that involves deep listening and connection, and a willingness to be adaptive. The mentor Cheryl was working with needed to lay the right foundation for feedback to be received and take root.

Starting over, the mentor and the art teacher began building common connections as people, finding grounds to share that exist outside of a space of judgement and critical feedback. Their conversations became more open, more personal. Turns out, he’s a musician himself and in a band. “It was something he didn’t really share with his students or the staff. But she talked with him about it,” said Cheryl. Little by little, they made a connection.

Group of students working on a biology project

She mentored him for the next year and Cheryl is happy to report “you could see the growth.” By the end of the year, he was really opening up — not just with his mentor, but with his students as well.

He even performed at the year-end assembly. “His students, they weren’t ready for that,” laughed Cheryl. When he got up on that stage and started to perform, “they were shocked to see that he was this really cool guy.” He began to establish real connections with his kids – the kind of relationships that reach beyond the curriculum. Those sorts of classroom connections are invaluable, and can lead to better, deeper learning and engagement.

Cheryl credits this transformation to his mentor. “Her work with him helped change the connection he had with those kids.”

New Teacher Center’s long-time partner Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) has always been an innovator. We are more than excited to support M-DCPS’s multi-faceted Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher pathways programming as part of our ongoing collaboration to engage and support aspiring and beginning teachers, and the students they serve.

In summer 2022, with their office phones often ringing in the background, this year’s cohort of aspiring educators participating in Miami-Dade County Public School’s (M-DCPS) Clerical to Teach (C2T) and Paraprofessional to Teach (P2T) programs took their next big steps toward becoming teachers. During a custom pre-service learning experience designed and facilitated by NTC program consultants Taryn Glynn and Jeanna Hawkins, these seasoned school professionals, some of whom have worked in the district for decades, came together to take their rich experience serving students, families, and the local and school community to the next level.

Over the course of an intensive week, participants examined the three domains of optimal learning. (This framework, which is grounded in the science of learning and development, provides a schema, concepts, and language to talk about classroom conditions that reflect what we know about how students learn best.) Participants identified the critical importance of knowing students and building authentic, healthy relationships as the foundation for learning. And the cohort enthusiastically embraced new learning about standards, subject-area content, and instructional practice, eager for more.

“They were such a joyful and engaged group, and the community aspect of the training was particularly empowering,” said Taryn and Jeanna. “Their understanding of the learning environment from their current jobs allowed them to quickly make deep contextual connections with the content provided in the session. In addition, because they have worked within the dynamics of the school system and come from the same professional backgrounds, the training was a safe space for learning that supported confidence building — participants came together in community as ‘non-instructional staff’ to support each other in building their identities as educators.”

Throughout the coming year, candidates will receive ongoing support from NTC-guided “buddy teachers” as they continue preparing for certification (and continue to serve in their current jobs). Once they are hired as “teachers of record,” C2T and P2T teachers will access three more years of aligned support through the district’s comprehensive induction program for all beginning teachers.

The C2T and P2T programs are part of a suite of grow your own educator pathways M-DCPS initiated several years ago to increase teacher retention and address staffing shortages. These two programs were designed to engage current district employees who have rich community knowledge and experience working with families and students as potential educators. The goal is to capitalize on the assets and expertise they bring to their new roles in the classroom.

Identifying GYO participants as ”pre-service” teachers was intentional, said Stephanie Garcia-Fields, NTC senior program consultant. Aspiring educators taking alternative routes to teaching often miss the typical supervised clinical experience that traditionally trained teacher candidates are required to complete. She also emphasized that designing a custom pre-service offering aligned with their experience and needs was critical. “The first step we took was to sit down with the program leaders to see what participants would need specifically based on the work they are already doing and the strengths they will bring to their roles,” Stephanie said. “This is something we want them to realize, that the knowledge they bring as an experienced member of the school community is going to translate into a strength in the classroom. We want to highlight and build on the skills and contacts and touchpoints and knowledge they already have that perhaps a regularly trained classroom teacher might not. [It] helps to build confidence and identity as an educator, which is important for retention, efficacy, and, of course, the student experience.”

These teacher candidates already play an essential role in students’ lives. They serve as vital liaisons between the school, caregivers, and the community. Non-instructional staff have deep knowledge of students from day-to-day interactions in the front office, including historical information, home dynamics, and knowledge about attendance and academic strengths and needs. Participants who have served as paraprofessionals can also bring practical experience with classroom management, instructional strategies, IEP implementation, early/child development, parental/caregiver engagement, and learning differences to the job.

In addition to C2T and P2T, NTC is also supporting another ongoing district GYO initiative called the Temporary Instructor Preparation and Support program (TIPS). TIPS is designed to recruit college students to explore teaching as a career while serving as temporary instructors in long-term substitute positions. Three more GYO pathways in development are being created specifically to recruit more men of color currently serving in security and custodial roles. Another emerging effort targets M-DCPS high school students through the Florida Future Educators of America pathway called Project REDI (Recruiting, Empowering, and Developing Inclusive Male Teachers of Color).

Stephanie highlighted M-DCPS’s willingness to experiment within an aligned and coherent vision for teacher development as particularly powerful. This has been true, she said, ever since NTC first partnered with M-DCPS to build its comprehensive Mentoring and Induction for New Teachers program over a decade ago. “That alignment is really important to Miami,” she said. “It’s their goal that everybody gets equal access to high quality pre-service experiences, no matter what pathway brings them to the classroom.”

“Our Grow Your Own pathways are deliberately crafted with support structures.”

— Kristin Trompeter, M-DCPS Executive Director, New Teacher Support, Office of Professional Learning and Career Development

Kristen Trompeter, M-DCPS’s executive director of new teacher support, shared a reflection on the intention and design of GYO for the district. “Recently, Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) shifted so that our division of professional development now includes a focus on career enhancement, establishing the Office of Professional Learning and Career Development. From students in our schools to individuals newly relocated to South Florida who have only dreamed about working in education, we want potential hires to know that they can have a full career with M-DCPS, their employer of choice. Our Grow Your Own pathways are deliberately crafted with support structures. These plans encourage strategic partnerships, like the one M-DCPS has with the New Teacher Center, to ensure that participants in these pathways are provided with current and expert knowledge and skill sets that will lead to not only their success, but also to that of our students.”

A key priority for M-DCPS, said Stephanie, “is not just filling seats, but getting the people our kids need into the classroom … recruiting staff who come from the community, who really care about teaching and learning, and then supporting them to grow into their roles as educators.”

M-DCPS At-a-Glance

Over the last 10+ years, New Teacher Center and Miami-Dade County Public Schools have partnered on several major federal grants to implement and refine the district’s vision for a coherent teacher professional growth and development program. A current focus of the partnership is integrating support for potential teacher candidates coming through alternative pathways.

M-DCPS is the 4th largest school district in the U.S.: 392 schools, 345,000 students, and over 40,000 employees, covering over 2,000 square miles and serving communities ranging from rural and suburban, to urban cities and municipalities. Students in M-DCPS speak 56 different languages and represent 160 countries.

There are many reasons we love Impact Florida’s Solving with Students Cadre. As a pilot partner, we are learning so much through this innovative professional learning model based on student feedback for Florida math teachers. And it’s not just us. Ninety-eight percent of teachers in the first pilot reported making substantive changes to their practice. What’s most exciting is what we are hearing from learners. Students of participating teachers confirmed the changes their teachers are making are having real impact on their experiences in the classroom.

Solving with Students is an initiative of Impact Florida designed to use student feedback on classroom learning conditions from the PERTS: Elevate survey as a lever for developing teacher practice. The first pilot included 49 secondary math teachers with anywhere from zero to more than 21 years of experience representing 16 districts across the state who applied to participate. Impact Florida supported teachers in the cadre to implement the survey with students in their classrooms, analyze the results, and then test small changes in practice in iterative cycles based on ongoing feedback through follow-up surveys.

