Professional Development
New teachers benefit from engagement in purposeful, ongoing, formal and informal job-embedded learning opportunities that promote reflection, collaboration and professional growth.
New Teacher Alliance Examples:
- Cle Elum-Roslyn helps new teachers meet the state’s professional certification requirements by providing the program locally through a partnership with Seattle Pacific University. Thirteen teachers have taken advantage of this option. The district used three criteria to select a partner: flexibility and convenience for staff, low cost and meaningful and relevant content.
- Educational Service District 105 assisted Cle Elum-Roslyn in finding a university to provide professional certification services. It also provided support for the district’s mentoring program. For other districts, it has shared the induction standards, hosted a mentor roundtable, developed mentoring support and presented a one-day think tank on implementing the standards.
- Educational Service District 113 offers a comprehensive program to new teachers and their mentors. It also provides teachers an option to meet their license requirements by designing a learning project, tracking progress with their own data and submitting their findings to a review committee.
- Spokane School District videotapes experienced teachers and creates CD courses that new teachers can take online for clock hours. Mentors can download the CDs to their new teachers’ computers and pinpoint a particular area they want to focus and work on together.
Great Ideas from Around the State:
- Invite new teachers to attend state or national conferences with experienced colleagues. This helps to integrate teachers into their schools’ professional learning communities.
- Videotape experienced teachers to provide examples of how they establish classroom management practices such as teaching routines, first-day practices, etc.
- Develop an online discussion board for new teachers and invite mentors and other experienced colleagues to contribute ideas.
- When your school or district adopts new curricula, build into the plan ways to “catch up” new teachers hired after the initial user training has happened. Identify specific teachers as resource colleagues.
- Assist new teachers in pursuing professional development that interests them and aligns to their professional goals.
Resources for Professional Development:
- Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Charlotte Danielson. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1996.
- Looking Together at Student Work: A Companion Guide to Assessing Student Learning. Tina Blythe, David Allen and Barbara Schieffelin Powell. Teachers College Press, 1999.
- Click here to view our Concept Map.
