Supporting New Teachers

I accept that I'm a month late with this, but the September 2007 issue of Scholastic's District Administration magazine has an interesting article on induction and mentorship programs for new teachers. The neatest feature of the article is the extensive list of web resources that they've put together relating to new teachers and their struggles; there's something there for everyone. You can get a direct link to the article here.

Sadly, I don't think that the new teachers in my school get nearly the support they should. We have a mentor on the district payroll, but she's responsible for five different schools and maybe comes in once every two weeks. They also make the new teachers participate in a book study on Professional Learning Communities, which is a night a week that they have to give up when they really should be given the permission to focus on their classrooms.