Throughout the experience, Impact Florida regularly brought the cadre together for targeted support, to share problems of practice, and to build community. Teachers also had the option to receive six additional hours of formal one-on-one virtual coaching from an NTC program consultant or informal coaching through regular check-in calls with Impact Florida’s cadre leader.

The PERTS: Elevate survey asks students to provide anonymous feedback on learning conditions in their classrooms.

One reason we are so enthusiastic about the project is it incorporates key design features that matter according to the research on what works in professional learning. These features, which also guide our approach at NTC, provide a solid jumping-off point for innovation and include:

• priority emphasis on building relationships
• well-planned opportunities for teacher collaboration
• one-on-one coaching with follow-up
• focus on subject-specific instructional practice vs. content knowledge

Another reason is the richness of the data. NTC’s impact team evaluated survey results from the first pilot and gathered insights from coaching conversations as well as teacher and student focus groups. Participants authentically shared stories of their hopes, fears, challenges, discoveries, and the important lessons captured in the nuances of what students had to say. Taken together, the findings from the pilot cadre were compelling. Not only did we see almost immediate student-reported improvements in participating teachers’ classrooms, we saw how teachers’ mindsets shifted as they engaged, with peer and coach support, in increasingly deeper ways with the feedback from their students.

We are also encouraged by the nature of teacher commitment we saw. Even after so much hardship and disruption over the past several years, cadre teachers — the majority of whom were long-term veterans with 10, 15, 20+ years of experience — jumped at this opportunity to grow professionally. They weren’t “voluntold” to participate, and the small stipend notwithstanding, they applied because they were genuinely interested in analyzing their practice from their students’ perspective to make positive changes. That willingness to be vulnerable, in and of itself, had a powerful influence on the classroom relationship, according to both teachers and students.

NTC senior program consultant and former math teacher Tiana Pitts, who coached about half the teachers in the pilot cadre, concurred. “It’s important to consider what teachers were messaging to their students by participating. They were essentially saying to them: ‘I want to grow. I want to learn. And I need you to help me,’” Tiana said. The surveys then allowed students to anonymously share their true opinions — if they thought their teachers cared about them, how the classroom community felt, if the work they were asked to do was meaningful. Using this data, teachers then chose an area to focus on, validating students’ feedback and, in most cases, bringing them into partnership to identify and test new strategies.

“It’s important to consider what teachers were messaging to their students by participating. They were essentially saying to them: ‘I want to grow, I want to learn. And I need you to help me.’”

Following each cycle of survey feedback, teachers were asked to report the extent to which they interacted with students about their focus area and strategy for addressing results. In general, teachers who intentionally engaged students in conversations about changes they were making saw more improvement in learning conditions. When teachers did not engage students in inquiry cycle conversations, the percentage of students providing positive feedback generally declined or remained flat.

Research suggests that efforts to promote student voice in the classroom can influence student engagement in learning. We believe Solving with Students reflects that potential in alignment with NTC’s guiding belief that meaningful teaching and learning is a partnership — a reciprocal, relational, human interaction between teachers and students that nurtures the potential of each individual in a community of learners.

The value-add of coaching — Teacher well-being and accelerated growth

To learn more about how coaching can both deepen and extend the impact potential of student data on teacher practice, we talked with Tiana about what she did and what she learned in her close collaboration with participating teachers. All of her coaching moves, she said, were designed to create safe spaces of optimal learning for teachers.

Of the teachers who received formal coaching, 81% strongly agreed they had made permanent and substantive changes to their practice.

Establishing the relationship

NTC’s Tiana Pitts (right) working with Impact Florida

For those teachers who opted in, Tiana provided six hours of remote one-on-one coaching from February to June, focusing on four cycles of student surveys from the teacher’s classroom.

In her first interactions with teachers, Tiana said her priority was to create connections. “They don’t know me. We’re meeting virtually. I’m in North Carolina. They’re in Florida. So, it was critical for me to establish that relationship from day one, set a really solid foundation, to build that rapport and trust in order to have some tough conversations later. That first coaching session, I said, ‘we’re not looking at data; we’re talking to each other. Let’s talk about how your life is; let’s talk about how things are going.’ I asked them to tell me about their journey in education. ‘Where did you start? What made you decide to teach? Why are you still teaching? Why are you teaching at the school where you are now? Why did you choose this particular professional development opportunity? What are you looking for out of this experience?’ I also told them a little bit about myself, my background, that I was a math teacher, and I understood where they were coming from.”

“They don’t know me. We’re meeting virtually. I’m in North Carolina. They’re in Florida. So, it was critical for me to establish that relationship from day one, set a really solid foundation, to build that rapport and trust in order to have some tough conversations later.”

Taking a deep look at student feedback

The next thing Tiana did was ask each teacher to re-engage with the student data, understanding the competing priorities teachers are continuously juggling. I said to them: “I know that you probably have looked at your data, but you probably had interruptions because it was your planning period or you looked at it real quick after hours at home, so I want to take some of our time together to look at it with fresh eyes.’ We spent a good 10 minutes looking at it independently; my camera is off, their camera is off, to really ground us in the data before we talked about it.”

Spending that time to look at the student feedback in more than a cursory way, and in the context of having an immediate and immersive conversation about what the data meant and what to do about it, was what made the difference. One focus group teacher said: “I look through the survey, and I’m like, ‘Oh, oh, okay. I don’t know how I’m going to fix that.’ And then you have that hour with Tiana, and she’s like, ‘Well, wait a minute. It’s not really that bad … let’s work on this.’ She pointed out things that I would never have taken the time to look at, and it helped me tremendously.”

Spending that time to look at the student feedback in more than a cursory way, and in the context of having an immediate and immersive conversation about what the data meant and what to do about it, was what made the difference.

Starting with what’s working — Assets, not deficits

Another key step was to focus on what’s working. Tiana said she had to push teachers not to overlook data that indicated where they were already having positive impacts on the learning environment. “They’re math teachers; they want to solve problems. They’re going to go to the problems first. That’s just how our brains work. As a coach, I have to help them prioritize looking for the things that are going well. I have to push them. It’s part of building the rapport, but there’s also a lot of meaningful data there that they shouldn’t overlook. For example, if your results for ‘meaningful work’ are at 80%, that’s a good thing. Of course, we have to look at that 20%, but let’s start with the 80% —‘What do you think you’ve done to create that kind of environment for your students?’ That’s hard for them, first to stop and name what’s going well but also to identify what behaviors or actions might account for that, and that’s really important to know.”

Starting with what the teacher was doing right proved very meaningful for participants. It also modeled a critical stance of asset-based, learner-centered teaching. “I had a couple of teachers start crying. You can go into it with a deficit mindset of all the things you’re not doing right. Me reminding them of the things that are going well is good for their spirit. I had one teacher say, ‘thank you for pushing me to see that because I thought I was failing my kids.’ They’re hard on themselves, some of them are really hard on themselves, and I get to see all the data. So I say, ‘do you understand that two-thirds of your kids think that you care about them? That’s a good thing.’”

“I had a couple of teachers start crying. You can go into it with a deficit mindset of all the things you’re not doing right. Me reminding them of the things that are going well is good for their spirit. I had one teacher say, ‘thank you for pushing me to see that because I thought I was failing my kids.’”

Tiana asked teachers to identify what actions or behaviors they thought created these positive experiences. “We dig into it and write it down. We don’t just talk about it. We want them to keep doing that stuff while they are also focusing on where they want to improve. Unless you name that explicitly, those actions and strategies might get lost.”

“It’s only after that that we talk about what they want to focus on,” Tiana said. “And I want to point out that the language of that conversation is huge. It’s not, ‘where were results low; it’s, now what do you want to focus on?’”

From there, Tiana supported teachers to dig deeper into their data, encouraging them to look at even smaller differences that might illuminate how some aspect of their teaching practice could be changed. And the more teachers learned, the more they wanted to know. “What was so cool,” Tiana said, “was that the teachers’ mindsets were changing, and the kids were getting a different person. There was one teacher who was about to walk away from teaching after the pandemic. This experience totally turned her back around, rejuvenated her, because she connected with her kids on a different level.”

Coaching for collective impact

Impact Florida team members work with NTC’s impact team on design

In addition to supporting individual growth, coaching served as a conduit for teacher collaboration. To help teachers think about what they were doing well, Tiana appealed to their instincts to help other teachers for the collective good. “I tell them: ‘I need to know what you did so I can tell other teachers. That’s a part of coaching. We’re collaborating. I’m not sitting here telling you all the answers. I need to hear what you’re doing right because somebody else is struggling in this area and what you’ve learned could help them.’ Naming that I am learning from them in ways that could help other teachers continues to build that rapport and also appeals to their spirit of teamwork…. We’re all in this together.”

In focus groups, teachers also talked about the value of working with their peers across the cadre on similar problems of practice. “What can I do differently to build relationships with my kids? It’s really, really comforting knowing we all have the same issues…. It’s a common bond we all have…. [How can we] break that cycle as a group? What can we come up with?” Focus group teachers also expressed a desire to extend what they were learning in the cadre to influence change in their school and district culture. “I’m going to take the results and information and show them. Because we need to modify the culture of our school,” one teacher said.

This impulse toward collective action is just one example of the ripple effect we anticipate from this unique professional learning opportunity as Impact Florida continues experimenting and bringing the cadre approach to scale. “We’re already impacting students all over Florida,” said Tiana, and word is spreading quickly. Over 130 teachers applied for the 75 openings in a second expanded cadre experience offered in Fall 2022. And with 34 teachers from the original pilot applying to participate again, Impact Florida incorporated a school-based Professional Learning Community (PLC) focus into the design to extend the learning to other educators at cadre teachers’ schools. Staff reports that teachers from other subject areas want to join as well.

Our takeaways from our partnership with the Solving with Students Cadre are significant, with implications for how we think about involving students in the co-design of new models for coaching and teacher development. Creating safe yet challenging opportunities like the cadre experience — that prioritize student voice and encourage connection in the classroom — is where we need to focus our energies as we continue our work to reshape the future of teacher professional learning.

Your district has invested in a two-year effort to rewrite curriculum in alignment with new state standards. You’ve organized a string of professional learning sessions to get it into classrooms. You and your staff are consistently using your “look-for” tools in schools to see if teachers are implementing the strategies from the initiatives central to your improvement planning. You regularly do step-backs to monitor progress. You have a well-established mentoring program for your beginning teachers, and you are ramping up your coaching program around your belief that every teacher deserves a coach. And yet, you still aren’t seeing anywhere close to the results you were hoping for. What isn’t working? Are teachers not implementing the curriculum? Do they need more professional development? How can coaches help? Or, are teachers and coaches doing what you asked them to do, but it’s just not the right approach for their kids, and teachers don’t have the time and the space to figure out how to adjust?

At NTC, we work closely with our partners to examine and overcome impact challenges like these.

“One of the things we’re learning,” said NTC’s Senior Director of Impact Lisa Schmitt, “is that sometimes assumptions about what the issue is can get in the way. There are so many moving parts, so many inputs, that it’s hard to zero in on where the disconnects are. That makes it hard to design solutions that will have real impact.” In response, we’ve been working with partners to define the unique landscape for change at their sites as a starting place for designing programs — What is the current state of instruction? How would students characterize the learning environment? Where are the strengths? What are the school- and system-level enabling conditions that have to be in place to support success?

Landscape Analysis

To help partners answer some of these questions, NTC’s program staff uses a suite of customizable data collection tools and processes to guide “current state” analyses. The goal is to target optimal starting points for designing and implementing improvements. These tools can be used for audits, instructional reviews, or strategic planning conversations to help identify trends, gaps, and opportunities to design appropriate interventions. The toolset may include:

• teacher and student focus group protocols
• student surveys
• curriculum review rubrics
• student work sample analysis rubrics using NTC’s mentoring/coaching tools
• walk-throughs and observations using customized instructional practice guides and other rubrics aligned with specific teacher practice and/or student experience goals
• consultative support focused on family/community representation and inclusion in audit and review processes

“We also encourage partners to extend invitations for ‘learning walks’ to site leaders, administrators, and others to help get a much wider group than might be typical on the ‘same page’ about the instructional landscape,” Lisa said. Our NTC team then supports partners in strategic planning conversations first to analyze the data and then to articulate very targeted findings and trends as the launching point for designing or modifying an improvement strategy or coaching priority. “In addition to observations, we really encourage partners to gather student and teacher perspectives from focus groups and surveys and analyze student work samples to better inform their planning,” she said.

“We encourage partners to extend invitations for ‘learning walks’ to site leaders, administrators, and others to help get a much wider group than might be typical on the ‘same page’ about the instructional landscape.”

— Lisa Schmitt, Senior Director of Impact

Common 5+1

Another “impact by design” approach we’ve been piloting is based on program evaluation research that integrates Guskey’s five levels of evaluation of professional learning. This framework differentiates data collection and indicators of success according to stakeholder input, program type, and depth of engagement. We call it: Common 5+1.

Participants value the experience → Participants learn → Organizations support, or change to support, implementation → Participants transfer learning to practice → Students learn and thrive + Improvements are sustainable/Ecosystems become healthier

The Common 5+1 approach is aligned with our theory of change — professional support of educators leads to student learning through a logical sequence of events and supporting conditions. Lisa continued: “We especially like this quote from Guskey about the broader system supports — ‘Organizational dimensions … can sometimes hinder or prevent success, even when the individual aspects of professional development are done right.’ That’s one shift we are trying to encourage by expanding the data we collect and by getting partners to articulate what the supporting conditions need to be. This drives a greater level of collective responsibility and accountability for the success of a new approach. It also helps us codify enabling conditions.”

Both of these approaches to NTC impact measurement focus on more immediate, student-centered, and site-specific measures in the unique contexts of our partner sites. “So often we will take a research-based initiative, and our goal is to have an impact on student performance on state tests because that’s how the field tends to measure success. But we don’t take into account all the existing variables in the context for implementing the strategy, including starting places and potentially limiting conditions on the ground that you need to design and adapt for. Half the time, we don’t even know what those hidden challenges are,” Lisa said.

So, instead of prioritizing statistical models and test data over all else, we are elevating student-reported experience data, classroom observations, and other qualitative measures. We are working with our partners to gather site-specific baseline data and then support them to co-design solutions that reflect their goals and appropriate methods of measuring impact. In all of this work, including expanded groups of stakeholders is key to designing solutions that honor and value partner, community, and student realities, needs, and priorities. Our ultimate goal is to build capacity at our partner sites to identify gaps for data collection and system supports, engage in goal-setting and action-planning around very targeted and meaningful outcomes for teachers and students, and effectively use authentic data to design solutions that are organically easier to monitor internally.

“We are learning from our partnerships all over the country about how to do this better,” Lisa said. In Florida and Houston, our partners are using student feedback from surveys to design professional development. In Massachusetts, parents and community partners are providing input to help shape social studies curriculum. Our Tennessee Math partners used our data collection tools and Common 5+1 structure to design site-specific strategies around a shared goal to prioritize conceptual understanding in math instruction. In Osceola, our partners are using a landscape analysis to align professional development and coaching strategies to support curriculum implementation.

These are just a few of the reports we’re hearing from our program staff.

— “This has just been a really good opportunity for us to think, with our partner’s end goal in mind, about what needs to happen at each level of the Common 5+1 plan to make sure that we get there. This work is super adaptive. We are meeting folks where they are … and helping them think through some of those system shifts and structures that need to be in place to be successful.”

— “We’re doing a set of focus groups with teachers, coaches, mentors, and administrators. We are also doing some with students and parents. We’ve been thinking – why are we trying to solve problems for students and parents without asking students and parents what they need?”

The aim of NTC’s new impact agenda is to be better able to co-design impact plans with our partners that measure outcomes that are meaningful and aligned with district needs. Our ultimate goal is to build capacity at our partner sites to engage in sustainable, evidence-based, systems-level continuous improvement that makes a real difference in the learning experiences of those students it is our mission to serve.

With a lot of people coming and going from the continental United States, a significant military presence, and a high cost of living, teacher turnover has long plagued Hawai’i schools. While nationally nearly half of new teachers leave the classroom in the first five years, Hawai’i was losing them in just three. Determined to stem the tide, state leaders implemented a robust induction program based on NTC’s research-based model. Hawai’i’s bold investment is now a beacon for states facing similar challenges.

We spoke with Keri Shimomoto and Kristen Brummel, educational specialists with the Hawai’i Teacher Induction Center, about the evolution of the state’s program and the key components that contribute to both its stability and coherence and its ability to remain dynamic, responsive, and reflective of the rich cultural context of Hawai’i.

After serving as an induction coordinator and mentor in the Honolulu District since 2001, Keri Shimomoto was asked to spearhead a comprehensive statewide induction and mentoring effort for the Hawai’i State Department of Education (HIDOE) in 2010 and has helped lead the state’s induction programming ever since. Kristen Brummel credits a new teacher course led by Keri early in her teaching career as life-changing. After being named Hawai’i State Teacher of the Year in 2011, she became a mentor herself. Kristen has also served as an induction program coordinator at the local level before joining the Hawai’i Teacher Induction Center last year.

When Keri first started doing this work, she recalled that a few induction programs existed, but new teacher support was not universally available. Her first formal mentor training came through a department partnership with the University of Hawai’i to support new emergency-hire special education teachers. New Teacher Center (NTC) provided the professional learning for participating mentors, which Keri described as “some of the best professional development I experienced as a teacher.” She said the experience helped her and her colleagues to “level up” their shared vision for quality mentoring as the cornerstone of teacher induction.

Over the next few years, NTC also provided programmatic consultation, conducting focus groups across the state to assess existing induction practices. “We found there were pockets of really good support for new teachers here and there, but there was a real need for consistency,” Keri said. Based on NTC’s recommendations for building a more coherent, statewide approach, the department began applying for grants and conducting small pilots. Eventually, the state spelled out its vision for new teacher support in a successful federal Race to the Top grant application, and in 2011, opened New Teacher Center Hawai’i. “We wanted to go for the gold standard,” Keri said, “to use the New Teacher Center’s model and contextualize it for our state.”

Those early years marked the beginning of a rich partnership that has fostered the growth of a state induction program now seen by Hawai’i’s education leadership as the “heartbeat of the department.” Hallmarks of this exemplary state model include stable infrastructure and funding, the guiding ethos of Nā Hopena A‘o, and an active commitment to sustain relevant, responsive, and continuously improving teacher support.

Hawai’i Teacher Induction Center team

Policy and infrastructure that says Hawai’i is serious about induction

New teachers in Hawai’i receive two years of intensive mentoring with ongoing new teacher-focused professional learning options through year three (and up to year five). This level of support is the result of policy initiatives, permanently funded induction positions to ensure comprehensive training for mentors at every level of the system, and local guidance and expectations for new teacher support programs that are spelled out in the Hawai’i Teacher Induction Program Standards.

Formalizing and institutionalizing high-quality induction as a state priority involved advocating with the Board of Education and the Hawai’i State Teachers Association. Keri said the resulting policy was critical: “We are able to say ‘We want to help teachers to get better, faster. It’s going to be better for your students, and we want to retain teachers. Also, it’s board policy, so it is an expectation, and we have the support of the teacher union to do this work.’”

Another critical piece was funding. “One of our goals,” Keri continued, “was to build a permanent induction system for beginning teachers. The only way to do that was to make sure we had permanent public funding for it, so we didn’t have to keep relying on grants and chasing after funds. It took some time to establish our existing office, but now there are 10 of us in positions that are publicly, permanently funded by the legislature and the governor. Teacher induction is in our general budget. That was a huge step.”

These state-level funded positions include two full-release special education mentors and five induction “state office teachers” responsible for working with local induction staff. Every superintendent of Hawai’i’s 15 “complex areas” (how the state refers to geographical districts) must designate an induction program coordinator who meets regularly with state staff. These coordinators also participate in Hawai’i’s Professional Learning Network (modeled on NTC’s National Program Leader Network) for quarterly professional learning designed to build induction leadership capacity. Local coordinators manage their complex area programs, including designing and facilitating professional learning for mentors serving in schools as well as for beginning teachers. “We felt it was really important to centralize and standardize the mentor training following the NTC model because we wanted to make sure that we were providing rigorous mentoring focused on improving instruction for all students, not just ‘buddy’ mentoring,” Keri said.

To sustain a high level of consistency, according to NTC program lead Vera-Lisa Roberts, state and local staff continue to participate in ongoing mentor training. They also continue to mentor at least one beginning teacher to keep their mentoring skills and perspectives fresh.

Another key piece of the program is the length and intentionality of the support for new teachers. The state coordinates beginning teacher summer academies and quarterly new teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) that are facilitated in each complex area. This is in addition to two years of intensive support paired with a trained mentor and engaging in 180 minutes of mentoring interactions a month. After the two years, some principals may request that teachers continue mentoring for a third year or teachers can request the support themselves. Otherwise, new teachers participate in specialized professional learning in years three, four, and sometimes, five. “We know that we still can lose teachers after that second year, third year, even fourth year, so we’ve created an extended system of support for those teachers once they no longer work so closely with their mentor,” said Keri.

The state also offers PLCs specifically for new teachers in years 2-4 led by veteran teacher leaders. According to Kristen, this is designed to leverage the expertise of exceptional teachers to share effective instructional practices with beginning teachers. “When teachers lead professional learning, they create a ripple effect. Their expertise inspires new teachers, ultimately benefiting all students. It creates a model of leadership that inspires new teachers to follow in those footsteps and become leaders themselves,” she said.

PLCs also provide opportunities for new teachers to collaborate with peers, an important working condition that research says improves job satisfaction and teacher retention. As a professional learning model, staff report that PLCs allow them to provide ongoing professional learning while staying flexible and adapting to how teachers want to engage. Kristen adds: “Building a network is crucial for new teachers. It fosters the understanding that resources and support can come from a diverse range of people and places. Additionally, collaborating with colleagues facing similar challenges provides invaluable guidance and camaraderie.”

Nā Hopena A‘o or HĀ

A more recent area of focus — and defining characteristic of Hawai’i’s induction approach — is captured in the HIDOEʻs Nā Hopena A‘o or HĀ. According to the state’s website, HĀ is a “department-wide framework to develop the skills, behaviors, and dispositions that are reminiscent of Hawaiʻi’s unique context and to honor the qualities and values of the indigenous language and culture of Hawaiʻi. The outcomes include a sense of Belonging, Responsibility, Excellence, Aloha, Total Wellbeing and Hawai‘i, that, when taken together, become the core BREATH that can be drawn on for strength and stability throughout school and beyond.”

NTC Program Consultant Vera-Lisa had a lot to say about the alignment of HĀ and NTC’s relational, student-centered approach to creating optimal learning environments. “There are so many connections to the science and optimal learning environments. It also reflects how we co-design with our partners. Across very different islands, it’s a very similar vision, everyone is working towards one goal.”

Keri agreed: “These are Hawaiian values that I’ve always felt really align well with NTC’s core values. NTC’s work with teachers and students always starts from a place of competence. Getting to know and honoring everyone’s gifts and building from there.”

“These are Hawaiian values that I’ve always felt really align well with NTC’s core values. NTC’s work with teachers and students always starts from a place of competence. Getting to know and honoring everyone’s gifts and building from there.”

And because so many teachers come to Hawai’i from the continental United States, the cultural aspect of induction that HĀ brings is essential to set new teachers up for success to create authentic relationships with students, families, and colleagues. “These are values that are important in the communities,” Vera-Lisa added. “Teachers from the mainland might not know that kids leave their shoes at the door, the importance of ancestors, grandparents coming into the classroom. HĀ helps bring teachers new to this context into the community.”

Commitment to collaboration, growth and, teacher leadership

Leveraging cross-departmental expertise and collaboration between the induction center and other state-level staff to address high-priority needs has been instrumental in growing the induction community across the department, Keri observed. “Our director always says we’re trying to ‘melt the walls’ between state offices because it is everyone’s responsibility to support new teachers.”

For example, joint work with the state special education office has resulted in specifically adapted mentor forums that reflect up-to-date special education law, policy, and practice. The induction office also advocated for 15 permanently funded positions (one for each complex area) for dedicated special education mentors to provide just-in-time support that meets the unique needs of new special education teachers and their students.

An annual statewide survey of mentors and new teachers also helps induction staff identify the departments and expertise needed to engage to meet teacher and student needs. Support for multilingual learners repeatedly surfaces as an area of significant need. “For the last three to four years, when we ask mentors and beginning teachers where they would like more training and support, multilingual learners are consistently in the top three. So, we partnered with the Castle Foundation, our state English Learner office, and NTC for training for induction coordinators and mentors. Now, we are looking at ways we can include this content in mentor forums for all mentors.”

Kristen highlighted another feature that makes Hawai’i’s program special: a “focus on continuous growth and exceptional support for beginning teachers and mentors as well as Complex Area Induction Program Coordinators.”

Vera-Lisa agreed, saying, “The Hawai’i team is always asking, ‘How can we make it better? How can we make the experience better for the mentors, better for the teachers, better for the kids? We need another lever to make it better.’”

To this end, the NTC team has been working with Hawai’i induction staff to provide “in-field coaching,” which involves coaching for coaches based on observations of their interactions with teachers — a core component of the NTC model. “Our mentors are passionate about making a difference and eager to grow their mentoring skills, and we’re committed to investing in them,” said Kristen.

The induction program also provides opportunities to foster teacher leadership development, which induction staff actively track. “We have over 500 mentors mentoring every year, and we train about 200 new mentors every year, which is really helping to build leadership capacity. How many of our mentors actually move into more formal leadership positions like principal, vice principal? It’s no accident that our induction program sits within HIDOE’s Leadership Institute. We do really contribute, from the very beginning of the pipeline, to building leadership from our new teachers to our mentors to our induction program leaders,” Keri said.

Tracking teacher retention at the local level is complicated and labor-intensive. It’s more complex than counting how many teachers are employed at a school one year and then counting how many come back the next. There are a lot of variables and methodological considerations, and it can get messy quickly.²

Not only that, retention is a lagging indicator — you’re already into the next school year before you can compute retention data because you won’t know who is returning until they do (or don’t). And if they don’t come back, and that’s all you’re monitoring, it’s too late to do anything about it.

For these and a host of other reasons, we need to think differently about monitoring our impact on teacher retention. Rather than being in the position of reacting to staffing gaps, we must look for measures that help us be proactive, keeping our fingers on the pulse of teacher attitudes and experiences so we can do something before they start heading for the door.

Fortunately, the research is pretty clear on the factors that can influence a teacher’s decision to stay in the classroom (or at a particular school). While some of these are personal and external and beyond the control of school/district decision-makers, many are within the sphere of influence of local leaders.

Rather than being in the position of reacting to staffing gaps, we must look for measures that help us be proactive, keeping our fingers on the pulse of teacher attitudes and experiences so we can do something before they start heading for the door.

Leading indicators for retention

As a mentoring and coaching organization, we believe one leading indicator for retention is self-efficacy — a teacher’s confidence that they are effective in the classroom. Evidence suggests that poor self-efficacy is linked to higher teacher burnout and stress. We also know that teachers who do not feel prepared or supported to do well at their jobs are at much higher risk for leaving the profession, while those who have more confidence in their abilities have higher job satisfaction and more commitment to teaching.³

A related indicator is “working conditions,” which researchers Ingersoll and Tran⁴ describe as putting “the organization back into the analysis” of staffing issues referring to the “structure, management and leadership in school districts and schools.” Specific working conditions called out in the literature include:

• supportive administration/capable leadership
• relational trust and respect among staff
• meaningful professional learning
• opportunities for collaboration as well as teacher autonomy
• opportunities for advancement
• having access to a mentor or coach⁵

A growing number of recent studies indicate that these factors matter especially to teachers of color,⁶ providing clarity about steps we can take in our ongoing effort to increase grow the educator workforce and improve retention overall.

Capturing teacher feelings about their daily work

To leverage the research base on what keeps teachers in the classroom, we can and should be monitoring these leading indicators for retention. Specifically, we need to gather and analyze data on teacher beliefs, feelings, and attitudes about the school environment, as well as self-perceptions of effectiveness.

How do we do that? It’s pretty typical for schools to collect climate data through annual staff surveys. Climate surveys are appealing for many reasons. There are a lot of high-quality, open-source instruments out there with aligned student (and sometimes parent) surveys that allow schools to triangulate stakeholder feedback on the overall school environment. But what these instruments don’t address as well are conditions that tend to be more nuanced and personal and much more specific to the individual’s attitudes and feelings about their daily work:

• How supported do staff feel in their role? How much trust is there among faculty?
• How do individuals feel about their ability to implement change or their own self-efficacy? Do they feel like they can provide the best instruction for each one of their students?
• Are teachers experiencing stress and burnout?⁷
• Does the school environment support teachers in asking for and receiving help?

The question, then, is how best to capture this information and monitor these critical leading indicators. At NTC, we’ve added key questions to all our program quality surveys (PQS) and work with our partners to track and analyze the data. But what can other districts and schools do?

NTC used to administer a large-scale educator working conditions survey in multiple states and large districts called Teaching, Empowering, Leading, & Learning (TELL),⁸ which offered a robust and statistically sound approach for measuring teaching and learning conditions. From this work, we learned that if there was one single item that was strongly related to all the other things we know to be important for retention, that item is: “Overall, my school is a good place to work and learn.”

Any school or district site can gain valuable information by asking teachers just this one question. It can be added to any existing survey or administered as a stand-alone, single-item (anonymous) survey that staff can respond to with a click in an email. We’ve found it to be highly effective in capturing the mood and spirit of staff on a campus. If you start to see teachers disagreeing with that statement, then you know they are pulling away and likely to be considering a departure.

Is my school a good place to work and learn?

Learning from our partners

For over 25 years, NTC has been nurturing highly skilled mentors and coaches to guide new and developing teachers in the complex relational and intellectual work of teaching, helping to keep them in the classroom and supporting their growth as professionals. Our approach is grounded in high-trust relationships between adults designed to build teacher competence and confidence as they mature as teachers and instructional leaders. We also work with school and system leaders to create the enabling conditions for positive teacher development at the school community level.

NTC works with states and districts across the country committed to improving the teacher experience so that students thrive. Each partnership pushes our learning on how to increase teacher effectiveness and improve working conditions in schools as a sustainable approach to support job satisfaction and retention. Working across so many local contexts and geographies helps us elevate best practices and stay in tune with a changing educator workforce. Over the course of the next year, we will be sharing stories from a few of these rich and diverse communities, representing state departments of education in Minnesota and Hawai’i, a border district in Texas, and a small rural county in Eastern Maryland.

As many have observed, teacher working conditions are student learning conditions, and that’s where the rubber hits the road. Making investments in what we know matters to teachers has the potential to improve so much more than retention statistics. Is my school a good place to work and learn? The answer has to be yes.

^{1. See for example: Teacher Turnover: Why it Matters and What We Can Do About it; Teacher Turnover in High-Poverty Schools: What We Know and Can Do; How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement}

^{2. Tracking retention requires being able to compare rosters of all teachers employed in one year to subsequent years’ rosters, with multiple additional computations involved. Sometimes teachers are assigned to multiple schools and might be retained at one school but not at another school. For example, a PE teacher serves two different elementary schools one year then returns to one school but is assigned to a different second school the following year. Because the impact is different for the school vs. the district, you have to compute teacher retention both at the school level and at the district level, so really every teacher has two different retention metrics. And what if a teacher returns as an assistant principal? Is that teacher retained? It still results in a classroom role that needs to be filled. What about when teachers aren’t rehired or are shuffled around mid-year because of fluctuations in student enrollment or there’s a reduction in force? School closures? When a teacher transfers to another location, how is that coded? Because it’s so labor intensive, not all school districts, especially smaller ones, have the time or internal capacity in their HR or research departments to adequately track retention. It requires pretty sophisticated analysis to do it in a way that’s valid. If an external partner like NTC is doing the analysis, doing it right requires a data-sharing agreement with the district to get all the raw data, as well as interviews and investigation of a variety of contextual factors.}

^{3. Perceived Teacher Self‐Efficacy as a Predictor of Job Stress and Burnout: Mediation Analyses; Teacher Efficacy: Capturing an Elusive Construct; Why Do Teachers Leave?}

^{4. Teacher Shortages and Turnover in Rural Schools in the US: An Organizational Analysis}

^{5. See for example: The Factors of Teacher Attrition and Retention: An Updated and Expanded Meta-Analysis of the Literature; The Effects of Working Conditions on Teacher Retention; The Impact of Induction and Mentoring Programs for Beginning Teachers: A Critical Review of the Research; Eight Ways States Can Act Now to Retain an Effective, Diverse Teacher Workforce}

^{6. See for example: Teachers Like Us: Strategies for Increasing Educator Diversity In Public Schools; If You Listen, We Will Stay; Voices from the Classroom; Building a More Ethnoracially Diverse Teacher Workforce; Retaining Teachers of Color in Our Public Schools}

^{7. Post pandemic, we are also specifically looking at things like burnout and stress at our partner sites. How are the people in the building doing in terms of mental exhaustion, being physically tired, and where can we step in and do something to further shore up how people are feeling about their jobs? See What Promotes Teachers’ Turnover Intention? Evidence From a Meta-Analysis.}

^{8. See Leadership Matters: Teachers’ Roles in School Decision Making and School Performance; see also TELL Kentucky research links here.}

Over the last five years, our collaboration with leaders across Minnesota has strategically targeted different touch points within the state’s education system to make critical investments in teacher talent. The aim is to support retention and develop the potential of the teacher workforce to better serve the student population of Minnesota. While these efforts carry a clear Minnesota stamp, they represent bright spots the field should closely monitor.

Bright spot — Coaching that centers students in standards-based learning

In 2018, we began working with Lisa Gregoire, director of the Southwest West Central Service Cooperative’s (SWWC) New Teacher Center, to adapt our mentoring model for local professional learning across the region. This partnership has been an incubator for innovation, and we’ve been able to share model practices and strategies with a cross-section of Minnesota education stakeholders and leaders in other states through our national peer learning networks.

As the program evolves, SWWC continues to offer robust induction support that gets better and better, producing several generations of highly skilled mentors serving new teachers in the region. A critical proofpoint is how well NTC coaching aligns with the needs of beginning teachers serving students with learning differences. Special educators and teachers and coaches from alternative schools in the region report that NTC’s optimal learning environment framework and coaching tools support teachers to design appropriate and impactful instruction to meet learners needs.

A critical proofpoint is how well NTC coaching aligns with the needs of beginning teachers serving students with learning differences…. Special educators and teachers and coaches from alternative schools in the region report that our relationship-driven approach puts the student first, leveraging social-emotional learning (SEL) to design appropriate and impactful instruction.

Bright spot — Coaching across the transition from pre-service to in-service

Recently, SWWC kicked off a collaboration with Southwest Minnesota State University to pilot a grow-your-own teacher prep initiative offering coaching modeled on NTC’s approach. But this is not the only place in Minnesota where higher ed is asking the question: Why are we waiting until they get into the classroom to mentor and coach our teachers?

To ensure student teachers at Minnesota State University (MSU) at Mankato receive excellent mentoring during their field experiences, Gina Anderson, director of the College of Education’s Center for Educator Support, has embraced our coaching approach. Her team uses NTC’s professional learning and formative assessment tools and protocols to support the growth of student teachers, university supervisors, and many cooperating teachers in MSU’s Elementary and Literacy Education, K-12 Secondary, and Special Education teacher prep programs. Graduates have shared they’ve made job decisions based on what kind of support they can expect at prospective schools. Systems that offer NTC-based coaching — even when teachers have to drive farther or when the pay isn’t as good — are seen as providing a critical career-boosting benefit.

Graduates have shared they’ve made job decisions based on what kind of support they can expect at prospective schools. Systems that offer NTC-based coaching — even when teachers have to drive farther or when the pay isn’t as good — are seen as providing a critical career-boosting benefit.

Bright spot — Coaching for rural communities

To learn more about how to support students and teachers in rural areas, in 2021, NTC received a five-year Education Innovation and Research (EIR) federal grant. We partnered with 20 Minnesota schools, engaging district and school leaders and coaches to support teachers to design rigorous instruction through coaching. A key focus is on elevating student, family, community, and teacher voices in the design of a whole-school professional learning strategy that prioritizes teacher well-being. Our learning from the EIR grant will help us contribute to the local and national knowledge base of what works for rural education.

Because so much education research focuses on urban environments, the field has a lot to learn about the challenges faced by educators in rural contexts. Our learning from the EIR grant will help us contribute to the local and national knowledge base of what works for rural education.

Bright spot — State-level innovations driving optimal learning

State teacher induction policy varies widely, from the bare minimum of “you have to offer induction” to detailed, top-down mandates. From the beginning of our partnership with the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), leaders in Teacher Induction and Mentoring have been purposeful in filling the gaps seen in many state programs.

MDE is deep into a carefully planned pilot of the framework, closely monitoring local strategies, progress, and impact at schools. The goal is to be able to show how school and district leaders are rethinking induction and to share evidence, artifacts, and resources to help replicate positive changes in new teacher support across the state.

From all our years in the teacher induction business, we know the life-changing impact a skilled mentor can have on a new teacher’s career. But quality teacher induction has to also involve commitments up and down the system to create the “enabling conditions” for teacher success.

We look forward to continuing our support for Minnesota’s education leaders as they connect the dots across multiple system touchpoints, making the efforts of champions for teachers statewide bear fruit. As they position coaching as a teacher preparation, recruitment, retention, and professional development strategy, we’ll share insights on:

• building seamless support for the transition from prep programs to the classroom
• identifying promising practices to meet induction challenges in rural schools
• and more clearly codifying the essential role school and system leaders play in these efforts.

In 2023, we began work with the Hawai’i Department of Education’s (HIDOE) assessment section to build local leadership capacity to improve assessment decision-making and coherence. Instead of issuing top-down mandates with prescriptive testing requirements, the Educator Leader Assessment Collaborative was designed to help shape the state’s approach from the ground up via a network of motivated teachers and administrators who understand how to use assessment alongside standards and curriculum. In addition to attending professional learning, assessing current practice, and developing action plans, participants are learning how to introduce and manage change in local assessment strategy at their schools. NTC supports group knowledge building and provides site-based coaching and consultation on implementing plans for improvement.

The challenge and opportunity

Done well, testing provides schools with vital information about what students know and where there are gaps, helping to inform decisions around instruction and resource allocation. However, a single assessment cannot accomplish everything, and overlapping or redundant tests can squander time and money. A balanced system is one in which all assessments work together to provide a useful and coherent profile of information about student achievement to improve teaching and learning.

The call to re-balance assessment, crystallized in a 2001 report by the National Research Council, stems from the realization that most state summative tests have little impact on instructional practice. Yet two decades after that report’s release, examples of well-functioning balanced systems are hard to find. There are several reasons for this, but they tend to fall into four categories, according to a 2019 report from the Center for Assessment: politics and policy; the commercialization and proliferation of interim assessments; a lack of attention to curriculum and learning in the design of assessment systems; and a lack of assessment literacy at multiple levels of the system.

The Educator Leader Assessment Collaborative (ELAC), which focuses on building assessment literacy among teachers and education leaders, tackles the last of these challenges. The pilot is designed to gain a better understanding of how to bring a “balanced” approach to assessment to Hawai’i’s schools. Achieving this goal is no easy task. It requires the planning and engagement of multiple stakeholders and agreement around a shared vision of how assessments can work together with curriculum and instruction to support rich learning environments. It also requires understanding that any one assessment cannot meet all information needs.

In Hawai’i and other states, the aggressive marketing of assessment tools by vendors has created confusion among many teachers. Some have been sold on the idea that testing solves all their problems; others are administering tests because they’ve been told to, without understanding how to use the data to improve their instruction.

Though HIDOE’s assessment section offers workshops on the “why” and “how” of balanced assessment, the section’s limited number of staff don’t have the bandwidth to train everyone, according to Dianne Morada, a test development specialist for math. Rather, through ELAC, staff hope to extend their reach by preparing a cadre of “rockstar educators” to train their peers.

“We’re developing and empowering leaders at the local level,” said Tyler Belanga, who oversees the state grant funding for the collaborative.

Kelsie Pualoa, the ELA test development specialist, said the ultimate goal of ELAC is to help teachers and administrators cut through the marketing noise and learn how to “assess mindfully.”

“…the ultimate goal of ELAC is to help teachers and administrators cut through the marketing noise and learn how to “assess mindfully.”

Pilot recruitment — Getting the right people at the table

While participation in the pilot is voluntary, individuals and participant teams were carefully recruited to help build an understanding of the diversity of assessment approaches across the state, promote cross-pollination of ideas, and build capacity at the local level. The ideal makeup of a school team includes key staff with different aspects of responsibility for assessment at a site, such as school leaders, curriculum coordinators, testing coordinators, staff in research roles, coaches and mentors, resource teachers, and teacher leaders.

According to Allison Brown, NTC’s lead program consultant for the project, the pilot cohort was carefully curated to test ways to improve communication and collaboration between important stakeholder groups. “We’ve seen the most traction and transfer to practice from professional learning opportunities when you had the right mix of staff at the table to actually effect systems change.”

“We’ve seen the most traction and transfer to practice from professional learning opportunities when you had the right mix of staff at the table to actually effect systems change.”

Building assessment literacy — Getting on the same page

Data collected by HIDOE assessment staff indicated that misconceptions and miscommunication across multiple levels from local to state about what a balanced approach to assessment looks like was a big barrier. To address this, initial professional learning was focused on language and terminology, creating shared definitions, and aligning on the purposes and uses of different types of assessment. Another aim was to translate the research on best practices in assessment to make it meaningful, practical, and manageable for educators. Additional learning focused on selecting assessments aligned with the scope and sequence of instruction and learner-centered formative assessment.

Participants’ key takeaways included the need to more effectively engage students and give them voice and choice in the types of assessment used. They also reflected on “how we as teachers should provide more opportunities for students to share their thinking” in the context of assessment and finding ways to use “student talk and feedback more efficiently in the classroom.”

Many participants appreciated thinking about how often we approach assessment with a deficit mindset. It takes persistent reflection and attention to flip the narrative and ensure all students are learning and being assessed fairly.

Assessing current practice — Identifying starting places

NTC also worked with state assessment staff to conduct a rough landscape analysis of current practice using data collected through focus groups. Some effective trends in local testing approaches within or across grade levels or content areas included:

• use of beginning-of-year screeners to inform teaching for the year
• effective use of formative assessments in some sites
• deployment of professional learning communities (PLCs) to examine data with focus on individual students

Work from a collaborative PLC session of teachers in Hawai’i

Participants surfaced challenges such as overtesting, too much focus on summative assessment, lack of buy-in, lack of teacher understanding of how to use results, timeliness of results, teacher turnover and shortages, misalignment with what is taught, and a lack of understanding that the student is one of the most important users of assessment data.

NTC then introduced participants to our assessment inventory and diagnostic tool to analyze current local assessment practices and portfolios. Participants used this resource to create a summary of tests in current use at their sites, how the data is (or is not) used, and strengths and gaps in their school’s overall assessment strategy analyzing for coherence, comprehensiveness, continuity, utility, and efficiency.

Almost half of the participating sites identified the need to increase the efficiency of assessment (addressing redundancies and ensuring that all assessments were used effectively in decision-making). Other areas of focus included coherence — using assessment in alignment with an underlying learning model — and the usefulness of results in decision-making.

One participant shared that decision-making about assessment should be driven by “focusing on the why, the how, and if student learning needs are being met.” Another considered how data teams and PLCs could be organized differently to use assessment data more effectively. Many participants were interested in ways to start the conversation at their schools to look at their assessment practices.

…decision-making about assessment should be driven by “focusing on the why, the how, and if student learning needs are being met.

Setting goals for balanced assessment strategy — Designing action plans

Based on site diagnostics, NTC consultants then began providing individualized assessment strategy consultation, working with individual teams focused first on setting goals and then developing strategic plans to address gaps in assessment practice.

For example, several participants planned to work within grade-level teams or content areas to develop common formative assessments to inform instruction. Many others plan to do more to involve students in the assessment process, through surveys or student-centered assessment practices. The team from Ewa Beach, a working-class community west of Honolulu, near the Army base, has committed to both goals and identifying duplicative or redundant assessments across the K-5 school.

Supporting local leadership — Building change management capacity

In subsequent professional learning, participants explored leadership theory and role-played scenarios that might occur when introducing change to their communities. Building trust and garnering buy-in from other stakeholders at their schools was called out by participants as a key concern. “We need ways to get and keep teachers motivated,” one said.

Participants discussed strategies for fostering student engagement and practiced skills for conversing with resistant or skeptical colleagues, including deep listening. Many participants went away with a plan for engaging other staff at their sites, anticipating roadblocks and finding allies to overcome barriers. “By having a better understanding of the traits of a transformational leader, I now have immediate next steps that I can implement when facilitating our PLC meetings,” one participant shared.

“My big ‘Aha!’ moment was in having a growth mindset and positive attitude in believing that ALL teachers, even the most set in their ways, can have a change in practice if provided good (transformational) leadership,” said another.

A look ahead

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was “an understandable panic” about learning loss, and a “huge rush to make sure we’re assessing and getting the data,” HIDOE’s Pualoa said. While this rush was well-intentioned, “other things kind of got lost in the mix.” Through ELAC, the division hopes to restore some equilibrium to the testing landscape.

Pualoa shared they also want to equip educators with the tools to contextualize their data — to consider it in conjunction with other data, recognizing that test scores are “not the whole story.”

By showing educators how they can use testing data constructively, project leaders hope to overcome some of the “negative mindset around assessment,” Morada said.

Staff acknowledged that it will take time to spread balanced assessment across the state. Still, they’re already seeing a shift in participants’ mindsets. During the first session, some doubted their ability to make a difference in their schools, saying things like, “I’m just a teacher.” But by the second session, they started seeing themselves as change agents.

“This group of educators has really inspired us,” said Morada. She added that in a field where so much is mandated by the state or federal government, it’s refreshing and exciting to be part of a grassroots effort.

Future NTC professional learning and coaching will focus on how to analyze assessment data to inform instruction, monitoring the ongoing process of initial strategic plans, and the development of a comprehensive balanced assessment strategy for the 2024-25 school year based on learnings from the pilot. A formal report due out in the fall will focus on lessons learned and bright spots and successes.

“I don’t know where to begin.”

It’s an all-too-common feeling for any new teacher and can be especially acute for those teachers coming to the profession on non-traditional paths. This includes the almost 300,000 American teachers with provisional and emergency licenses already managing classrooms nationwide. Most of these beginning educators haven’t benefited from the pedagogical coursework or pre-service field experiences available to those coming through traditional teacher prep programs. This means they are learning on the job and, in far too many cases, in isolation or with assigned mentors in name only.

In entering a profession famous for its rocky starts, alternatively certified educators face additional challenges. While they chose to become teachers because they love kids and/or love the content, many need to gain essential pedagogical knowledge to succeed in the long term. They might not have had exposure to the technical language, concepts, and methodologies of teaching. They might not have thought about, witnessed firsthand, or had the opportunity to practice all the practicalities and strategies that fall under the umbrella of designing instruction, much less how to create environments for optimal learning. They might have the mindsets (though that usually takes some development too), but not the full skill sets. And all too often, they might not get the support they need in time to stay in the classroom.

With the spike of emergency hires from pandemic-era waivers and new and chronic shortages in certain districts and regions of the country, this group of teachers is filling a critical need in our system and deserves a lot more of our attention.

Though emerging research from Massachusetts and New Jersey indicates that these teachers perform similarly to their traditionally prepared peers and are motivated to stay, they have also long reported feeling underprepared in the first months of teaching and subsequently leave the classroom at higher rates. This loss of talent has negative impacts on schools and student learning with significant implications, given that a larger portion of alternatively certified teachers work in schools serving students experiencing poverty.

We know that these educators represent a wide variety in terms of the pace and depth of their preparation experiences. But we need to learn much more about the specific needs of these aspiring teachers as they come into the profession. Existing research identifies the following as challenges for this group: meeting diverse learning needs, classroom management, engaging students, family and caregiver involvement, collaborating with colleagues, and time and stress management. While many traditionally prepared teachers also struggle in these areas, their alternatively certified peers have to manage the additional pressures of learning on the job and trying to build confidence and self-efficacy while finishing credentialing requirements.

Meeting the needs of alt-certified teachers

Our long-time partners in Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) have been thinking deeply about extending critical aspects of NTC’s mentoring model to meet the specific needs of their alt-certified teachers. Teresa Morales-Young, who heads the district’s teacher development department, emphasized that the goal is to provide a coherent continuum of support for aspiring and new teachers, including those coming through the district’s multiple and expanding pipeline programs. 

We caught up briefly with DeAnn Carr, manager of new teacher support in FUSD, which serves approximately 700 new educators annually. This includes alternatively certified new teachers and/or those with provisional licenses working to get their credentials “cleared” by the state of California. (Learn more about provisional licensing in California.)

…the comprehensive support and mentoring focused on assets-based, student-focused teacher development offered through New Teacher Center’s induction model is critical.

DeAnn emphasized that the comprehensive support and mentoring focused on assets-based, student-centered teacher development offered through New Teacher Center’s induction model is critical. In extending and differentiating support for these teachers, however, DeAnn stressed that it’s important not to assume that teachers have the background knowledge or enough exposure to effectively process pedagogical techniques. To meet these teachers where they are, she offered the following additional considerations.

Planning can be a big area of need for alternatively certified teachers

Many alternatively certified teachers don’t know what lesson planning looks and sounds like, DeAnn said, and don’t have enough experience to know that they must plan out all the details. This includes delivery modalities, timing, thinking about where the students are in the classroom and what they are doing at all times, and how to optimize learning time. They have great ideas, she said, but haven’t had the experience structuring a lesson. They also often need to learn to build time into lessons to reiterate expectations and instructions; once is not enough.

Observe, observe, observe

Fresno is currently able to assign substitutes so that teachers can go with their coach to observe other teachers regularly. The opportunity to see good teaching in action, and what specific pedagogical practices goals (e.g., around student engagement) look and sound like are invaluable. Equally critical is the opportunity to be observed by a trusted coach and receive feedback. Following an observation cycle, coaches can provide just-in-time feedback in the moment then debrief and reflect during subsequent coaching conversations building towards a teacher’s development goals.

Take advantage of technology, especially video

Because time is always a constraint, it’s hard to find adequate opportunities for observation and feedback. DeAnn emphasized that video can make a huge difference. “There’s something about watching yourself teaching that really activates that reflective muscle all by itself,” she said, “without the evaluative component of an observer who can only see through their own eyes.” New teachers also just need to see different aspects of teaching in play in the classroom, so building a bank of demonstration videos teachers can watch and coaches can refer to is helpful.

Lean on coaches to help teachers choose, process, and apply professional learning

In addition to induction support, coaches in FUSD help new teachers choose professional learning from the district’s options, helping them to align learning with areas of need and then following up to support application as part of, not separate from, ongoing induction support.

Find ways to bring new teachers together for support

FUSD encourages principals to offer new teacher PLCs, with coaches facilitating or helping principals to facilitate collaborative learning around common problems of practice. Learning in a community of peers and knowing that they aren’t alone in their experiences helps to build novices’ confidence.

Help coaches prioritize skills to avoid new teacher overload

FUSD coaches participated in a group book study to collectively identify a hierarchy of skills aligned with the teaching and coaching cycle to set a trajectory of manageable targets for coaching conversations. This has been especially helpful for new coaches, DeAnn said, and helps to break down what might seem like “lofty” goals of teacher learning plans into smaller bits that are easier for already overwhelmed new teachers to absorb.

Provide just-in-time supports

In FUSD, coaches practice “active coaching” strategies to provide models and discuss and support adjustments during instruction in the moment instead of waiting until after a lesson to debrief and plan for change. To maintain trust, it is important that mentors do not use these strategies without discussing them in advance with the teacher so they know how the interactions will occur. Strategies include:

• Cueing — During a pre-observation conversation, teachers determine a focus for the observation and co-develop a cue that the mentor or teacher can use to indicate a need for support.
• Charting — The mentor collects data on a predetermined focus area (e.g., calling on students, teacher movement), enabling the mentor and teacher to quickly review the data during instruction to make adjustments right then and there. The process can be repeated.
• Teacher time-out — The mentor and teacher decide on a time to confer during a lesson or predetermine a signal that a time-out is warranted so the teacher and mentor can think out loud about a decision point (it’s fine for students to hear the exchange).
• Huddle/co-teach model — With students in small groups, the mentor and teacher huddle to discuss a strategy for the mentor to model with one small group. The teacher and mentor debrief, and then the teacher tries with another small group.

What FUSD is doing works. Retention rates for alternatively certified teachers in the district have ranged between approximately 80% to 90% over the last three years, compared to a 59% average for similar teachers reported in a 2021 University of Texas at Austin study.

The challenges faced by provisionally and alternatively certified teachers and the districts that employ them are real. We applaud FUSD’s effort to provide comprehensive and differentiated support to this growing sector of the teacher workforce. We will continue to partner and learn from FUSD and plan to share more insights on support for alternatively certified teachers in the coming months.